Basic introduction to working with past timelines and the Three Horizons Framework, as presented at the 'Blowing the Cobwebs Off Your Mind' Three Horizons / Futures Thinking Bootcamp, 18-19 September 2013, by Wendy Schultz

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• History as a launch pad for foresight:
• Robert Textor, Ethnographic Futures --
the rubber band effect.
• Paul Saffo, Technological Forecasting --
twice as far back as forward.
• Layering history of different sectors:
• Analysing different patterns of change.
• Identifying different speeds of change.
TIMELINES and the FUTURE

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1© H C H L V 2 0 0 8
Th e s ix la y e rs o f c iv ilis a tio n
N a t u r e
G o v e r n a n c e
C u lt u r e
S o c ia l c h a n g e
S o u r c e : S t e w a r t B r a n d /F r e e m a n D y s o n , a d a p t e d
In f r a s t r u c t u r e
B u s in e s s
F a s h io n a n d m e d ia
Faster
Slower
Regulators
Accelerators
TIMELINE LAYERS: Speed Differentials

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

5.  Beginning of research,
not the end;
 “N of 1”;
 Unearths contradictions;
 Subjective, not
objective;
 “Unscientific” sources;
 Systems-based;
 Unfamiliar concepts.
HORIZON SCANNING
• Primary futures tool for identifying and
monitoring emerging change.
• Related to issues management and
competitive intelligence.
• ”Environment” refers to the information
environment – all media – and
”scanning” to logically structured,
continuous monitoring of data sources.
• High quality scanning:
– identifies an emerging issue that is objectively
new even to experts,
– confirms or is confirmed by additional scan
hits, and
– has been identified in time for social dialogue,
impact assessment, and policy formation.

6.  Scanning provides a starting point to monitor
possible transformative / disruptive changes.
 3 Horizons helps us organise and consider the
interplay of trends and emerging changes.
 Uses:
 Challenge obsolescing assumptions;
 Spot emerging constraints / opportunities;
 Get beyond incrementalism.
SCANNING + the 3 HORIZONS framework

7. Three Horizons Framework for Layering Change Life-cyclesThree Horizons Framework for Layering Change Life-cycles
B Sharp, T Hodgson, A Curry
The 3 HORIZONS framework

8. • Perspective: long-term time horizon
• Need: technology road-mapping that reflects
generations of technological innovation
• Researchers: Bill Sharpe, Tony Hodgson, Andrew
Curry
• Subsequent publications and articles:
– IIS Technology Forward Look; Sharpe and Hodgson
– “Seeing in Multiple Horizons: Connecting Futures to Strategy;”
Curry and Hodgson, Journal of Futures Studies
– Bill Sharpe, Three Horizons: The Patterning of Hope, 2013.
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ORIGINS of 3 HORIZONS framework:
UK Foresight Intelligent Infrastructure
Systems (IIS) Project

9. Three Horizons: Functional differencesThree Horizons: Functional differences
B Sharp, T Hodgson, A Curry
Horizon 1:
Managers
Horizon 1:
Managers
Dominance of worldview
Horizon 2:
Entrepreneurs
Horizon 2:
Entrepreneurs
Horizon 3:
Visionary Leaders
Horizon 3:
Visionary Leaders
Status quo,
momentum,
inertia
Status quo,
momentum,
inertia
Incremental
adaptation &
innovation
Incremental
adaptation &
innovation
Emerging
change &
visions
Emerging
change &
visions
Pockets of the future
found in the present

10. Horizon ONE
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• Today’s dominant pattern(s) – accumulations of
past decisions and designs
• H1 systems are fully integrated with
surrounding culture – ‘locked in’
• Well-established ways of dealing with problems
frame approaches to new challenges
• Dominated by quantitative sense of time as a
limited resource
MANAGERIAL

11. Horizon THREE
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• Imagined futures and emerging changes –
transformative shifts from the present
• Explores the ‘full range of possible social
settlements and systems that could be brought
into being’
• Surfaces and questions underlying cultural
assumptions
• Dominated by qualitative awareness of time as
a defining moment of decision
VISIONARY

12. Horizon TWO
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• Looks both ways – past and future – to respond
to limitations of H1 and opportunities of H3
• Creates a zone of innovation and turbulence
• Danger: “H1 capture” – too mired in the past
• Dominated by feelings of opportunity,
engagement and a sense of opportunity cost –
trade-offs that must be made
ENTREPRENEURIAL

13. Horizons Insights
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“Instead of seeing a world of stability to which
change and uncertainty ‘happen,’ we instead
become aware that everything that seems fixed
and stable is just part of a slow process of
change, embedded in other processes that
extend out as far as we want to explore.”