How governments research and communicate about the future. Governments around the world are increasingly recognizing that they have a responsibility for structured thought and research about the future, both to shape their own initiatives, and to assist companies and institutions in the nation to survive and thrive in times of change. Examples of government futures groups include:Egypt: Center for Futures StudiesFrance: Centre d’Analyse StratégiqueIndia: Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment CouncilIndonesia: Badan Perencanaan dan Pembangunan NasionalMexico: 2030 VisionSingapore: Futures GroupSweden: Institute for Futures Studies Other governments, such as those of UK and USA, do extensive future studies, however these are distributed across a variety of departments and functions.
Many of these operations do a good job at analysis, however usually communicate in traditional government-speak, including weighty reports written in officious language. The document below, Imagining the New Normal, is excellent. Imagining the New Normal. Brainstorming 2.0: Making Ideas That Really Happen. One of the most common questions we hear at 99U is: “How do I get more out of my brainstorming sessions?” While brainstorming sessions have become perhaps the most iconic act of creativity, we still struggle with how to give them real utility. The problem of course is that most brainstorming sessions conclude prematurely. We all love to dream big and come up with “blue sky” ideas. We’re less fond of diving into the nitty-gritty details of creative execution. As a result, we spend 90% of our time coming up with a bunch of great ideas, and maybe 10% (if any!)
So how can we retool our approach to brainstorming to make it more effective? Disney’s rigorous creative process involves 3 distinct phases of idea development, each of which is designed to unfold in a separate room. Step 1 asks “WHAT are we going to do?” It’s all about dreaming big. Room Setup: Airy rooms with high-ceilings are the best locations for thinking big. Mentality: Any idea is fair game. Step 3 asks “WHY are we doing this?” Scenarios. This scenario development process is based on the following principles: The highly prepared meeting. We interviewed a wide variety of people including all the participants in the first workshop ahead of time in order to understand the issues facing the Park and to solicit ideas about important actions, investments, changes in law and regulation, etc. that would be necessary for “good futures” to transpire.
In this way, the participants were presented with a lot of ideas to work with and spent relatively little time getting started.Two-part definition of scenario. In this approach a scenario is divided into the endstate or outcome statement at the planning horizon (in this case 25 years from now) and a series of events that must occur or must not occur that lead us from the present to that outcome. Scenario: series of evens that lead to an endstate Back-casting: if your endstate has happened, what events must have happened (or not)?
Like this: Like Loading... How governments research and communicate about the future. Methods of prospective > Softwares > Morphol : La prospective. Morphological analysis aims to explore possible futures Morphological Analysis Aim Morphological analysis aims to explore possible futures in a systematic way by studying all the combinations resulting from the breakdown of a system. The aim of morphological analysis is to highlight new procedures or products in both technological forecasting and scenario building. Description of the method Morphological analysis is the oldest of the techniques presented in this toolbox. In fact, it was first developed by the American researcher F. . • Phase 1 : Building a morphological space In this first phase, the system or function under examination is broken down into subsystems or components.
. • Phase 2 : Reduction of morphological space However, certain combinations and even certain families of combinations are unfeasible, e.g., incompatibility between configurations. Usefulness and limitations The first limitation of morphological analysis stems from the choice of components. Practical conclusions. 12 Themes for 2012: what we can expect in the year ahead. Brainstorming 2.0: Making Ideas That Really Happen.