Quick introduction to the first basic steps in futures thinking and foresight: scanning for emerging change, exploration impacts and implications of emerging change, and delving deeper into potential transformations of change.

1. 28 August 2010 Futures Tools:
Exploring
Dr. Wendy L. Schultz
Director, Infinite Futures
Fellow, World Futures Studies Federation
Fellow, Royal Society for the Arts
Possibilities and
Implications
Scanning,
Futures Wheels
(basic and augmented)
and
Verge
(Ethnographic Futures
Framework)
Monday, 30 August 2010

2. Mapping a trend’s diffusion into public awareness
from its starting point as an emerging issue of change.
system limits;
problems develop;
unintended impacts
Number of
cases; global; multiple dispersed
degree of cases; trends and drivers 3rd horizon
public
awareness
institutions and government
newspapers; news magazines;
broadcast media
laypersons’ magazines;
local; few cases; websites; documentaries
emerging issues
Pockets of specialists’ journals and websites
future found
In present
scientists; artists; radicals; mystics Time
“present” “future”
Monday, 30 August 2010

3. Scanning
TIMELINES
SYSTEMS MAPS
HORIZON SCANNING
+ the 3rd Horizon
TREND FORECASTS
IMPACT MAPPING
USED & DISOWNED FUTURES
FUTURES TRIANGLE
Scanning provides a starting point to SCENARIOS
INFLECTION POINTS
monitor possible transformative / DECISION HORIZONS
disruptive changes.
3 Horizons let us organise and consider
the interplay of trends and emerging •
How will emerging
change affect
changes. people’s lives, lifestyles,
belongings, houses,
pets, communities,
Uses: work, retirement, and
investment patterns?
Challenge system robustness; •
How will different
emerging changes
intersect with each
Enable plausible provocative scenarios; other to either amplify
or constrain their
related impacts?
Get beyond incrementalism.
3
Monday, 30 August 2010

4. “3 Horizons” and Horizon Scanning
Dominance
of paradigm / worldview
STATUS QUO, MOMENTUM, INERTIA 3rd horizon
Invent, Develop, Deploy
Fading
paradigms &
technologies Research,
Demonstrate,
Disrupt
CURRENT 2nd horizon
Transition TRENDS &
paradigms & DRIVERS
technologies Envision, Explore, Embody
EMERGING
Pockets of ISSUES OF
future found CHANGE
In present 1st horizon
Time
“present” “future”
Monday, 30 August 2010

5. Futures Wheels
Monday, 30 August 2010

6. Futures Wheels:
Origins
Jerome C. Glenn
Invented futures wheels in 1971 as a method
for policy analysis and forecasting
Also called Implementation Wheels, Impact
Wheels, Mind Mapping, and Webbing.
Reference: Jerome C. Glenn, “The Futures
Wheel,” in The Millennium Project Futures
Research Methodology 3.0 (CD)
Joel Barker
“Cascade thinking:” go out at least three
orders of implications to find big surprises
http://strategicexploration.com/
implications-wheel/
Monday, 30 August 2010

7. Futures Wheel
Monday, 30 August 2010
What are the first effects you can extrapolate would emerge from this shift in the computing infrastructure – and everything connected to, or depending upon, it?
For example:
•working – and education – environments noisier;
•nobody needs to remember passwords anymore;
•precipitous drop in incidence of work-related carpal tunnel syndrome;
•market emerges for ”great voice” modules to personalize computer speech.
These are just a few examples of primary effects. If your thinking gets stuck, look at the subdivisions in the futures wheel. These effects address the areas of
work, education, daily life, health, and the economy – what about hobbies? our homes and family life? the arts? etc.
Next, take each of these primary effects, one by one, and ask what effects they in turn will have on our lives:
•working – and education – environments noisier:
•wireless ”earbud” headphones/microphones to communicate with your computer;
•development of ”workpod” office and schoolroom furniture, with built-in sound barriers:
•people in the same room conversing through their computers’ wireless network;
•”visual display” goggles for silent response, eye movement navigation through menus:
•accelerated development of augmented reality.
While listing the secondary effects of the chosen primary effect, tertiary effects also emerged, as the indented, italicized items illustrate.

