by Teaching should not stand still of course, but it is part of an academic mission is to stay true to what is the core of a discipline. It’s a balancing act and part of my job is to keep abreast of what’s changing. In light of that, APF is having one of its epic discussions about the future of the field and professions that seems to emerge every couple of years. A key theme of this recent incarnation is a perceived shift toward futurists needing to be more “doing” vis-à-vis “thinking.” In short, don’t talk about making or doing stuff, do it!
Indeed we have noted the shift in the field toward “doing” among other shifts:
- It first became apparent to me when I “went inside” as a organization futurist back in the 1990s because our clients were having trouble figuring out what to do with our consulting products (see “Viral futures at Dow”).
- For me, the organizational futurist role is key to our future. We need more people inside organizations who understand foresight work and can help get it acted upon. (see “An organizational futurist role…”)
- We’ve been using the idea of a framework of six activities of foresight for the last decade: framing, scanning, forecasting, visioning, planning, and acting. Interestingly, it’s the bookends – framing and acting – that are getting more attention from my perspective as a practitioner and thus as a teacher as well. In short, we spend more time getting to know our clients (and ourselves) and more time helping them to implement (see Why foresight: I can think of 316 reasons)
- The Professionalization Task Force has a draft Competency Model that is being presented to the APF Board next month. It does include some updating of the framework above, reflecting shifts in the field, but is more tweaking than an overhaul. And the proposed competency model is rooted in the present. It was decided to start there, and then explore how that model is or may be changing.
- The formation of our Alternative Perspectives class recognized the emerging of critical and integral perspectives and basically has become the “home” for emerging approaches, while Futures Research focuses on the basics.
One of the shifts I’m focusing on now is the greater use of online tools. We’ve been online for years, but many of our tools are still paper- and f2f-based and being translated rather clunkily into the virtual and hybrid spaces. What else should we be thinking about??? Andy Hines
What piques my curiosity as much as anything these days is the knowledge economy. For a long time, we’ve been moving away from an economy based on the production and possession of physical things and toward an economy based on what we know. Knowledge is the essence of professions — expert knowledge put to use solving problems. So where does that knowledge come from, how is it produced, transmitted, and used? What is the difference between information and knowledge? These are questions I’m learning to ask as part of my broadening interest in the sociology of knowledge, and I should think they’re of interest to everyone in the foresight profession: who is producing our knowledge, how is it produced, how do foresight professionals get the knowledge needed to become professionals, how do they get new knowledge . . . . That is an area for a lot of investigation.
Recently, I’ve come across the other side of the knowledge coin: ignorance. And I think this is an area we need to look in to carefully and deeply, because ignorance can be a real threat to our profession. I can remember just a few years ago reading articles claiming that “any haus frau with an internet connection” can do futures work. While there’s some small truth to that, that statement is an example of manufactured ignorance that could steer potential clients away from knowledgeable foresight professionals and toward poorly educated practitioners or ideologues. So how do we locate ignorance, manufactured and otherwise, and how do we combat it? How do we convince potential clients that good futures work is worth more than mass-market forecasting? And how do we communicate what constitutes good, reputable foresight work and where to look for it?
Along these same lines, how does global neoliberal capitalism treat foresight? How is our knowledge being commodified and sold? Is there any way to prevent, avoid or at least delay that from happening? What are the costs to our potential clients of commodification of our knowledge? From my readings, it appears that sources of knowledge are coming under increasing fire from people and organizations with deep stakes in manufactured ignorance. Maintaining our ability to contribute to society — not to mention our ability to make a living — may well depend on our ability to expose ignorance and keep producing real knowledge. Global neoliberal capital’s interest lies in inundating the public in ignorance.
Maybe the best way of putting it is to say that we need to both learn and teach how to give clients what they need without giving away the store. Clients need enough knowledge to understand that hat we offer will suit their needs better than anyone else’s services. Beyond that, we need to make good on the trust we ask them to put in us. How to communicate that is a little beyond me, but I’m guessing that there are both practitioners and researchers out there who have answers to how to strike that balance.