STRATEGIC FORESIGHT CONCEPTS
What Is Strategic Foresight?
Strategic Foresight is the capacity to anticipate the effects of change and make informed decisions toward a preferred future.
Imagine anticipating disruptors so you can lead change, not follow it! What if you could identify plausible futures and consider several alternative futures? With the tools of Strategic Foresight, that’s just what you do, developing the internal capacity to create scenarios that guide smart decisions.
Strategic Foresight helps you identify developments in society, technology, the economy, the environment, politics and demographics. You learn to picture the most plausible futures and assess their impact on your organization. Alternative futures emerge as you determine key drivers of change and see where they are pointing. Then you can plan effective, proactive movement in the best direction. Influence your future rather than just reacting to change!
Six Key Tools
- Scan for trends, events and choices that might impact your future.
- Organize the trends into STEEP: Society, Technology, Economics, Environment and Politics.
- Analyze driving trends, events and choices: find connections and assess the speed of change and its potential impacts.
- Create scenarios around four possible futures: Transformation, Continued Growth, Disciplined Constraint and Decline/Collapse.
- Envision and plan a path from where you are now to where you want to be in ten years.
- Act by implementing the plan and monitor indicators that suggest the future toward which you’re headed.
Envision teaches the foresight process through workshops led by an academically trained and nationally known expert, Garry Golden. We’re building a critical mass of foresight knowledge throughout the Greater Green Bay community, supported by Envision’s Foresight Network of workshop alumni.
Signals Teams Develop Foresight Content
We’ve created Signals Teams around five broad factors that impact our future as a Community of Choice:
- Economic Opportunity
- Health, Connectedness, and Inclusivity
- Upward Mobility
- Housing and Safety
- Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation
Our teams scan for signals and organize trends, events, and choices, identifying signals of change to help our community understand its future. They report key observations to initiate discussion, assess implications and build scenarios.
Strategic Foresight Outcomes
Outcomes can be both inspiring and practical, and they help Envision engage the community:
- Developing focused community discussions
- Sharing signals of change through our publications
- Inviting national experts to Green Bay to present on aligned topics
As Strategic Foresight becomes part of the fabric of local business, government, education, and nonprofit organizations, we expect the influence to spread throughout the community. We’ll see organizations of every type infuse Strategic Foresight methods into their planning processes and ultimately share findings and insights with each other. The culture of Strategic Foresight that will evolve will be marked by informed, collaborative decisions, moving Green Bay toward distinction as a community of choice.
ENVISION GREATER GREEN BAY
112 N Adams St
Green Bay WI 54301
920-615-4350