The Futures Cone

A summary of the Futures Cone, a useful tool that helps us to realise there is more than a single future, and begin to expand our thinking about futures.

Introduction

This follows on from an earlier post on Foresight Principles.

The sixth foresight principle is that there are always more futures beyond the one linear future assumed in most organisations and governments today.

This linear future is frequently called the “official future” which Scearce and Fulton (2004, p. 88)define:

The explicit articulation of a set of commonly held beliefs about the future external environment that a group, organization, or industry implicitly expects to unfold. Once articulated, the official future captures an organization’s shared assumptions or mental map.

The Futures Cone demonstrates that there are always many alternative futures available to an organisation beyond the official future. The origins of the Futures Cone are detailed by Voros (2017), Hancock and Bezold (1994) and the probably original Charles Taylor (1990) – it demonstrates clearly that there are always many alternative futures available to an organisation in the present beyond the offici…