You can take the horse to water, but you can’t make it drink! How many times have we futurists said this or something …
2021 APF “Most Significant Futures Works” Winners
[NOTE: Sorry for the absence, but as you can see Hinesight got a much needed-facelift!] Back in 2007 I got together with …
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Futurists, get in the box!
For a lifetime we have heard, and likely been advising, that we and our clients should “get out of the box.” In …
What’s your Foresight Sauce?
In Futures Research class last week, we reviewed our Framework Foresight method from A to Z. I emphasize that my goal …
Change: Confusing movement with progress
[we are guilty of] confusing rapid movement with meaningful progress. Oh my … having truer words been spoken? We have …
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Foresight Emotions: Hmmms, Oooos, Dangs, and No-ways
As futurists, we must pay strict attention to emotional reactions from our clients (and ourselves). Hmmms -- an …
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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 …
The unbreakable rule: Know your audience
In foresight, rules are made to be broken. Futurists are rule-breakers by nature. We do have some rules at Houston …
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Scenarios start now
Sometimes those new to foresight get the impression that when we create 10-year scenarios, we are somehow just talking …
How foresight strengthens strategic planning
Can foresight help strategic planning? You betcha. We designed Framework Foresight to “feed” strategy, innovation, …
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Most Significant Futures Works Nominations Are In
/What a great crop this year for the APF Most Significant Futures Works Program! Fifteen works will be submitted to the …
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HAT: Houston Archetype Technique
For several years I’ve been challenging audiences to take up the dissertation-worthy question of whether there is a …
A Futurist Wildcard Policy
The pandemic has generated a fair bit of discussion about wildcards. It raises the very fair policy question for …
The STEEP Cheat: Build your Trend Inventory
Last time, we talked about our typical three-month project. We have four weeks to do the bulk of the scanning. That’s a …
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The typical three month foresight project
In our teaching as well as in our project work, we talk about the “typical” 3-month project. We joke that there is no …
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Design Pizazz for the Framework Foresight Cone
The process is never done (see the last tweak). Sometime we get lucky with students who are not only supremely …
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Personas in foresight
Is it just me, or has the use of personas in foresight gone quiet? We used to use them quite regularly in my consulting …
Scenario archetypes across 3 horizons
When we explain our four archetype scenarios, often someone will ask whether there is a pattern in how the four …
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Futures Chain of Custody
There is no proof in the futures business! [This includes the sexy "future-proofing" concept making the rounds - not …
Utopia is a moving target
We are probably never going to achieve utopia. What a negative, pessimistic thing to say! Have I turned sour on the …
A “Final” Tweak to the Framework Foresight cone
Final is in quotes to acknowledge that the process is never final. But there is a necessary balance to having some …
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Updating the Framework Foresight cone
It’s that time again. We’re always tweaking our core Framework Foresight process. Every few years the tweaks build up …
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Framework Foresight Video
A key mission of Houston Foresight is to introduce people to spread the use of "high-quality" foresight. In order to do …
Images and decision-making in foresight
I had a nice conversation with some colleagues on a private listserve on the role of futurists. One camp suggested that …
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Art or Science in Foresight
Of course it's not an either-or. But do the scales tip one way or another in foresight? It depends on the practitioner …
Sci Fi Futures
Our Annual Spring Gathering is an opportunity for our extended futures family to come together and socialize, and dig a …
Digging into Monitoring and Indicators
We’ve been talking a bunch about scanning. But what about the flip side – monitoring, and more specifically indicators? …
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Finding the Fringe Takes Time
Last time we talked about snowball scanning as a way to find the fringe in horizon scanning. As I thought more about, I …
Integral Futures Questions
It was great to dive back into some Integral Futures in Alternative Perspectives class this semester. The all-too-rare …
Reasonable futures timeframes
What’s an appropriate timeframe for foresight work? It’s a question we futurists often get. It’s usually coming from a …