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Foresight Manual – Empowered Futures for the 2030 Agenda
Published by the Global Center for Public Service Excellence, Singapore
10 things to know about the future/s
1. Future cannot be fully predicted – most things we think we know about the future tends to be extrapolation of current trends, which is based on past data — so we should not be looking at the rear-mirror when driving forward.
2. There is no data from the future (we create the future as we experience it) so we should be thinking about futures in terms of different (often conflicting) personal and group perspectives, frames of references, and ‘images’.
3. The future should be ‘pluralized‘: there is not one, but multiple alternative futures. Within the broader scope of all possible futures, some are more probable or plausible, some are less so. Normative (preferable) futures are those that stakeholders aspire to create.
4. Very often, useful ideas and ‘images’ of the future tend to seem ridiculous in the present exactly because they are ‘not expected‘. Therefore, foresight should challenge existing beliefs, values, mindsets, and behaviour to avoid being trapped in the ‘business as usual’.
5. Technology is not the future — how we use existing (and develop new) technologies will determine their future implications.
6. The future belongs to the curious — those who see beyond existing systems and thinking patterns.
7. Future is the process, not a destination: you cannot ‘reach’ the future or ‘arrive there’ – the future ‘there’ will always be another ten years further ahead.
8. Historically, most fashionable trends died out relatively quickly, while most important events that did reshape the future started as barely noticeable, ‘weak signals’ of change.
9. For every future that will happen there are hundreds of expected futures that will not happen — we always need plan B (and C and D, etc.).
10. The worst thing is to live somebody else’s past while thinking it is your future.
Other contributions to strategic foresight
- DesignJam: Futures of Social Innovation Hubs, Strategic Innovation Lab, March 2018
- ILead – Foresight methods for Social Innovation, University of Toronto, 2018
- Gray matters: systemic analysis of employment and elderly, SFI/OCADU, May 2016
- Future of the Music Industry, SFI/OCADU, May 2016
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