Thinking about the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight

Thinking about the Future, by Andy Hines and Peter Bishop, distills the expertise of three dozen senior foresight professionals into a set of essential guidelines for carrying out successful strategic foresight. Presented in a highly scannable yet personable style, each guideline includes an explanation and rationale, key steps, a case example, and resources for further study. The 115 guidelines are organized into six sequential categories that mirror the phases of a strategic foresight activity: Framing, Scanning, Forecasting, Visioning, Planning, and Acting.

An updated second edition is available on Amazon for $14.95 paperback and $6.99 e-book. The changes include:

• Most important, our additional work on the process of using the six framework activities opened up an opportunity to provide specific “how-to” process advice to supplement the guidelines. Thus, I added a new step-by-step how-to chapter to conclude the book.
• Some of the guideline examples were getting a bit dated. All the examples of the 115 guidelines were reviewed and 55 were updated. This also add some new references.
• My friend and colleague John Smart, who inspired several folks to review the book and thus helped deplete the first edition, was adamant that I change the shape of the new edition paperback, so it is now a 6×9 instead of the original square. The cover is redesigned as well.