Futures work and forecasting
The value of scenarios and how they are used
The more papers I read about foresight and futures, the more … I feel. The … is because I can’t quite find the right word to describe what I feel - sad, annoyed, amazed (in a negative way), maybe even perplexed. Read this:
In the foresight literature there has been little interchange of ideas between the two approached with the established journals, such as The International Journal of Forecasting and the Journal of Forecasting providing little coverage of scenarios, while journals such as Futures have focussed more on scenarios.
Paul Goodwin and George Wright (2025). Can Narrative-Based Scenarios Support Quantitative Judgmental Forecasting? Futures & Foresight Science, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1002/ffo.7003
My immediate reaction was: and? This is a unique paper and worth reading. Personally, I shiver when I see forecasting and scenarios in the same paper, but this paper is about human judgement and its value in forecasting, except for imagination. Maybe because it’s assumed that the imagination part has happened during scenario development.
Then I kind of shivered. My worldview won’t let me merge quantitative and qualitative research - I am a social constructionist at heart. And I tend to think that focusing on the output of futures processes only is missing their original purpose in the Shell process and Pierre Wack’s work* - to change the mental models of corporate beings - ‘the gentle art of reperceiving’. The thinking comes before the doing was as important, if not more important, in Wack’s work. And today, while futures literacy processes are being critiqued, let us not forget that their core is imagination, and that makes them an important approach for the field in my mind.
Good scenarios are the product of our imaginations, and after reading a paper recently about handing over the whole scenario process to AI (except for the Executive Committee making the final decision on the one right future), I am shivering a little bit again about what’s going on in futures and foresight work. Note: I have nothing against AI being used for trend exploration in the present, but I don’t think letting it bring together all it has scraped about futures today to claim it can imagine new futures is a bit much - though I’m open to discussing this. Maybe when AI reaches its final level of development - when I’m not around - will enable it to imagine entirely new futures.
I was taught in my foresight course, and have learned through my experience, that if we lack imagination in the development of futures scenarios , we have lost the purpose of scenarios. The phrase ‘scenarios are not the end game’ was heard in the course and all my workshops because they are very unlikely to ever exist in the form that we imagine them. Scenarios and the narratives that must accompany them are develop to help us think in new ways about the present. And we do that by using our imaginations to develop them and to move us to reframe the present.
Like the term ‘strategic foresight’ which has lost its focus on thinking first, strategy second, scenarios have lost their focus on thinking in new ways and now seem to be all about forecasting the single right future. I might be, and probably am, overstating this, but we haven’t learned how to challenge our assumptions about futures and make it the norm at the start of futures processes in the present yet, let alone understand the true value of scenario development (note, not scenario planning) and the value of our imaginations as a valid alternative source of ‘data’. That last bit might make you shiver and that’s okay.
Scenario development is critical but really only has value if our imaginations are free of the present - and that is hard to achieve. I have been in too many workshops where people can’t or won’t use their imaginations and have told me so in no uncertain terms; hence, their thinking remains unchallenged and their images of the future are constrained to what is possible in their present realities. And the actions that emerge from these types of closed processes are stunted extensions of old ideas - those ‘used futures’ we talk about. We need to remember that imaginations come before scenario development. We think before we do.
I now view the field from afar and may have no right to be critical of things happening in it today - most of which are for the good (especially its emerging connections with neuroscience). Remember though, that we have a history that we must not forget, and that we stand on the shoulders of some very remarkable people.
*Two examples of Wack’s work: https://hbr.org/1985/09/scenarios-uncharted-waters-ahead and Scenarios: Shooting the Rapids.
The sense is we are losing the capability to have what many would still call brainstorming
The use of computing power in picking trends and patterns has been there for at least 30 years - the ICRC worked with Insead on this.
What is being lost are the inflection points, the decision points, where trends are totally disrupted and patterns require further data.
Here, the imagination also comes to the fore in terms of mindset - or challenging mindset in fact - to look at something new, invention rather than innovation.
Computing power will continue to grow - An altruism - and if we are not careful inventive free flow will be further stifled. The blended learning always requires inquiring minds otherwise we will not get sky blue pink ?
This really resonates with me Maree. And I would add that what comes before imagination (or lack thereof) is desire (or lack thereof). And this, in turn, is related to most people's disempowerment in the current system. If, at the core of your being, you feel hopeless and unable to change things, your imagination is unable to visualise what you might desire, what incredible futures might be before you, before all of us.
My view as to the causes of this is that we are still caught up in the Newtonian, linear paradigm. We need complexity science and chaos theory to be taught in all schools, kids need to grasp what tipping points and leverage points are, and develop an understanding of non-linearity. So they know that tiny actions can have enormous effects, and vice versa. This will empower and enable them. It will also fuel their imaginations.