by I am pleased to see a collaboration with former guest student Alex Ferganani and friends captured in a new article in the Europan Business Review: Corporate Foresight In An Ever-Turbulent Era. Alex visited with us last fall as part of his PhD work. The topic was the State of Foresight and in particular we wanted to craft an article that would help introduce foresight in a simple, compelling, and sexy way. Beyond doing a very nice article (primarily by Alex), I thought it would helpful to highlight a few things we did to increase its appeal:
First, we broke the basic six-step process of Framework Foresight (based on the APF competency model) into three steps. This pained me a bit — the first bow to sexy
. So
- Scanning including Framing and Scanning
- Futuring stayed Futuring
- Reconfiguring included visioning, designing, and adapting.
There were a couple of other places where I felt it made sense to be a little sexy (this one has more to do with me personally):
- “Corporate foresight.” I know there fans of this out there, but I am not one of them. It implies a distinction from governmental foresight that I don’t see as worth marking. The process is basically the same. There are differences in the goals or output, but the ability to accommodate these differences is built into our basic Framework Foresight process. For that matter, any foresight process can just be tweaked a bit to deliver business concepts or policy options. I suppose there is some branding value in “corporate foresight,” along the lines of “strategic foresight.” We add the word strategic to make it sound more serious, but there is no separate process for strategic and I guess non-strategic foresight. Again, the larger principle in play here is introducing the future as widely as possible. If corporate foresight is a sexy concept, there is no real harm in using it.
- Reconfiguring. My sense was that reconfiguring was a bit too strong to capture the influencing the future steps (visioning/designing/adapting). In my experience with foresight projects, we don’t always reconfigure what the clients are doing. Sometimes we do not change the client at all – if they are happy with process and results, why change it. I suppose there is a mindset in foresight work that clients always need to be changed (ha ha). Challenged, yes, but changed, maybe not. Maybe they are doing good foresight and just need to keep doing it. The larger principle that prevailed here was that reconfiguring was more appealing. I recognize that my own tendency to be nuanced, balanced, and fair is not all that sexy, thus we went with reconfiguring.
I think we need as much sexy as possible — and no more. Quite simply we need to bring more people into the fold and we could use use a little sex appeal – we can “coach ‘em up” later. Nonetheless, I recognize this is dangerous territory. What do you think? What’s your policy on sexy foresight? — Andy Hines
I wince at the idea of “sexy” foresight, but I definitely get that we need lingo that better captures the imagination and excitement of people when they envision and resolve to achieve better futures for themselves. One of the things I learned to do as a consultant, a Black Belt, and during foresight engagements is to translate professional lingo into the vernacular of the client. Adding a little pizzaz and showmanship doesn’t hurt, but do we want to go full “Faith Popcorn?” I kind of thought she was onto something back when she did her thing but my fellow futurists roundly panned her in favor of “serious” foresight. Has the pendulum swung back her way?
wince acknowledged 🙂
I don’t see sexy foresight yet, Andy. Our 7,000 organisational members are not asking for that. They want fast answers more than sexy. Though having said that we are increasingly going visual, and audio led to improve efficiency and effectiveness and reducing text as much as we can. But all mediums have a role to play.
Best
Mike
The point is not to appeal to people who are already in the game, like your clients, but to bring in new people!
This scanning-futuring-reconfiguring reminds me of Teece’s dynamic capabilities franework sensing-seizing-reconfiguring. I thank you both White about actionable future.
I think it’s all well and good to make foresight “sexy”, whether we’re catering to policy makers or corporate clients. But what has me feeling a bit unsettled is lay people and how we sell the idea of foresight to them. Who — if anybody — is working to inform the public about why thinking systematically about the future is important? Who is talking about recognizing good futures work and differentiating it from bad futures work? And most importantly, how do we avoid hype and still make foresight “sexy”?
Finally, I may have missed it, but where was “sexy” defined in terms of foresight? What does “sexy” mean? If we can’t define it, how can we use it to lead people to better foresight?