Hinesight....for Foresight

For Foresight, Use Hinesight

You are here: Home / Search for "three horizons"

Search Results for: three horizons

by on Leave a Comment

Why Foresight

It was great to catch up with my old PTIS packaging foresight buddies at our last Strategic Foresight Boot Camp. PTIS has built a business around exploring the future of packaging. They asked me to share some thoughts about foresight in their most recent newsletter. I decided to focus on what is foresight useful for.

Let’s start with three basic facts!

1. Nobody likes to be caught by surprise.

2. Most of us would rather not be in reactive mode either.

3. And some of us really like to be ahead of the game.

Foresight and futurists can help with all three.

I’ll share our recently updated definition of foresight that includes the basic value proposition:

Foresight as the study of change that uses a systematic methodology to explore the future in order to make better decisions today by helping us move us toward the futures we want and avoid those we don’t, and to ultimately build confidence in the future by building our capacity to avoid surprise!

We know that many people come to us confused by what seems to be a non-stop avalanche of change. One thing we can help with immediately is sorting out the timing of the change. We use a Three Horizons framework that organizes change into those influencing today’s world (Horizon 1), the emerging future (Horizon 2), and the long-term future (H3). This helps you be more discerning about change.

Read full article in PTIS Newsletter  — Andy Hines

Filed Under: Foresight

Sign up for updates

by on Leave a Comment

Houston Archetype Technique Updated

Not new, but updated … as promised in a previous post. To recap, for several years we and our audiences at the  Houston Foresight program thought we saw likely patterns in how domains evolve over time using archetypes and the Three Horizons. We use a customized version of Jim Dator’s Archetype technique (see Evolution of Framework Foresight).

We (finally) did the research by gathering and analyzing historical scenario sets. We identified those using or aligning with the archetypes and observing, with the benefit of hindsight, whether the domains did in fact follow a pattern along the three horizons. The paper has been through revisions and is still in the pipeline. (It is taking such a long time – peer review is broken, but that’s for another post.)   

The most significant change to the original graphic is that the super-talented Denise Worrell re-designed it (Denise is part of the research team along with myself, Heather Benoit, Lavonne Leong, Laura Schlehuber, and Adam Cowart.) On the graphic, we explicitly added the three horizons label. We already had put forth the idea of two versions of transformation in the early version. Now that we have used it in practice a few times, we like it and it’s here to stay. We should be able to share an example publicly soon (another piece stuck in a review process). We also added some design polish, i.e., shading and a redesigned logo.

Now, for a little sneak preview of the research findings. The key purpose of the research is to see if there is a pattern in the flow of a domain through the archetypes and across the three horizons. There are two obvious candidates.

  • Baseline > New Equilibrium > Transformation
  • Baseline > Collapse> Transformation

Of these two, we thought the answer was obvious. We appear to be wrong. Care to guess? – Andy Hines

by on Leave a Comment

History is vital to the future

I just finished Wilkinson and Kupers’ very nice “The Essence of Scenarios: Learning from the Shell Experience,” which reviews went through the history of scenario planning at Shell. And within the last year I enjoyed Chermack’s Foundations of Scenario Planning: The Story of Pierre Wack, which focused on the central role of Pierre Wack at Shell. What great and valuable lessons from history.

History helps ground us in “reality.” These peeks behind the Shell curtain, for example, should help us all feel a little better. Shell has rightfully earned a place as the gold standard in the foresight world for their continuous 50-year commitment to scenarios and the future. That is amazing and to my knowledge unparalleled commitment. But it wasn’t all bunnies and rainbows for them …. either. The scenarios capability had its ups and downs. It had the typical struggles with legitimacy, senior management acceptance, and even several geographies remained skeptics. Wilkinson noted that the function was almost discontinued three times.

A second valuable contribution of history is in providing us with a more nuanced understanding of how change actually happens. At Houston Foresight, we’ve been gathering historical scenario sets to see how the domains or topics they mapped actually evolved over time. We are testing some ideas about potential patterns involving scenario archetypes and the three horizons. More on that later. But one thing has popped loud and clear: domains are generally changing slower than we thought. If change is slower, and if there are patterns in how the change is taking place, it sure does behoove us to know our history!!!

Full disclosure: I double-majored in history and political science before getting my Master’s at the University of Houston Foresight Program, which I share mostly to fist-bump my co-conspirators with this background! – Andy Hines

Filed Under: Foresight, Methods Tagged With: , , , , ,

Sign up for updates

by on 3 Comments

Automated Scanning: The State of Play

We at Houston Foresight get asked fairly frequently about what is the best automated scanning tool. Our response is that there seem to be lots of them out there, we watch, we ask, we try, and as of yet haven’t found one that’s “it.” That day will come. The tools are getting better all the time … as they have been for the last 25 years or so that I’ve been exposed to them. I think I have a healthy fear and paranoia about missing the next big thing. We need to be on top of this. At the same time, relax and breathe.

