Finding the Fringe Takes Time | Hinesight....for Foresight

Last time we talked about snowball scanning as a way to find the fringe in horizon scanning. As I thought more about, I realized a big challenge with developing fringe sources is that they take time to develop! I was adding a hit to my After Capitalism library (private on Diigo) and I realized that over the course of the last several years, I’d come across some pretty funky — aka fringey –sources.

We should probably review two different kinds of horizon scanning:

Scanning: continuous, year-round search for interesting trends, needs and ideas w/out a particular topic in mind

Scan: focused effort for a project/given period of time around a specific domain

It seems to me that in scanning we have the luxury of time to dig for the fringe. We can do the snowball scanning. We have the time to dig deep down the Reddit Rabbit hole and find those fringe conversations. But with a scan for a project that might last three months and have a month or so of intense scanning, it becomes much more costly to invest time and effort in the fringe. Not impossible, but more challenging.

This is an advantage for organizational futurists in that a single organization’s domain is likely to be more bounded (compared to a consulting futurist jumping from topic to topic). The organizational futurist can put more time in finding and characterizing their fringe.

What say ye? What’s your experience in how much time it takes to find the fringe? – 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.

About Andy Hines

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