1.2) Principles, benefits and applications of foresight and scenarios

Question 1

Foresight principles

(to keep in mind when building scenarios)

Answer 1

• The long term and ‘the long view’
• Global, holistic and systematic approach
• Multiple perspectives
• Creativity “out-of-the-box”
• Actors’ games
• Retrospective and peripheral view 360°
• Outside-in thinking
• Triangulation
• Structure/morphology of the future

Question 2

Benefity and outcomes

Answer 2

1. Quality of decision-making
2. Impact of decision-making
3. Ability to react to future changes

Question 3

Benefity and outcomes (quality of decision-making)

Answer 3

• provides guidance for strategic actions being taken today (what to do, how and when)
• useful information for actors whose decisions consider long-term developments
• decisions to be based on a wider societal debate and a greater variety of knowledge sources

Question 4

Benefits and outcomes (impact of decision-making)

Answer 4

• creates commitment among actors to support future-oriented visions
• encourage stakeholders to join forces to achieve common goals

Question 5

Benefits and outcomes (ability to react to future changes)

Answer 5

• allows for knowledge and ideas to flow more freely, enhancing innovation and the capacity to design and manage non-routine events
• increases risk awareness and provides a basis for more effective contingency planning and appropriate forms of resilience
• may result in new decision-making processes in organisations

Question 6

Areas of application

Answer 6

Question 7

Decision tree

Answer 7

Can be used to determine whether scenario thinking is an approproate tool for addressing your challenge or problem

Question 8

Developing a social capacity for foresight

Answer 8

Question 9

S4 Futures

Answer 9

Scoping >> Scanning >> Scenarios >> Strategy

Question 10

Scoping and framing

Orientation, organization and design

Answer 10

• attitudes (towards the future, …)
• audience (client(s); decision makers, stakeholder, …)
• work environment (openness, inhibitions, possibility for experiments and prototypes, …)
• rationales, purpose and objectives
• teams and experts
• focal issue and time horizons(s)

Question 11

Scanning

Exploration, information

Answer 11

• System and structure
• retrospective and context
• actors vs. factors
• creating a shared language for scanning and learning
• sources (internal and external; primary and secondary), platforms and databases

Question 12

Foresighting / Building scenarios

Synthesis

Answer 12

• key trends and uncertainties
• diverge (generate ideas, challenge mental models,…) and converge (rank, select ideas, …)
• anticipation and interpretation (tools and ‘schools’)
• alternative futures, scenarios, plausibility and appropriation
• Baseline/reference, bau and ‘to the best of our knowledge today’

Question 13

Strategy

Direction and visioning

Answer 13

• implications of foresightinh/of the scenarios (e.g. portfolio)
• develop strategic options
• direction and appropriation
• think in a visionary way
• envision desired outcomes
• Preferred future(s)
• Scenarios and visions: ‘organizing the (collective) wish’

Question 14

Strategy

Action, Testing, Institutionalizing and Monitoring

Answer 14

• Report and communicate results
• Develop plans, agenda for action (strategic objectives, KPIs, …)
• Organize to achieve the vision
• Agile, prototyping, testing
• Intelligence, scanning and monitoring systems
• ‘Institutionalize’ foresight and strategic thinking