Scanning: a Key Practice for Futurists
Intro to Futures, Week 7
Future events can only be anticipated if they emerge from something happening in the present. These signals of change can be strong or faint, and for every signal that becomes dominant in the future, several will fail1. Identifying as many signals as possible and tracking their relevance over time, therefore, is an important part of foresight work, and this is exactly what we mean by “horizon scanning”, “environmental scanning”, or more simply “scanning”. A daily scanning practice is just like the tooth-brushing I mentioned in week 2: basic good hygiene for futurists.
However, lots of people read, watch, and/or listen to the news daily. What, then, sets a good scanning practice apart? Chun Wei Choo and Elina Hiltunen offer some useful guidance:
Scan with various levels of focus and structure: from paying attention to what you see as you walk through town, to trusted sources for news, to doing a regular search of all patents within a particular area.
Realize that the goal is to find things before they enter the popular awareness, so many of these will fizzle out, but that’s OK.
Once you find something interesting, systematize what’s done with it so knowledge is retained, related work is brought together, etc. If this is for a larger organization, this probably means some IT support for a knowledge system.
Think about how acquired signals can be turned into a useful product. For example, I write a monthly digest on LinkedIn summarizing all the things I’ve read in the month that seem relevant to technology, healthcare, society, and especially their intersections. It would probably be more useful if I focused that work by more explicitly calling out the themes and identifying where the signals seem to be pointing.
There’s an irreducible role of curiosity and intuition in doing this well. I am not familiar with the literature on cultivating curiosity as a learned skill but it seems worthwhile to investigate. I like Bobby Pinero’s idea of an “overheard list” as one example of what this might look like.
If this is something that everyone in Futures is doing, then it is reasonable that looking to other Futures practitioners is a good source of distilled signals; the downside is that it creates the risk of an echo chamber.
A good distillation of these ideas can be found in the University of Houston’s Foresight Scanning Process:
I sought out and started this Masters program because I already spend time every day trying to understand how what is happening in the world will affect things related to my work, and I was convinced that someone had to know how to do this in a more systematic way. I have since expanded my view of Futures and the value it can provide, but this week’s content is a direct answer to that initial goal and I’m working to decide exactly how to improve my practice. I’d love to hear in the comments below if you’ve found a thought storage/retrieval solution that has worked for you.
For technology, think social audio, NFTs (don’t @ me, crypto bros), and the Zune. Politically, for every Donald Trump, there’s a Ron Paul, an Andrew Yang, and a Marianne Williamson.