by We have been doing a lot of thinking and work on horizon scanning at Houston Foresight. We revised our process several years back captured in the graphic below.
And in Spring 2018, we dedicated our annual Spring Gathering to “scanning the fringe.”
We also talk about it a lot in class. In particular, we’ve been trying to get better/more systematic about finding Horizon 3 scanning hits and “the fringe.” One of the student scanners sparked a response from me that maybe we should include in our how-to. “You might do some “snowball” searching in which you look at an interesting piece, and see what sources it has that might be more provocative, and follow them, and see where they lead you.” So, “snowball scanning?” I owe the thought to Dr. Oliver Markley who taught us snowball surveying…why not apply it to scanning. Be interested to hear your feedback. – Andy Hines
I like the idea of snowball scanning! It goes beyond the fringe and may lead to some unknown places and rabbit holes. I can imagine looking at an interesting article and thinking “Where did this emerge?” or “And now what?”
As I mentioned, Professor Oliver Markley is the source of the snowball concept…just applying in a different area.
Nice to know there is a term for this style of scanning. I usually do it on select scan hits that feel like there might be more info closer to the original source, or feel like they may be just illuminating one specific aspect of the hit. I used to think of this as “rabbit-holing”. Snow-balling is better
ha ha, I like rabbit-holing, too!
Lots of references on snowball searching in a research sense, particularly for systematic literature reviews. It seems to have emerged as a method in the 1990s. Another similar term is ‘berry picking’.
This is an interesting concept as the snowball searching resonates with me. Are you able to provide me with example references that use the concept of snowball searching? Thanks, Vanessa