Good scanning is essential to good foresight like sourcing the best ingredients is essential to tasty dishes. The slides show you three essential tips to take your scanning and your foresight from good to great. Instead of the usual broad sweep, I will show you how to see the future in the news you consume on a daily basis. The slides are part of my foresight blog called The Canary.

1. Barbara@FuturistBarbara.com
How to See
the Future
in the Daily News

3. What is Foresight?
The future is impossible to predict for the lack
of facts. We can only develop educated
guesses.
Scanning

4. Common Questions
QUESTIONS SOLUTIONS
• How to find foresight information in the
abundance of noise that hits us daily?
• Scan for specific types of signals
• Reduce your expertise blind spots before
scanning
• Where to find foresight information? • Include sources with a longer time-horizon
• How to interpret foresight information? • Assess information objectivity

5. Foresight Starts with Scanning
…but for what?

6. Time
Signal
Power
Noise
Signal
High Risk,
High Gains
Diminishing Returns
on Information
Mainstream
Ideas
Hiltunen, 2010
Two Signal Types
Strong signals
rarely signify
disruption
So we look for
relevant weak
signals

7. Weak Signals Are:
• Weak signals are:
developments that seem
irrelevant or not urgent in
the present;
• But will impact your industry
severely in de future

8. How to Find the
Right Weak Signals

9. In foresight goes:
Your expertise is your
biggest enemy

10. Assumption Validator
Try this exercise to reduce blind spots before you start scanning for signals
Which imaginary developments
will halt or destroy your
assumed future?
…………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………….
What I assume will happen:
…………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………….
Industry developmenys– Impact on organization– Now/later
Can you Google indications of
those developments
happening?
Ye
s
No

11. Sources per Time Horizon
IMPACT
LATER
IMPACT
NOW
• Research by the UN,
Gartner, and similar
• Research by industry
and trade associations
• Economic research
desks of banks
• Scale-ups
• Innovations by
competitors and supply
chain actors
• Academic research on
long-term effects,
drivers, and barriers of
new developments
• Mergers and
acquisitions
• Start-ups
• New entrants
• Patents
• Prototypes from the
labs of universities and
big corporates
• Artists
• Science Fiction
• Futuristic future
scenarios

12. How to Interpret
Weak Signals Right

13. The Future = Perception
SLAVE MASTER HUMAN

14. Weak Signal
New Tech
Your Expertise Mediated Information
What actually happens
What you hear/read
about it
How you interpret the
information
So: Unravel Weak Signals

15. Recap
WHAT TO DO WHY IT WORKS
• Scan for weak signals (the unfamiliar,
ambiguous information about developments
with future impact)
• Weak signals are more likely to indicate
disruption and opportunities
• Reduce your expertise blind spots before
scanning
• Your expertise is used to discard weak
signals, so you have to scan deliberately
• Include sources with a longer time-horizon • Your usual media are likely to be shorter-
focused, so pick your sources carefully
• Assess information objectivity • Most weak signals come packaged as
opinions (yours and those of the signal
makers), so look beyond that for higher
accuracy