8. Augmented Futures Wheel
Monday, 30 August 2010
What are the first effects you can extrapolate would emerge from this shift in the computing infrastructure – and everything connected to, or depending upon, it?
For example:
•working – and education – environments noisier;
•nobody needs to remember passwords anymore;
•precipitous drop in incidence of work-related carpal tunnel syndrome;
•market emerges for ”great voice” modules to personalize computer speech.
These are just a few examples of primary effects. If your thinking gets stuck, look at the subdivisions in the futures wheel. These effects address the areas of
work, education, daily life, health, and the economy – what about hobbies? our homes and family life? the arts? etc.
Next, take each of these primary effects, one by one, and ask what effects they in turn will have on our lives:
•working – and education – environments noisier:
•wireless ”earbud” headphones/microphones to communicate with your computer;
•development of ”workpod” office and schoolroom furniture, with built-in sound barriers:
•people in the same room conversing through their computers’ wireless network;
•”visual display” goggles for silent response, eye movement navigation through menus:
•accelerated development of augmented reality.
While listing the secondary effects of the chosen primary effect, tertiary effects also emerged, as the indented, italicized items illustrate.

9. Futures Wheels:
Instructions
 Enter your assigned change in the inner circle of your
worksheet.
 Everyone take five minutes by themselves to imagine the
possible impacts of this change.
 Share your individual lists within your group. Which of these
are immediate, or primary, impacts? Immediate primary
impacts are the direct caused by the change. Write those down
next to the appropriate “spoke”.
 Some of the impacts on your lists may actually be the result of
a primary impact, or occur after a primary impact - draw a line
from the relevant primary impact, and write the suggested
secondary impact in a circle at the end of that line.
 Now consider each primary impact, one by one. Brainstorm
two or three impacts it will have, and map those, connecting
each to its primary impact.
Monday, 30 August 2010
Let’s create a futures wheel from the statement, ”By 2010, we talk to our computers, they talk back, and recognize us via biometrics.” This statement is a vivid
way of expressing several related trends: 1) increasing multiplicity of input and display devices for computers, with consequent decline in use of keyboards; and
2) increasing use of “biometrics” – identifiers based on unique characteristics of living organisms, like our fingerprints, retinal patterns, blood type, or DNA.

10. work?
travel? economy?
primary effects
home/ critical
education?
families? emerging change
impact communications? hobbies?
environment?
impact
secondary impact
effects
Futures Wheel
Monday, 30 August 2010
What are the first effects you can extrapolate would emerge from this shift in the computing infrastructure – and everything connected to, or depending upon, it?
For example:
•working – and education – environments noisier;
•nobody needs to remember passwords anymore;
•precipitous drop in incidence of work-related carpal tunnel syndrome;
•market emerges for ”great voice” modules to personalize computer speech.
These are just a few examples of primary effects. If your thinking gets stuck, look at the subdivisions in the futures wheel. These effects address the areas of
work, education, daily life, health, and the economy – what about hobbies? our homes and family life? the arts? etc.
Next, take each of these primary effects, one by one, and ask what effects they in turn will have on our lives:
•working – and education – environments noisier:
•wireless ”earbud” headphones/microphones to communicate with your computer;
•development of ”workpod” office and schoolroom furniture, with built-in sound barriers:
•people in the same room conversing through their computers’ wireless network;
•”visual display” goggles for silent response, eye movement navigation through menus:
•accelerated development of augmented reality.
While listing the secondary effects of the chosen primary effect, tertiary effects also emerged, as the indented, italicized items illustrate.

11. office sound silent, eye-tracking
“earbud” headphones to barriers menu navigation goggles
talk to/hear computer
developed
work noisier
work?
travel? economy?
primary effects
home/ voice input / output,
education?
families? biometric passwords
impact communications? hobbies?
environment?
impact
secondary impact
effects
Futures Wheel
Monday, 30 August 2010
What are the first effects you can extrapolate would emerge from this shift in the computing infrastructure – and everything connected to, or depending upon, it?
For example:
•working – and education – environments noisier;
•nobody needs to remember passwords anymore;
•precipitous drop in incidence of work-related carpal tunnel syndrome;
•market emerges for ”great voice” modules to personalize computer speech.
These are just a few examples of primary effects. If your thinking gets stuck, look at the subdivisions in the futures wheel. These effects address the areas of
work, education, daily life, health, and the economy – what about hobbies? our homes and family life? the arts? etc.
Next, take each of these primary effects, one by one, and ask what effects they in turn will have on our lives:
•working – and education – environments noisier:
•wireless ”earbud” headphones/microphones to communicate with your computer;
•development of ”workpod” office and schoolroom furniture, with built-in sound barriers:
•people in the same room conversing through their computers’ wireless network;
•”visual display” goggles for silent response, eye movement navigation through menus:
•accelerated development of augmented reality.
While listing the secondary effects of the chosen primary effect, tertiary effects also emerged, as the indented, italicized items illustrate.

