Scanning for Our Futures
As I write this, my team at Vision Foresight Strategy is engaged in FORESIGHT’s Futures Scan, in which we’re investigating the health and well-being landscape to illuminate trends (patterns of change over time) and emerging issues (weak signals of potential change) that could significantly impact the United States in the short term (~10 years) and long term (~50 years). Understanding these current and possible emerging trends—and other factors that could influence how those trends might bend or break—is important because it will give FORESIGHT building blocks with which to create scenarios describing alternative futures.
Brainstorming with Philanthropies
Recently, the FORESIGHT Implementation Team met with our philanthropic partners to discuss the Futures Scan. My futurist colleague Wendy Shultz opened the virtual session with an activity where we started with a blank timeline and gave everyone in the meeting the ability to concurrently add trends to it in real time. This brainstorming session resulted in this very rough draft of a Shared History Timeline (below). This exercise was useful not only for giving our partners more insight into the Futures Scan process, but also for illuminating that we have collectively experienced significant changes in health and well-being over the last 50 years or so. And, while there were a few “black swans” (events that were unpredictable or completely unexpected) the majority of the changes identified by FORESIGHT’s philanthropic partners were entirely predictable. In fact, a futurist engaging in scanning during that time would likely have identified some of those as trends or emerging issues. The timeline exercise helps explain the “how” behind FORESIGHT’s Futures Scan, and what we’re looking for as we scan the environment.
