About Foresight Futures

Foresight Futures services are designed to help you begin to understand how and why you think about possible futures in the present. My focus is on working with people to recognise our assumptions underpinning current planning processes and their constraints. We have conversations that engage with present complexity and find more expansive ways of understanding the present - and the new actions that emerge from this new thinking and new assumptions. Why this shift?

As a society in transition to the next stage of its development, our ways of thinking, our ways of working and the assumptions and models upon which we have structured our organisations and decision-making are no longer useful. We have to move beyond that if we are to find sustainable futures for ourselves and the planet.

We have a choice. We can keep using the old way - and keep creating used futures - or move to a new way where we use a more integrated, inclusive frame to generate a long-term perspective and to inform our thinking and our actions today. Fundamentally, that means helping you find and use your foresight capacities so you can find the new and novel in the present. Once you have found your foresight, you will never lose it.

History

Foresight Futures originated in Thinking Futures, the business I established in 2007.

Thinking Futures emerged from the work I did using foresight in universities from 1999 to 2007. Being asked by the Vice-Chancellor at Swinburne University to 'do' foresight in 1999 sent me on a journey that started with me as a foresight novice and led to changing my 28 year career as a university manager to one as a foresight professional.

From a rather conventional consultancy in 2007, Thinking Futures developed to be a globally recognised collaborative foresight practice that worked with people to create futures ready organisations. I focused on both the mindsets that underpin thinking about futures and foresight-infused strategy - both are essential if we and our organisations are to transition to the new world that is emerging.

Foresight Futures is the third - and final, I hope - iteration of Thinking Futures. From my original focus working with people to add value to strategy development in organisations, I am now providing courses, resources and advisory services to support the development of an individual and collective social foresight capacity.