Societal Strategic Foresight
What support systems (networks, institutions, data-bases, programs, staff, help lines, citizen dialogues, etc.) would be necessary to enable a whole society to practice the most current version of strategic foresight and do so routinely at a high professional level?
To date, most societies have no formal capacity to probe into the emerging future. The absence of a societal foresight capacity does not matter if the future will be essentially familiar – a re-run of the past and present. Given human history, this assumption makes sense. But with rapidly changing current events, the need for societal foresight is greater than ever.
What global governments (if any) have the strongest societal foresight programs? What can we learn from these programs and how do we apply this learning to other countries? Discussion would include the purpose, core roles, business strategies, goals, budget, and staff requirements for ordering societal-based foresight programs.
Ruben Nelson, executive director of Foresight Canada. He is Canada's most widely experienced teacher and practitioner of the next generation of strategic foresight. Lac Des arcs, AB, Canada
Post your questions or comments for Ruben
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Societal Foresight
The core issue for me is this: how can a democratic society that, by definition, was formed in an earlier, slower, less complex, and more provincial time develop the capacities required to cope with the emerging global, complex, swampy (wicked) issues of the 21st Century? That no society is now doing this well is clear to me.
As evidence for the above assertions consider both the fact of and the quality of our public responses to the following: 911, the global credit crisis, climate disruption, the degradation of our oceans, soil and water supplies, the erosion of every traditional culture and many modern societies. Add your favorite symptom to this list.
These failures are not surprising in light of the fact that in every society concerned persons in every sector are either left on their own to make sense of their society or bombarded with organized pre-set views that essentially tell them how to see and what to make of their world. Strange, when it comes to roads and water, we create support systems we all pay for and can use. Yet, when it comes to something far more precious -- our future -- we leave it to each one to cope as best he/she can.
One response that may be hopeful (filled with hope)is the creation of a societal capacity for foresight -- a permanent public support system that would enable any and all concerned citizens in groups of very different sizes to make more reliable sense their past, present and possible futures, and do so in an open, transparent and democratic way.
It seems to be an idea worth exploring. If not, why not?