12. office sound silent, eye-tracking
“earbud” headphones to barriers menu navigation goggles
talk to/hear computer
developed
work noisier
work?
travel? economy?
primary effects
impact
home/ voice input / output,
impact education?
families? biometric passwords
impact
no passwords market for “great new licensing
required voices” opp’ty for
drop in carpal tunnel popular singers
syndrome and actors
secondary
rather talk to pirate market:
effects
your machine great voices
than you… “napsterized”
collapse of
increase in worker
keyboard wrist
productivity
rest market
decline in worker
compensation costs Futures Wheel
Monday, 30 August 2010
What are the first effects you can extrapolate would emerge from this shift in the computing infrastructure – and everything connected to, or depending upon, it?
For example:
•working – and education – environments noisier;
•nobody needs to remember passwords anymore;
•precipitous drop in incidence of work-related carpal tunnel syndrome;
•market emerges for ”great voice” modules to personalize computer speech.
These are just a few examples of primary effects. If your thinking gets stuck, look at the subdivisions in the futures wheel. These effects address the areas of
work, education, daily life, health, and the economy – what about hobbies? our homes and family life? the arts? etc.
Next, take each of these primary effects, one by one, and ask what effects they in turn will have on our lives:
•working – and education – environments noisier:
•wireless ”earbud” headphones/microphones to communicate with your computer;
•development of ”workpod” office and schoolroom furniture, with built-in sound barriers:
•people in the same room conversing through their computers’ wireless network;
•”visual display” goggles for silent response, eye movement navigation through menus:
•accelerated development of augmented reality.
While listing the secondary effects of the chosen primary effect, tertiary effects also emerged, as the indented, italicized items illustrate.

13. Verge: an ethnographic
futures framework
Michele Bowman and Richard Lum
Formulated in response to frustrations with
STEEP/PESTE scan taxonomies
Focus on people and society: define; relate;
connect; create; consume
Wide applicability
as a taxonomy for scanning: organises
emerging change by point of impact on
people, rather than by point of origin
enriches futures wheels, strengthens
scenarios, deepens vision, adds specificity
to strategy.
Monday, 30 August 2010

14. Verge: how does change
affect human experience?
“Human history can be dissected (and sometimes
understood) as a series of eras or epochs – the
Agricultural Era, the Industrial Era, the Information
Age. Common to each of these eras or ages is a set
of culture points which define and shape each era
and which are common to all of human experience.
For instance, while the role (and even the flavor) of
religion has changed throughout time, the common
need of humans to have a framework for
understanding their world has not. Likewise, while
our weapons, our choice of foods and structure of
our families may change throughout time, the need
for them does not.” Michele Bowman
Monday, 30 August 2010

15. Verge in brief
The concepts, ideas Social structures &
and paradigms we use relationships which link
to define the world people and organizations
around us
The technologies used to connect people,
places and things
The processes and The goods & services we
technology through create, and the ways in
which we create which we aquire and use
goods & services them
Monday, 30 August 2010
The Ethnographic Futures Framework - VERGE - was developed by Kaipo Lum and Michele
Bowman of Global Foresight Associates, and any use of it should cite them as authors /
designers.

16. Use it with futures wheels:
brainstorm by Verge category
define? relate?
primary effects
impact critical
emerging change
impact connect? consume?
secondary
create?
effects
impact
 Enter your assigned change in the inner circle of your worksheet.
 Use the following questions to help you imagine possible impacts of this change over the
next twenty years:
 DEFINE: How will this driver affect the concepts, ideas and paradigms we use to define ourselves and the world
around us?
 RELATE: How will we live together on planet Earth?
 CONNECT: How will this driver affect the technologies / techniques we use to connect people, places, and things?
 CREATE: How will this driver affect the processes and technologies we use to produce goods and services?
 CONSUME: How will this driver affect the kinds of goods and services we create, and how we acquire them, use
them, and destroy them?
 Map potential impacts outward as with an ordinary futures wheel.
Monday, 30 August 2010

17. Dr. Wendy L. Schultz
Infinite Futures:
foresight research and training
Oxford, England
wendy@infinitefutures.com
http:// www.infinitefutures.com
Thank you.
Monday, 30 August 2010