My sense of the human vs machine scanning is that much of the push to automate is based on what I’d say is a faulty assumption about what scanning provides. There is a sense that scanning will uncover the “hidden gems.” That it will find an insight that no one else know about. I say “good luck.” There is just too much info and too many people looking to make that any kind of reliable basis for scanning. There may be a few instances where such a focus is useful, but for the vast preponderance of foresight work, scanning is gathering and sorting signals in organized way to get a sense of potential change ahead in a domain. We like the simple three horizons framework to organize the signals. Our experience is that any “hidden gems” of change will be picked up fairly early in horizon three – long before they have an impact on the domain (that is before they reach horizon one). It takes years … really decades. If you do your regular scanning, you will not miss a hidden gem!

Put another way, in our typical three-month project, a team of 3-6 scanners can get a handle on the scanning/signals of change in a domain in 4-6 weeks doing it part-time. If any of my prior scanners want to chime in here, we’d love to here you confirm (or deny) this. Much more scanning than that for a project is overkill [note: ongoing scanning is a different thing].

Nonetheless, you may be getting pressure to update, automate, and take advantage of all the great big data, analytics, machine learning, AI and stuff that should be revolutionizing scanning. Be very wary about those who say they have the answer. I have heard these kinds of claims, and unless it happened yesterday, I personally haven’t seen it yet. Use your  good consumer commonsense. My advice, if you have the time and budget, is to go ahead and try as many of the tools as you can. Compare, contrast, and pick one that you believe in the people and in the tool. Sure, there are snake oil salespeople, but there are also smart, wonderful, and well-intentioned people trying to good things – when you find those people, go on the journey with them. There is no doubt in my mind that scanning will be more and more automated and in a useful way – eventually. – Andy Hines

by on 4 Comments

Aligned and in motion

A description of what we do as futurists that I like: we help clients align with the emerging future (clients can be anyone, not just paid). Get in synch. In the flow. Choose your phrase. Another piece of that occurred to me recently, when I was explaining how we usually do our recommendations in three phases or over three horizons. In that explanation, I was saying how that 1st phase or horizon gets us in motion.

I think there’s an idea among clients that “we’ll kick in the future-related strategy when the time comes.” Or at the opposite extreme, we go “all in” right from the start.  Neither works. Most innovative future-oriented ideas are at least slightly ahead of their time, if not drastically so. My advice is to be patient … sense the domain, align, and be in motion — doing something, even if very small.

We know that it’s easier to do something when you’re already doing something related – when you’re in motion – than starting from a standstill. I remember as a basketball player being admonished to “keep moving your feet” because it enabled you make the next move faster than it would be from a dead stop. This idea is very much related to the concept of “learning your way into the future.” It’s about small steps, pilots, and experiments. In our version of an elevator speech tool that we use to catalyze thinking about options for action, we have a box on “how do we make it happen” or kickoff.

A good example comes from our own story at Houston Foresight. Peter Bishop the long-time Foresight Program Coordinator started putting courses online, one at a time, in the early 2000s. He took his time. He was aligning with the emerging future. Eventually the whole program was available online as a hybrid with some people still coming to the classroom. As the numbers coming to physical class dropped, we did away with the classroom and went virtual with zoom classes a few years before the pandemic. This is almost 20 years of staying aligned with the emerging future. Did it get us any massive advantage? Not really, but it was helpful. But here it comes, boom, the pandemic, and most of higher ed is scrambling to go virtual overnight. We don’t even blink. That in itself is a nice little “good to be prepared story.” One more thing, though, is we get a huge wave of people inquiring about the program. “Can you do virtual? “You bet — we’re already there.” The end result was we nearly tripled our enrollment in two years. If Peter Bishop hadn’t had the foresight to start aligning with the future and keeping us in motion, we would not have been ready for the greatest growth surge in the history of our program. That to me, is the case for being aligned and in motion. – Andy Hines

Filed Under: Foresight Tagged With: , ,

Sign up for updates

by on 1 Comment

Adaptive and transformative futures

This is one of the questions futurists wrestle with periodically. What is our proper purpose? Should we be helping our clients (defining clients broadly from paid project work to voluntary work on behalf of planet earth and its people)? Some would argue it should be one or the other. Typically, the “strong” position is that we should only work on transformative futures. But I’d like to propose that we acknowledge that both are useful. In some cases, we aim and work at transformation. In others, we aim and work at adaptation.

The point came up in discussions around a potential project around impacts of climate change. Some of the discussion centered around what could be done to prevent certain future impacts – a transformative focus. And some centered around what could be done to prepare and respond to impacts that are very likely to happen. In the context of a project, where there are always constraints of time, budget, and people, there is often a choice to be made.

Another way to think of this is referring back to our trusty three horizons model.

  • Think of an adaptive focus as being on Horizon Two (zone of transition)
  • Think of a transformative focus as being on Horizon Three (new system)

Even when we have a primary focus on one horizon or the other, we are always paying attention to all three horizons. I suspect that futurists may develop their practice that tends to focus on one or the other. For me, I’d guess 80% of my project work has been on H2 adaptive. I am very happy that we have other futurists primarily focused on H3. But, let’s all repeat together (ha ha), we support a broad diversity in aims, approaches, methods, and techniques in foresight! – Andy Hines

 

by on 2 Comments

Foresight Slides for a Desert Island

You are exiled to a desert island and you were given permission to print out three slides to take with you. What would you take?

