Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight (2nd edition), by Andy Hines and Peter Bishop

Reviewed by Tom Schumacher, Envision board member

Without exception, our Strategic Foresight workshop graduates find themselves thinking more about the future. The question is how to engage others and communicate the results in a way that moves toward a preferred future. The answer can likely be found in Thinking About the Future, a book by Andy Hines and Peter Bishop, University of Houston Foresight faculty members.

The book is a Swiss Army knife of strategic foresight, providing guidance through six phases of the Strategic Foresight process:

  1. Framing
  2. Scanning
  3. Forecasting
  4. Visioning
  5. Planning
  6. Acting

The book is not an explicit methodology text, but a guidebook on how to apply the various tools and techniques within each step. Whether an executive, educator, consultant or analyst, Thinking About the Future is a well that can be drawn from to tailor a successful Foresight journey.

For example, the first section (Framing) is heavily weighted toward setting expectations and project scope and establishing a balanced team to take on the challenge. To assist in that objective, the authors provide 21 framing guidelines, which can be chosen and applied to best fit the circumstances and needs of the organization. Each guideline throughout the book starts with its rationale, followed by key steps to execute the guideline and the benefits of successful execution. Additional perspective is provided with an example of how the guideline was successfully or unsuccessfully applied in a real-life situation, and each guideline closes with a list of related reading resources.

Thinking About the Future concludes with a seventh chapter that brings the entire process into focus. It proceeds systematically through the six steps, separating them into two groups of three steps each. Framing, scanning and forecasting provide the baseline map, including the domain definition, current state, key stakeholders and plausible futures. The final three steps of visioning, planning and acting are the “What are we going to do about it?” steps that can influence which future eventually occurs. While the first steps are interesting, the value of strategic foresight arises from the translation into decisions and actions to influence or adapt to the uncertainties of the future.

This book has a well-earned place on the bookshelf of any serious foresight practitioner. It’s the go-to guide we use at Envision Greater Green Bay in our workshops, signals teams and consulting engagements to make the most of our strategic foresight efforts. We urge all workshop graduates to add this book to their resource library. Be sure to get the second edition, which has valuable updated examples and references. Enjoy!

Housing: From NIMBY to BIMBY

Tom Schumacher, Envision Board

The supply of affordable housing has not kept pace with the needs of homeowners and renters. Zoning and permitting are factors that limit and delay new construction. Two recent signals point to future improvements in the supply of affordable housing.

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Wisconsin Diversity Increases Five-fold in Latest Census

Tom Schumacher, Board member

Wisconsin, like every other state in the US, became more diverse between 2010 and 2020. In our state, diversity rose from 7.2% to 37% by the latest census measure. Throughout the nation, the non-Hispanic white population’s share of the population decreased while the number of Hispanic and Asian people grew. Hawaii is the most diverse state, and the least diverse county in the nation is along the Mexican border in Texas where 98% of the population is Hispanic.

The diversity measure used by the Census Bureau is based on the probability that two randomly chosen people from a given geographic area belong to different racial and ethnic groups, which ignores concentrations of ethnic populations within states. Individual counties in Wisconsin generally increased in diversity by 5% to 10%, with diversity in our home Brown County up by 9.4%.

Source: US Census Bureau as reported by USAFacts