Foresight Frameworks

Exploring a range of frameworks that can be used to design foresight processes.

Foresight frameworks define similar stages/phases that can be used to explore possible futures - the major difference across the framework is choice of terminology. The frameworks all provide a structure that allows expansion of perspectives to seek new possibilities as external changes evolve over time, to imagine futures that generate new strategic or policy options, and to decide on action to take today to prepare for and work towards a preferred future that is ‘owned’, as opposed to ‘disowned’ (the one we ignore or can’t see) or ‘used’, the future we borrow from elsewhere.

That is, the frameworks are designed to help people take a ‘prospective’ not reactive stance to the future. Foresight emerges when we systematically and consciously use prospective methods, and it is only when such a prospective stance is taken that the new and novel can emerge. by challenging conventional thinking and assumptions for veracity and usefulness – specifically because prospective thinking explores th…