LittleBig APF 2007: Verge: the little black dress of foresight methods
1. Futures Mashups,
or…
Verge: the little black dress of futures tools.
• An ethnographic futures framework:
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Define
Relate
Connect
Create
Consume
• Unique scanning taxonomy: point of impact
(POI) rather than point of origin (POO), like
STEEP or PESTLE.
2. Use it with your futures wheels!
Define
Relate
Change /
Emerging issue
secondary
effects impact
Create
impact
impact
primary
effects
Connect
Consume
3. Strengthen your scenarios!
A Virtue of Necessity
The Rose Garden
• First loyalties to family and local community;
• Value balance and wellness;
• Focus on life;
• “Shabby green”: sustainability forced by economic
limitations -- don’t have much so you don’t use much -innovations help.
•Technology: assess health and environmental impacts
before adopting
• First loyalties to digital social network and communities
of interest;
• Value exploration and creativity;
• Focus on transcending the life/work conflict;
• “Green de luxe”: environmentalism, sustainability for
design elegance and parsimony of system solutions;
• Technology: embrace innovation, but take responsibility
for impacts.
• “A Nation of Tinkers with Virtual Allotments”:
• Trevor Bayliss, Charlie Dimmock
• “Cool Explorers on New Adventures”:
• Kevin Warwick, Richard Branson
Define loyalties to the company or organisation;
• First
• First loyalties to self;
• Value security;
• Wish for the luxury of choice regarding work/life
balance;
• “Conserving to cope”: no available capital to invest in
retrofitting or entrepreneurial initiatives;
•Technology: can’t afford the R&D -- or ameliorating
any negative impacts.
• “Tough choices require tough resolve”
• Arthur Daley, Private Walker
Tough Choices
Comparing:
• Where people invest loyalty;
• What people value;
• Position on work/life balance;
• Value competition and winning;
• Focus on work;
• “Success first, sustainability later”: the trickle down
approach -- only stable, surplus generating economy can
afford sustainability;
• Technology: adopt and adapt -- let someone else pay
for R&D, and externalise the impacts where possible.
• “Optimised Sharks in the Market”
• “There is no society, there are only individuals.”
Thatcher
Boom and Blame
•Sustainability and the environment;
•Attitudes to technology
• Who we are / indicative celebrity
4. Enrich and organise your visions!
Define
Relate
secondary
goals impact
impact
impact
Create
Connect
Preferred
future
primary
goals
Consume
• Layer with CLA to add depth:
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What’s the litany on the preferred future?
What’s the systems / causal explanation?
What worldviews / models inform it?
What myths and metaphors express it?
5. Add specificity to strategy!
Verge
Define
Relate
Connect
Create
Consume
S
W
O
T
Strategy
6. Add specificity to strategy!
Verge
Define
Relate
Connect
Create
Consume
S
W
O
T
Strategy