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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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TIMELINE LAYERS: Speed Differentials

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 offuture 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

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.

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

Three Horizons Framework for Layering Change Life-cyclesThree Horizons Framework for Layering Change Life-cyclesB Sharp, T Hodgson, A Curry

The 3 HORIZONS framework

• 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

Three Horizons: Functional differencesThree Horizons: Functional differencesB Sharp, T Hodgson, A Curry

Horizon 1:ManagersHorizon 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

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

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

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

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.”