horizon scanning system | Hinesight....for Foresight

One of the great challenges of foresight work has been to establish a consistent ongoing horizon scanning system within organizations. Alongside that has been the equally difficult challenge of teaching beginners how to do horizon scanning in the first place. I am pleased to share a new article that takes on both challenges that was recently published in the excellent foresight journal World Futures Review. I encourage readers to subscribe to this journal with its practical focus on how to improve the practice of foresight.

The article I refer to is Setting Up a Horizon Scanning System: A Federal Agency Example that I co-authored with two colleagues from the US Forest Service, Dave Bengston and Mike Dockry, and a Houston Foresight grad student (now alum) Adam Cowart.

While we certainly do not claim to have solved the twin challenges setting up a scanning system and teaching scanning to beginners, we hope that we have made a useful contribution towards those ends.

The article reports on the design and early stage development and implementation of a horizon scanning system established for the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), Strategic Foresight Group, and developed cooperatively with the University of Houston Foresight Program. The goal of the project is to develop an ongoing horizon scanning system as an input to developing environmental foresight: insight into future environmental challenges and opportunities, and the ability to apply that insight to prepare for a sustainable future.

In addition, the horizon scanning system is supported by volunteers from within the Forest Service. To that end, we also focused on how to make the teaching of scanning more accessible – a mission important to all aspects of teaching provided by Houston Foresight.

The scanning process is summarized in the graphic below. We’ve found it useful to break scanning into three steps

Finding the hits (including creating a domain map, and search terms/tools/sources
Collecting the hits (use of cloud-based library and tagging system along three horizons)
Analyzing the hits (from simple triage, to criteria, to weighted indices)

An interesting addition to the “set up” and teaching of the horizon scanning system was the development of a brief Scanner Guide. The figure to the right captures the highlights. We’ve been tweaking it as we go and hear back from the volunteers and refine the scanning system.

Many thanks to our great friends Dave and Mike at the US Forest Service, and the many students who’ve worked on the project: Adam Cowart, Maria Romero, Johann Schutte, Will Williamson, Liah Johnson, Bo Roe, Kimberly Daniels, Kurt Callaway, ! – 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.

Comments

Jason says

January 25, 2018 at 6:29 am

Hi, Andy. This article made me think about my experiences at UH and the changes the program made after I graduated. I’m wondering if, rather than having students take a quantitative statistics course, they could take a qualitative research course instead? I think about what I do when I do qualitative research, and there’s much more overlap with scanning and analysis than t-tests and ANOVAs. Just a thought.

Reply
- Andy Hines says
  
  January 25, 2018 at 9:20 am
  
  ya…..”Stats” makes the university feel more comfortable, but not terribly useful! We’ve toyed with something like predictive analytics instead, but need to find someone to teach it!
  
  Reply

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