Your Most Significant Foresight Challenge? | Hinesight....for Foresight

What is the most significant challenge you face in getting your foresight work implemented within organizations?

The #1 complaint I hear from clients with foresight projects is some version of “I don’t know what to do with this” or “I don’t know how to get them to act on it.” This takes many different forms. What “form” do you hear it in?

I’m working on a summer elective course for the UH Foresight program with Adjunct Faculty Mina McBride called Activating the Future. Our premise is that we have got to do a better job of helping clients with implementing foresight work. In an upcoming book chapter on foresight methodology, I suggested that the #1 shift I’ve seen over my time in the field is the request from clients to move deeper and deeper into the value chain.

That said, a fundamental premise we’re starting from is that good activation depends on developing the capacity for foresight within the organization x and doing good foresight project work. Activation happens before, during, and after project work.

Activating is also close to my thinking now that Imagining After Capitalism has launched and it’s time to put more thinking into “what to do.”

Please Share! If you are actively involved in the foresight field, we want to know: what is the most significant challenge you face in getting your foresight work implemented? We’d really appreciate your thoughts – we know our students will as well! – Andy Hines

About Andy Hines

Dr. Andy Hines is Program Coordinator at the University of Houston’s Graduate Program in Foresight, bringing together the experience he earned as an organizational, consulting, and academic futurist. He is also speaking, workshopping, and consulting through his firm Hinesight.

Before that, he was Managing Director of Social Technologies/Innovaro, and served as an Adjunct Professor with the university since 2004. Hines enjoyed earlier careers as a consulting and organizational futurist. He was a partner with Coates & Jarratt, Inc., a think tank and consulting firm that specialized in the study of the future. He was also Futurist & Senior Ideation Leader at Dow Chemical with a mission of using futures tools and knowledge to turn ideas into new business opportunities. Before that, Hines established and ran the Global Trends Program for the Kellogg Company.

Hines is motivated by a professional hunger to make foresight practical and useful, and he believes that foresight can help deliver the insight that is so needed in today’s organizations and the world. His goal, he says, is to infect as many change agents as possible with this message. Thus, he has honed a skill set designed to make foresight more actionable in organizations.

In this pursuit, he has authored five books: Teaching about the Future: The Basics of Foresight Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); ConsumerShift: How Changing Values Are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape (No Limits Publishing, 2011); Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight (Social Technologies, 2007); 2025: Science and Technology Reshapes US and Global Society (Oak Hill, 1997); and Managing Your Future as an Association (ASAE, 1994) and has another in the hands of publishers: Teaching about the Future: The Basics of Foresight Education. He has also authored dozens of articles, speeches, and workshops, including the 2003 Emerald Literati Awards’ Outstanding Paper accolade for best article published in Foresight for “An Audit for Organizational Futurists” and the 2008 award for “Scenarios: The State of the Art.” He has appeared on several radio and television programs, PBS Houston, KRIV-26 News, and the CBS “Early Show.” He also co-founded and is former Chair of the Association of Professional Futurists.

What is the most significant challenge you face in getting your foresight work implemented within organizations?

About Andy Hines

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply