Category: Foresight

Scanning hits over at LinkedIn

In the spirit of the Scanning Retrospective, I now publish some of my scanning hits over at LinkedIn, on a dedicated page called, of course (what else?), TheVoroscope. I typically post only 2-3 per week, and then only if they are something that catches my eye, so if you look through the hits from the Scanning Retrospective and you find them interesting or quirky enough, or they seem to resonate for you, you might want to consider “following” TheVoroscope page over at LinkedIn.

https://www.linkedin.com/company/thevoroscope/

 

National Security Podcast episode – Mapping the Future

A few weeks ago I was in Canberra to teach into the Advanced Futures course run by the Futures Hub at the National Security College (NSC), which is part of a joint initiative between the Australian Commonwealth Government and The Australian National University (ANU).

This was my third trip to NSC, so – according to the Goldfinger Principle – this now constitutes “enemy action” 😉

I taught into the opening morning session and, later that afternoon, took part in recording an episode for the National Security Podcast. The two other guests were Dr Ryan Young, the Director of Research & Methods at the Futures Hub, and Odette Meli, a fellow member of the NSC’s Futures Council. We were hosted by Dayle Stanley, the Director of Strategy & Engagement for NSC. The topic was: “Mapping the future: how strategic foresight can supercharge policymaking.”

It was a wide-ranging discussion, covering a lot of territory, and was focused primarily on helping people who may not be familiar with futures analysis understand how futures can be useful in their strategic,  policy and decision-making contexts. We were asked to give concrete examples of how our work has been useful, and it was very interesting to hear the other guests’ experiences – very often we carry out our foresight engagements in isolation from other practitioners, so hearing from others about their work is always fascinating and valuable.

As ever, I hope it is both interesting and useful.

https://play.acast.com/s/the-national-security-podcast/mapping-the-future/

AusCERT Podcast interview – What Does The Future Hold?

While at the AusCERT Conference back in May, I recorded a podcast interview with my old friend, tech aficionado and general tech fan-boy all-rounder Anthony Caruana. We’ve known each other for nearly 30 years, and our paths have criss-crossed many times over the course of our careers, so it was kind of fun to catch up once again for a chat.

As you might imagine, Anthony and I did a fair bit of reminiscing before the microphone went live, some of which is made reference to (but a lot is not!). The interview was recorded over lunch a couple of hours before my keynote preso later that afternoon, and actually went on for much longer, too, but the miracle of editing (and AI-powered software?) makes both of us sound fairly eloquent. It’s now published on the AusCERT web site as well as via the usual suspects channels. AusCERT call their podcast “Share Today, Save Tomorrow”, and this episode – number 25 – is entitled What Does the Future Hold?

As ever, I hope it is both interesting and useful.

https://auscert.org.au/podcast/podcast-ep-25-what-does-the-future-hold/

Podcast for Inquiry interview

I recently recorded a podcast episode with Leslie Rosenblood of the Centre for Inquiry Canada, which produces the (aptly-named) Podcast for Inquiry.

Leslie has a wonderful ability to take conversations in new directions on the spur-of-the-moment. You can hear this in his other interviews, and in the way this one branched out several times. And also in how it tried to finish but couldn’t quite do so, the first time, no doubt due to my worrying that I had forgotten something I’d meant to speak about (the Sept 11 story).

Anyway, it was fun to do, and I hope that readers of this blog might find it useful. Sometimes it is much easier to hear someone speak about their subject than to simply read it. I hope you enjoy it.

https://centreforinquiry.ca/futures-studies-with-joseph-voros/

Scanning Retrospective, No. 36

‘From the pages of prospect’ – No. 11

[Originally published] Issue 10, December 2002

    • [Intro to new format for prospect]
    • [Description of selection criteria for inclusion of items (‘hits’) in the  FPR strategic scanning database (SSD)]
    • [Sign-off from FPR, editorship of prospect and authorship of the Snippets]
    • [Ten scanning ‘hits’ from the SSD]
    • Foresight Snippets, No. 25

Continue reading “Scanning Retrospective, No. 36”

Scanning Retrospective, No. 35

‘From the pages of prospect’ – No. 10

[Originally published] Issue 9, September 2002
Special Issue – Environmental Scanning

  • Environmental scanning
  • Environmental scanning in four worlds
  • Reframing environmental scanning
  • Foresight Snippets, No. 24

Continue reading “Scanning Retrospective, No. 35”

Scanning Retrospective, No. 34

‘From the pages of prospect’ – No. 9

[Originally published] Issue 8, June 2002

  • Virtual schools
  • The radical restructuring of higher education
  • A choice of transformations for the 21st-Century university
  • Foresight Snippets, No. 23

Continue reading “Scanning Retrospective, No. 34”

Scanning Retrospective, No. 33

‘From the pages of prospect’ – No. 8

[Originally published] Issue 7, March 2002

  • From The Herman Trend Alert:
    • Metamorphosis of University Education
    • Internationalisation of Education
    • Upheaval in Education?
  • The Futures of Universities
  • Higher Education in the 21st Century
  • Foresight Snippets, No. 22

Continue reading “Scanning Retrospective, No. 33”

Scanning Retrospective, No. 32

‘From the pages of prospect’ – No. 7

[Originally published] Issue 6, December 2001
Special Issue – Preparing for the Swinburne Scenarios Project, 2002

