Simulation, gaming, and the foresight tool kit

Looking forward to the APF (Assn of Professional Futurists) annual Gathering “Play” from May 2-4 in Orlando. The theme is the future of Simulation and Gaming. I’m particularly excited about it because I feel it’s been a weak area of my practice/knowledge base. It has been a bit puzzling that simulation and gaming has not been a bigger part of foresight to date. There are certainly some practitioners and groups who are doing this work – in fact the Institute for the Future’s online game Superstruct won the APF’s 2009 Most Important Futures Work top award. My sense of simulation and gaming back when I was a student entering the field twentyish years ago was that it was poised to talk off “once the software got better,” and it was assumed it would get better. My own experience over the years is that simulation and gaming was getting better, but….not quite there, or at least not compelling enough to add to my personal tool kit. Perhaps it’s because it requires a more significant time investment to become effective with it, and thus a choice is needed on whether one wants to specialize in it?

The notion of what’s in one’s personal tool kit is particularly timely for me given that I am teaching the Professional Seminar Course this semester at the Houston Futures program. This is typically the last course students take before they embark into (or back into) the real world. So we try to get them prepared by reviewing the state of the field, the asking them to review their personal skill set (and maybe adding a few things), and then pulling together what they’ve learned into various aspects of a personal professional plan (we use another APF award-winning work here, Verne Wheelright’s It’s Your Future book). We encourage the students to think about what’s in their tool kit – ideally what are they good at and what they like doing. It’s challenging to be a master of all tools, so choices have to be made. For me, simulation and gaming has buried at the back of the tool kit. Perhaps on May 5^th, it may move to the front? 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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