Last night I attended a discussion that was notionally about a possible national foresight ‘Community of Practice’, under the auspices of the Centre for Australian Foresight (CfAF). Chris Stewart from CfAF said that CfAF hoped to play an industry building role, as well as doing consulting work. At the same time over in the United … [Read more…]
The need to strip things back to their basics for an upcoming series of workshops (for folk with no foresight experience) has prompted some reflection on what the core aspects of futures work might be. Other frameworks – like the process phases of ‘framing’, ‘scanning’, ‘forecasting’, ‘visioning’, ‘planning’ and ‘acting’ described in Thinking About the Future … [Read more…]
A few weeks ago I published an article at an independent news and analysis website called The Conversation which discussed how forecasts are shaped by the interpretations and biases of whoever makes them. It referenced psychological studies that have revealed the many cognitive biases that can affect how we explore the future. Last night I … [Read more…]
A great discussion has developed at http://futuristpaul.com in response to a recent post by Paul Higgins titled ‘Futurists, What are they good for?’ In it a bunch of practitioners, myself included, discuss lots of issues relevant to my doctoral research project. Here I’ve collected under different themes some key comments, as well as some quotes from … [Read more…]
Broadly speaking, my doctoral project is examining the increasing use of foresight methods for tackling sustainability problems, and their effects. A key focus that’s emerged is inquiring into related practices for enhancing the handling of more “wicked” sustainability problems – for example, as part of participatory governance approaches – and for preventing worse challenges emerging … [Read more…]
In early June, I’m giving a talk to the Centre for Sustainability Leadership on futures thinking and techniques (for the Melbourne Fellowship Program). This post is an initial “idea dump” which I’ll revisit over the next month. It also picks up on some themes I’ve spotted in relevant literature, such as on “wicked”/”super-wicked” problems and … [Read more…]