Three Common Challenges in Foresight Work
And how to tackle them
FUTURE PROOF-BLOG BY FUTURES PLATFORM
Foresight is a vital practice for all organisations today, but it's not always easy. Foresight practitioners encounter common challenges that can obscure their view of what lies ahead. In this article, we delve into three of these challenges and provide practical solutions to help you ensure that your insights into the future are both reliable and adaptable.
1. Excessive Focus on “Growing” Trends, Missing Out on Weakening Trends
The conventional approach to foresight often places a significant emphasis on strengthening trends while neglecting those that are gradually losing prominence. However, to gain a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of change, we must look not only at what is currently prominent but also at what is fading into obscurity.
One effective method to address this imbalance is to establish a system that assigns markers of ‘strengthening’ or ‘weakening’ to the trends you’ve identified. Often, these categories manifest as two sides of the same coin. Consider, for instance, the rise of the platform economy, which has spawned numerous new business models and trends, while simultaneously eroding older economic facets, such as traditional journalism.
By recognising the duality inherent in trends and consciously striving for balance, one can avoid the undue fixation on strengthening trends, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of their foresight work. There exists a spectrum of change, including strengthening and weakening trends, change signals that are "too early to tell," and potential "wild cards." Hence, it’s paramount to look at the entire landscape and recognise the weight of each trend.
At Futures Platform, we categorise future changes into four types - Strengthening, Weakening, Wild Card and Weak Signal.
2. Doing Away with Bias in Foresight Work
The second challenge can be framed as a bias challenge, and it involves two critical aspects.
First, there's a tendency to place uneven emphasis on subjective, serendipitously encountered, and intuitively assessed weak signals. More importantly, this is often accompanied by a failure to connect these individual observations with one another, resulting in an incomplete understanding of changes and trends. To avoid this, it's essential to treat single observations, weak signals, and case examples as credible evidence of change only when supported by multiple other external insights.
Another significant pitfall is the reliance on value rationality, often referred to as ideological or proactive visioning. This occurs when a person advocates for a future aligned with their personal ideology. They may actively persuade others and themselves of the likelihood or necessity of such a future, falling prey to selection bias. Of course, this bias must be addressed in all research and professions, but it’s particularly important in foresight, where outcomes are uncertain.
Addressing these challenges related to research objectivity is a complex task, as some level of unconscious subjectivity inevitably creeps into what we choose to present or write. Nonetheless, there are effective techniques to improve this.
For instance, at Futures Platform, we meticulously group different phenomena and trends, linking them to overarching megatrends and broader themes across various sectors, such as technology and the economy. This enables us to make sense of weak signals by identifying supporting or contradictory evidence and contextualising them within larger trends.
As foresight is a collaborative endeavour, involving third parties is another key aspect of overcoming bias. Here at Futures Platform, each trend and scenario analysis our team produces undergoes an internal peer-review process to ensure it meets our standards. We also have an international content advisory board that provides valuable feedback and expertise when necessary. Finally, we also empower users to modify our content and supplement it with their own material if they believe it doesn't accurately represent their vision of the future.
3. Avoiding a Static Vision of the Future and Trends
The third challenge emerges when we are tasked with analysing the evolution of a trend over time. Too often, it’s difficult to assess this analytically and step by step, as trends are frequently regarded as static concepts that “occur at some point” or as entities that “grow without undergoing significant change.” We know, for instance, that transportation is moving towards automation—but how do we assess this?
Addressing this question requires a nuanced examination of the changes the broader transportation industry will undergo in the short-, mid-, and long-term. This is far more insightful than broad statements like "all transit will be automated in 25 years." While that might be a possibility, it pales in comparison to a detailed analysis of the trend, its various phases, and the associated opportunities and threats.
Employing a structured framework based on themes helps break down larger topics and megatrends into manageable timeframes and sub-trends. The "Transportation" theme, for instance, encompasses various time frames influenced by different trends, like the rise of ride-sharing apps and the eventual adoption of clean energy for transportation.
An example foresight radar on transportation on Futures Platform, where the theme is broken down into different time horizons, sub-categories and individual trends
This approach offers a comprehensive view of the evolving future. If one prefers to operate at a higher level, they can focus on macro-phenomena, working with broader clusters of trends instead of delving into individual micro-trends. And when necessary, they can delve deeper into the network of micro-phenomena within each macro theme.
By using a theme structure, we not only gain clarity in navigating a dynamic and ever-changing future but also address the other two challenges mentioned above. This approach underscores the importance of establishing connections and links between phenomena as evidence for individual trends, therefore reinforcing objectivity and ensuring a holistic understanding of all change phenomena in our analysis.
Ready to tackle these foresight challenges head-on? Try Futures Platform’s digital foresight solution today and equip your team with the tools they need to navigate the future with confidence.
Foresight is a vital practice for all organisations today, but it's not always easy. Foresight practitioners encounter common challenges that can obscure their view of what lies ahead.