This article is written by Jessica Thornton, Principal, Creative Futures.

Thinking and planning for the future is a challenging task at the best of times. In our current Covid-19 world, uncertainty is at an unprecedented high, making it exceptionally difficult or even seemingly impossible. But as policymakers, understanding what lies ahead and the ability to make future-focused decisions is crucial.

The unprecedented changes brought on by the global pandemic means that many of the assumptions our usual projection models are built upon are less reliable than before. They simply are unable to consider the breadth and range of changes we’re facing — from the global economic disruption, the climate crisis, and global citizen unrest. Making sense of complex changes and the potential futures that may result is exactly what the discipline of strategic foresight (and future studies) was created to do.

“Strategic foresight is a structured and systematic way of using ideas about the future to anticipate and better prepare for change” — OECD, What is Strategic Foresight?

To do this, strategic foresight leverages a range of tools and methods to identify possible changes requiring attention, to understand the possible, plausible and preferable scenarios that may emerge as a result, and the strategies and steps required to take action. The following is a brief overview of a few tools that can be used to help anticipate and plan for changes on the horizon.

3 approaches to Horizon Scanning

In May, suburban real estate listing views were up 13%—double the growth rate of urban properties in the United States. In July, Canada’s last fully intact arctic ice shelf collapsed. While changes like these will not be new to policymakers working in the relevant domain areas, they can lead to knock-off effects that can take policymakers in other fields by surprise. For instance, if a growing number of urban dwellers are shifting to suburban or rural lifestyles, how are we ensuring these areas have sufficient access to medical, emergency, or other critical services? What are the implications if they do not?

Horizon scanning can be completed through traditional desk research — reviewing popular media, academic journals and fringe sources to identify evidence of possible changes on the horizon

Whether it’s a new event, the emergence of new behaviours, or a new product or innovation, we encounter evidence of change daily. The process of collecting these changes, distilling and synthesising them is called horizon scanning. Similar to environmental scanning, horizon scanning looks broadly, across a diverse mix of domains to understand the possible changes on the horizon. In doing so, horizon scanning helps identify the key changes that have the potential to disrupt and catch us off guard so that policymaking can be future-focused and resilient.

1. Desk research

Horizon scanning can be completed through traditional desk research — reviewing popular media, academic journals and fringe sources to identify evidence of possible changes on the horizon. This approach can be done individually or as a group and should be an ongoing process. Horizon scanning can be done deliberately when you identify a domain you wish to understand the potential futures of, or passively if you want to keep an ongoing eye on emerging changes.

Tip: Depending on your domain, new art exhibits or scientific patents are excellent sources of insight. Think creatively about the sources you review, and ensure that you are balanced in your approach across a variety of sources.

2. The Delphi Method

Another way to identify these changes is by engaging experts for their opinion and reflections. This can be done using a range of methods such as the Delphi Method, created by RAND in the 1950’s. The Delphi Method is a framework that uses multiple rounds of questions sent to experts for a response to test and distil insights. An expert panel responds to the first round of questions, which are distilled, then sent back for further response. This process might have multiple rounds depending on the degree of consensus you seek to reach.

The global pandemic has demonstrated the price we pay when we’re not adequately prepared for major changes and disruptions

Tip: To simplify data collection and coding, focus as much attention on the framework and platform for collecting insights from your panel as the questions themselves. Lengthy delays between rounds of questions can reduce engagement rates of your experts, impacting your final output.

3. Seven questions

Another approach is to directly interview a range of internal and external experts for feedback and strategic insights. The Seven Questions method is a useful framework to use in this regard. This method, created by Shell, includes the following questions to help uncover emerging changes and challenges:

  • What is the critical issue for the future of your domain?

  • What might a possible, desirable future look like?

  • What would you worry about if things went wrong?

  • What would need to be changed to achieve the desired future?

  • What historical reasons led to the way things are?

  • What are the most important things that need to be achieved in the short term?

  • What you would do in a perfect world, with no constraints?

Tip: Include a few unusual suspects in your interview panel to broaden your perspectives. Unobvious choices can result in the most important insights. Here are some more great tips from the UK’s Government Office for Science.

There is merit in all of these approaches, and depending on your resources and intended output, you may wish to use different in different circumstances. For instance, the Delphi Method requires a heavy engagement of your expert panel, in multiple sessions. Seven questions on the other hand is less of a commitment for experts but doesn’t provide the opportunity to feed back results from other experts. Both these methods however only help uncover changes currently on the radar of your participants and therefore may miss weak signals and changes that originate outside of your expert’s domain of expertise. As such, each of these methods is best supplemented by desk research.

Policymaking needs foresight

Typically strategic foresight is used when planning for 5+ years in the future, since, in normal times, not much changes in 2-5 years. However, these are not normal times, and the rate of change and complexity of change is at an unprecedented level. The global pandemic has demonstrated the price we pay when we’re not adequately prepared for major changes and disruptions. This is why understanding and applying strategic foresight tools is critical for the policymaking community. Making sense of the future, or rather, the range of possible futures on the horizon is our best path forward in these uncertain times. — Jessica Thornton

_________

Jessica Thornton is an award-winning futurist who has worked on a range of strategic foresight projects exploring the futures of cities, futures of work, futures of food, and futures of public engagement. Jessica is the founder of Creative Futures, a research and design studio based in Toronto, Ontario that specialises in strategic foresight and design research for the public and nonprofit sectors. She is a collaborator at the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship and a Future Cities Canada foresight associate.

(Picture credit: Unsplash)