Designers, futurists, and innovators of all kind often apply the long view toward businesses and the world at large; but how often do we apply this perspective to our personal lives? Alida Draudt and Julia Rose West have taken the complex tools of foresight and distilled them to their simplest forms in order to tackle this challenge. Together they have written a workbook that focuses on ten-minute mini workshops around personal futures - introducing not only foresight, but the idea of multiple potential futures to the realm of the individual. This workbook will give you a few tools to shift the long view from business-oriented to highly personal. "Finally, methodologies leveraged by leading strategic foresight practitioners have been made accessible. If there is one thing to takeaway from What the Foresight, it's this: the future is for everyone. In the book, authors Alida Draudt and Julia West brilliantly break down the guiding principles of futures work in an easy to understand set of materials and activities that anyone can use to imagine their own futures. Read this book! The future is a cause worth fighting for." - Matthew Manos, Founder and Managing Director of verynice. Creator of Models of Impact, author of Toward Preemptive Social Enterprise, and author of How to Give Half of Your Work Away for Free "What the Foresight is one of those rare feats - it is well informed, easy to understand and broadly applicable. If you're looking to take that first step into futures thinking here's your road map." - Brian David Johnson, Futurist and author of Science Fiction Prototyping "Going through the exercises in What the Foresight helps you envision multiple possible futures and then choose the path that suits you best. It's a imaginative and useful tool for anyone who wants to expand their options and explore more paths." - Christopher Ireland, Co-author of Rise of the DEO "Foresight is an emerging skill that is becoming more visible and more common around the world - that is, among adults. Young people are not yet included in the discussion of the future these days, and it's their future more than ours! Almost no schools teach students how to anticipate and influence change, much less about the plausible futures that await them later in life. Now Draudt and West have provided us with What the Foresight, a clever, beautifully designed approach to the future for young and old alike. Thank you!" - Peter C. Bishop, Ph.D. Executive Director of Teach the Future, Inc. and co-author of Thinking About the Future

Foresight and Innovation is a guide for readers that are interested about the future. The book introduces a concept of futurist thinking, which includes anticipating, innovating and communicating about the futures. These concepts show how various organizations, all over the world are thinking, communicating and creating a better future.

Thinking about the Future distills the expertise of three dozen senior foresight professionals into a set of essential guidelines for carrying out successful strategic foresight. Presented in a highly scannable yet personable style, each guideline includes an explanation and rationale, key steps, a case example, and resources for further study.

The Futures Thinking Playbook is designed for students and teachers alike, to help the younger generations anticipate and influence the future. This interactive, fun and engaging workbook will open minds to many possible and surprising futures. The Futures Thinking Playbook, divided into sixteen manageable plays, supports young people's creative and critical thinking skills.

Assessing the future is vital in informing public policy decisions. One of the most widespread approaches is the development of scenarios, which are alternative hypothetical futures. Research has indicated, however, that the reality of how professionals go about employing scenarios is often starkly at odds with the theory - a finding that has important ramifications for how the resulting images of the future should be interpreted. It also shows the need for rewriting and updating theory. This book, based on an intensive five year study of how experts actually go about assessing the future, provides a groundbreaking examination of foresighting in action. Obtained via ethnographic techniques, the results lay bare for the first time the real processes by which scenarios are made. It is also the first book to examine foresighting for public policy, which is so often overlooked in favour of business practice. From handling of discontinuity to historical determinism, the analysis reveals and explains why foresight is difficult and what the major pitfalls are. Each chapter ends with a toolkit of recommendations for practice. The book aims to help readers to reflect on their own practices of public-oriented foresight and thus to foster a deeper understanding of the key principles and challenges. Ultimately, this will lead to better informed decision making.

This is a practical (field) guide to foresight and foresight tools for leaders in business, the public sector and NGOs, to aid their practice in strategy, decision making and change.

This book provides students and line managers in organizations with the means to create better scenarios and to use them to create winning business strategies. The book covers scenarios such as: economic outlooks; political environments; acquisitions; downsizing, and more.

Flash Foresight offers seven radical principles you need to transform your business today. From internationally renowned technology forecaster Daniel Burrus—a leading consultant to Google, Proctor & Gamble, IBM, and many other Fortune 500 firms—with John David Mann, co-author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller The Go-Giver, comes this systematic, easy-to-implement method for identifying new business opportunities and solving difficult problems in the twenty-first century marketplace.

In this book, leading authors explore ways in which organizationscan develop their ability to manage the future. An exploration of the ways in which organizations can developtheir ability to manage the future. Consists of ten papers written by authors from both sides ofthe Atlantic and from Asia, all of whom are distinguished scholarsin the fields of strategy or organizational learning. Addresses key questions about how organizational foresight canbe conceptualized and developed, and the extent to which it ispossible. The papers are prefaced by a foreword from Spyros Makridakisand an introduction from the editors. Helps to shape a new research agenda, and so will be ofinterest to academics, as well as to students andpractitioners.

Foresight for Organizations will acquaint the reader with various foresight methods and tools, to show the reader how these methods are used, what the pitfalls are and how the methods relate to each other. This innovative volume offers the reader the ability to carry out a study of the future by him- or herself and apply the results in a decision-making strategy process. The author addresses the following methods: scenarios, trend analysis, the Delphi method, quantitative trend extrapolation, technology assessment, backcasting and roadmapping; the most relevant and popular methods that also cover the range of approaches from predictive, via normative to explorative. Every chapter also contains references to additional literature about the methods being discussed. This book is essential reading for researchers, academics and students in the areas of Community Development, Sociology of organizations, Change management, Social entrepreneurship, Sustainable development and participative planning.