  • A Primer on Futures Studies, Foresight and the Use of Scenarios
  • Envisioning (and Inventing) the Future
  • Making the Future Visible: Psychology, Scenarios and Strategy
  • From Scenario Thinking to Strategic Action
  • The Swinburne Scenarios Project 2002

Continue reading “Scanning Retrospective, No. 32”

Scanning Retrospective, No. 31

‘From the pages of prospect’ – No. 6

[Originally published] Issue 5, September 2001

  • The Inevitability of a Business Model for Higher Education
  • Trends Transforming the Universities of This Century
  • Managerial Vision
  • The Notion of Entrepreneurship: Historical and Emerging Issues

Continue reading “Scanning Retrospective, No. 31”

‘Timing’ of scanning systems

The final major piece of the scanning puzzle is the issue of timing: how often, or according to what sort of timetable, is the scanning in your organisation to be carried out? That question depends on how aware you want to be about what is going on in the external environment, and what your tolerance is for the risk of being blindsided out of existence by events or emerging issues in that environment. (TL;DR: serious preparation requires serious resourcing of the scanning system; no shortcuts or excuses will cut it. Reality cannot be fooled.)

Continue reading “‘Timing’ of scanning systems”

Scanning Retrospective, No. 30

‘From the pages of prospect’ – No. 5

[Originally published] Issue 4, June 2001

  • Linking Strategic Thinking with Strategic Planning
  • Changing Ideas of the University
  • Bridging the Divide
  • Trend Alert: Recruiters Will Reach Into High Schools

Continue reading “Scanning Retrospective, No. 30”

Scanning Retrospective, No. 29

‘From the pages of prospect’ – No. 4

[Originally published] Issue 3, March 2001

  • Education: New Economy, New Challenges?
  • Reshaping Universities for the Future
  • Universal Tertiary Education
  • Academic Entrepreneurship in Higher Education

Continue reading “Scanning Retrospective, No. 29”

Scanning Retrospective, No. 28

‘From the pages of prospect’ – No. 3

[Originally published] Issue 2, Dec 2000

  • Instititutional Entrepreneurship in Higher Education
  • The Changing Research Environment
  • Globalisation: a world without borders
  • TAFE and university graduates – what’s the difference?

Continue reading “Scanning Retrospective, No. 28”

Scanning Retrospective, No. 26

‘From the pages of prospect’ – No. 1

[Originally published] Issue 2, Dec 2000

From this post onwards, we now dip into the items that were published in the Foresight Bulletin, prospect, starting with issue 2, the first issue that I edited. Most will not be given in their entirety, since they were often full-length articles taken from journals, magazines or other long-form sources. Rather, it will be sufficient to just give the ‘flavour’ of the piece in order to see how well they have ‘aged’. Initially, there were a handful of Snippets-ish type items, but these soon gave way to longer-form articles.

  • Ain’t no network strong enough
  • Home is where the e-classroom is
  • Internet contributes to rise of identity theft, FTC says

Continue reading “Scanning Retrospective, No. 26”

Scanning Retrospective, No. 25

Foresight Snippets – No. 25

[Originally published in] prospect no 10, December 2002

  • The chronic question: “What is Time?”
  • Macrohistory – the really big picture view
  • And finally, “who is it that ‘knows’?”

Continue reading “Scanning Retrospective, No. 25”

Exponential Minds Podcast interview

Nikolas Badminton of the Exponential Minds Podcast and I had a chat a couple of months ago. That interview is now live.

We had a pretty fun conversation. It did meander just a teeny little bit, but it does manage to mention quite a few things as a result: something of the history of my use of the Futures Cone; the levels at which foresight can be implemented; Big History and how I’ve used it to frame the coming civilisational energy transition (i.e., away from fossil fuels); as well as mention of David Christian‘s new book which continues on from Origin Story (which I was reading in manuscript at the time). Of course, there are also some aliens mentioned in there, as is Hoag’s Object. There’s also a little bit on this blog’s current scanning retrospective and the concept of futures intelligence. So, all in all, regular readers won’t find too much that is unfamiliar in the interview, but it might be fun to hear it spoken of. Nikolas did a pretty good job of paring it all back from the very long chat we had! 😉

What I am smiting my forehead over, though, is that I forgot to mention Cal Newport’s 2019 book Digital Minimalism, during the segment where we were talking about using technology with careful intention. My bad! Also, Newport’s podcast, whose name I couldn’t quite remember, is Deep Questions, and it just keeps getting better and better as Cal hits his stride with it. It’s definitely re-ignited my interest in intentional approaches to productivity. Might end up doing a series of posts on that, one of these years…

Anyway, I do hope you enjoy listening to the interview as much I did recording it! Thanks Nikolas!

The Interview:
at Exponential Minds
on YouTube

Scanning ‘the’ environment

As noted in an earlier post, I tend to distinguish between environmental scanning and horizon scanning, the former being relatively more proximal to the organisation/entity (in my usage), the latter being relatively more distal, although the terms are frequently used interchangeably in the literature. Expanding upon this distinction is useful because it allows for the creation of a more tractable ‘segmentation’ of the broader organisational environment into parts for which certain information sources are more clearly relevant and thereby more easily selected for inclusion into the overall scanning frame. In this way, a wide variety of disparate information sources can be combined into a unified framework for systematically reducing the risk that organisations – corporate, civic, governmental and military – could get caught out and ‘blindsided’ by a future they should have been able to detect coming.

Continue reading “Scanning ‘the’ environment”