I’ve been working for some time on a piece Environmental scanning in which I lay out thinking and advice on how to do effective, collaborative environmental scanning (aka horizon scanning) using the tools of the digital world. This work, which I expect to update from time to time, is long enough that I’ve given it its own [...]
A few weeks ago, I gave a talk to a group of association executives on environmental scanning. My proposed title for the talk was "Environmental Scanning 2.0," by which I wanted to reflect the potential and power we have in harnessing new tools and the network to make envirobmental scanning much more effective. My host urged [...]
Fred is the YouTube character of a Nebraska teenager, Lucas Cruikshank. I came across his videos because they kept turning up under Most Viewed or Most Popular on Youtube. Most viewed doesn’t make the content of a video valid or even viewable, but in my view, it makes it important to know about. His 19 [...]
The way to make foresight more effective is to pay it forward. That means sharing what you find in exploring the future with others, in and out of your organization. And when you get the sharing going, and people will share back. You are encouraging a conversation about the future, and it needs nurturing. [...]
My great friend, Mary Jane Naquin, a futurist with Informed Futures, Houston, understands how to break out of conventional thinking, and discover new things. Some years ago, she presented a parable to the opening session of the World Future Society annual assembly. I don’t remember the full story of Mary Jane’s parable, but the [...]
The diagram above looks at how organizations may choose to monitor the forces and trends acting on their interests. It can help you consider how you do environmental scanning, and how to make it more valuable to you and your colleagues. Most competent organizations do periodic scanning, formally or informally, but they often [...]
Environmental scanning is a grand name for a simple, routine process. It just means regularly monitoring what’s going on across a broad landscape, to better understand the trends at play and the forces of change you face. Most people do some of this naturally, but they can come up short in getting enough of it [...]
To look effectively at the future of anything, you should take a global view. Most organizational executives know this and are familiar with the broad themes of change unfolding around the world: globalization, the rise of China, climate change, and so on. What is harder is for people to give the global view [...]
Environmental scanning is a technique in which almost anything goes. Scanning simply means exploring the universe of information available to discover deeper insights about what is going on and what is changing in the world. It’s the core technique of foresight, and there is no substitute. But too often, people’s environmental scanning is too [...]
Nokia’s Jan Chipchase travels the world, exploring often subtle cues in societies, and taking pictures of them. His blog Future Perfect, is a marvel to look at. It often is not clearly meaningful at first glance, but there’s always something to ponder. He doesn’t explain everything, you have to do your own thinking, but he [...]