My three:

Three Horizons: an excellent framework for discussion timeframe and how domains evolve and an excellent set-up to introduce a scanning system.

Framework Foresight Cone: our core method for exploring the future; we joke that the final examination of our coursework is to be able to explain the cone in 90 seconds.

Meadows intervening in a system: the perfect framework for thinking about how to influence the future and implement suggested changes.

What do you think? Please do share your top 3 and I’ll compile a list. – Andy Hines

 

Filed Under: Foresight Tagged With: , , , , ,

Sign up for updates

by on Leave a Comment

Monitoring … The Time Has Come!

We’ve talked at a high level about no surprises, wildcard insurance policies, indicator bingo, and even a curse! The basic idea is that change is a lot slower than we think. We realize this once we do regular horizon scanning. And if we really want to get our futures game on, we add in a monitoring capability to our scanning. At Houston Foresight, we did a pilot project on “Monitoring Emerging Issues (article)” with our good friends at the US Forest Service and wrote it up for World Futures Review. It was a big job. The team was Andy Hines, Bes Baldwin, Dave Bengston, Jason Crabtree, Keri Christensen, Nina Frankowski, Laura Schlehuber, Lynne Westphal, and Lena Young.

The figure is an approximation of the team’s view of how the six emerging issues have “moved” over the last five years since the horizon scanning system that originally identified them was set up. [Note: we’re still wrestling with the best way to visually depict the movement along the horizons].

The gist is this. Futurists have long advocated for monitoring the future on an ongoing basis or for tracking the findings of project work in practice. But clients historically weren’t all that interested — translation, they wouldn’t pay for it. We think that is changing. So we sought to provide some practical guidance is available on how to set up a monitoring capability that is easy, cheap, and useful. So we piloted one and wrote up what we learned. In short, yes we can set up practical monitoring capability to track the progress of emerging issues.

But there was so much more. This article is insanely dense. We did a forensic analysis, and had a neat section on how we might sort different types of sources along the three horizons. Plenty of fun for we foresight geeks – and maybe the normies as well. – Andy Hines

Andy’s Recent Content

Imagining After Capitalism Book Video

I put together a short video summary of the essential info about Imagining After Capitalism including (1) why I wrote it (2) the need for positive guiding images of the future (3) the disintegration of capitalism (4) seven key drivers of change and (5) the three guiding images: Circular Commons, Non-Workers Paradise, and Tech-Led Abundance. […]

Imagining After Capitalism Launching

E-Book Now Available [limited]  & Paperback Launching February 10, 2025. It took over a decade, but perhaps that timing is perfect? There is much concern and plenty of gloom-and-doom about the future. I’m reminded of one my favorite M*A*S*H episodes in which Hawkeye jumps upon on the table, bangs his tray, and leads a chant […]

The Election and After Capitalism

Thinking about what the election results mean for After Capitalism (plz, no current politics … important, but not here). A few years back I set the timeframe for After Capitalism at 20-30 years. Part of me thought, don’t be so timid. The other part of me recalled my own frequent warning that transformation scenarios avoid […]

ARTICLES
ENGAGEMENTS
HOUSTON FORESIGHT
IMAGINING AFTER CAPITALISM new


ABOUT ANDY HINES

Dr. Andy Hines is Associate Professor and 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.

Read More

BOOKS

https://www.andyhinesight.com/

by on 1 Comment

HAT: Houston Archetype Technique

For several years I’ve been challenging audiences to take up the dissertation-worthy question of whether there is a typical pattern in how archetype scenarios unfold. In my work, I am increasingly persuaded it is the case, but of course those pesky clients seem to prefer evidence over my intuition (the nerve!). So, I’ve enlisted a crack team of two grad students – Heather Benoit, Lavonne Leong — and an alum Denise Worrell from the Houston Foresight program to help me tackle it.

Oh my, this is a rich topic. It’s made us think about a lot of things. At the most basic level it’s made us rethinking our version of the archetype technique. We have been using a customized version of Jim Dator’s Archetype technique that I first used with the help of Mark Justman of the Foresight Alliance back in 2007. We have been continuously tweaking and updating it – see Evolution of Framework Foresight. And we’re at it again!

The sneak preview of the HAT (Houston Archetype Technique) in the sketch below shows the hypothesized flow of a typical domain through the Three Horizons. We believe the most “typical” pattern is that we start with the Baseline, them move to either Collapse or New Equilibrium, and then to Transformation.

One thing we are clearly changing once and for all. Jim’s technique begins with a Continuation scenario. Our begins with the Baseline. For years we have been hyphenating, going back and forth, and generally confusing people by using both terms. Henceforth, we will just use Baseline!

Simple, right?  We’ll see. Stay tuned. – Andy Hines

Filed Under: Methods

Sign up for updates