FUTURES & FORESIGHT SCIENCE最新文献

Organizational and political responses to strategic surprises such as the credit crunch in 2008 and the pandemic in 2020 are increasingly reliant on scientific insights. As a result, the accuracy of scientific models has become more critical, and models have become more complex to capture the real-world phenomena as best as they can. So much, so that appeals for simplification are beginning to surface. But unfortunately, simplification has its issues. Too simple models are so generic that they no longer accurately describe or predict real-world cause-effect relationships. On the other hand, too complex models are hard to generalize. Somewhere on the continuum between too simple and too complex lies the optimal model. In this article, the authors contribute to the ongoing discussion on model complexity by presenting a logical and systematic framework of simplification issues that may occur during the conceptualization and operationalization of variables, relationships, and model contexts. The framework was developed with the help of two cases, one from foresight, a relatively young discipline, and the other from the established discipline of innovation diffusion. Both disciplines have a widely accepted foundational predictive model that could use another look. The shared errors informed the simplification framework. The framework can help social scientists to detect possible oversimplification issues in literature reviews and inform their choices for either in- or decreases in model complexity.

In this paper, we introduce the notion of a microperspective to futures research. Contrary to the more traditional timespans of futures research that are measured in years or decades, a microperspective focuses on shorter timespans that can be measured even in minutes. We point out that the use of a microperspective can provide an understanding of the central issues of futures research from a new angle. These issues involve the difficulties in estimating the future, the entanglement of the future with accounts of it, and the (in)ability to relate to certain futures. We argue that a microperspective can provide an understanding of how patterns shaping the future are created, how people respond to patterns, and how conflicts and misunderstandings shape the future. As an illustrative case, we discuss how the workings of elevators and the development of predictive algorithms in Kone corporation shape the future moment-by-moment in an interaction between the users and the developers. A microperspective shows how the different temporal orientations of the actors and their different interpretations of the environment interact. The case indicates that a microperspective can provide a novel way to study some of the central issues in futures research. The case also indicates that the notion of a microperspective is not merely an academic concept but has practical utility in planning and creating the future.

This article focuses on using science fiction for military purposes to anticipate the future of warfare and presents a new tool for creating military science fiction. As technology is a significant driver in the future of warfare, science fiction has increased its popularity for military purposes. Armies and defense organizations have begun utilizing science fiction to anticipate and prepare for future wars. Examples can be found in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, and NATO. Even though military sci-fi is on the rise, there is a lack of a more profound analysis of the sci-fi narratives of the military and its foundations. Allied Command Transformation's, (NATO's Strategic Warfare Development Command) report called Visions of Warfare 2036 (2016) exhibits an example of military-based science fiction employed to anticipate and get prepared for the future of warfare. It includes 12 narratives of the future of warfare varying from gene-manipulated soldiers to AI-generated warfare. By analyzing the report qualitatively using the Atlas.ti program and manual methods, the basic elements of the stories were identified. One of the findings of the analysis was that the stories were somewhat similar to each other. To create more diverse military science fiction scenarios, a new tool: the Military Science Fiction Scenario Card was created. This tool can be used in practical work when thinking about the war of the future and in particular the role of technology in it. It can also be seen as a new tool in the field of futures research.

As a multidisciplinary field, futures research borrows approaches from different disciplines. However, it often ignores the potential of the arts on a large scale, even though the arts embrace creativity and often depict and narrate imagined futures. This article applies a case study approach to review and categorize selected arts-based approaches and assess their potential—strengths and limitations—for futures workshops in higher arts education context. The approaches were tried extensively in Art School Futures Labs (15 test labs and 12 actual labs) and a summer school in eight European countries. Three case examples are scrutinized in more detail to illuminate their use in the cocreation of futures images. One artistic futures image is discussed within the frameworks of Wittgensteinian aspect perception and intertextuality, highlighting the importance of interpretation in unpacking the complex meanings that artistic futures images convey. Finally, some recommendations are given to support the successful use of arts-based approaches in futures workshops.

This paper performs a backcasting wheel analysis of the issue of democratic backsliding. It identifies an interacting set of proximate causes of democratic backsliding, and then a set of complementary strategies for addressing the root causes of each of these. It takes an interdisciplinary systems-based approach throughout. The paper is grounded in an extensive survey of several literatures in multiple disciplines. It shows how the backcasting wheel complements other methods employed in anticipation and future studies more generally.

Our study emphasizes the evolving nature and increasing relevance of corporate foresight (CF) in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world. This research, therefore, contributes to the foresight literature, concerned with the antecedents and motivators of CF as it investigates how external events that are characterized by great uncertainty influence the CF practice of large companies. On the example of the COVID-19 pandemic and based on a study of 25 interviews, this empirical research reveals that such events provoke an intensified engagement with the future within companies as implied by a greater resource commitment and interest in foresight. Thereby, CF and especially the development of multiple future scenarios, are considered helpful in countering uncertainty and facilitating responsiveness.

We describe an exploratory study examining the effectiveness of an interactive app and a novel training process for improving calibration and reducing overconfidence in probabilistic judgments. We evaluated the training used in the app by conducting an American college football forecasting tournament involving 153 business school students making 52 forecasts over 11 weeks. A coarsened exact matching analysis found statistical evidence that, in under 30 min, the more challenging training was able to modestly reduce overconfidence, improve calibration and improve the accuracy of probabilistic judgments (measured by the Brier score). The experimental results also suggest that the generic training can generalize across domains and that effective calibration training is possible without expert facilitators or pedagogical training materials. Although no previous studies have reported similar results, due to the modest effect, we conclude that these results should only be interpreted as a proof of concept and that further evaluation and validation of mechanisms of the app's effect is necessary.

System dynamics (SD) is a methodology to generate qualitative and quantitative models. SD has two main concepts that are highly suitable to use with scenarios: feedback processes that define the structure of sociotechnical systems and accumulation processes that are responsible for the dynamic behavior of systems over time. This article discusses a framework that integrates methodologically scenarios and SD. The integration can take multiple forms depending on the use of SD for creating or supporting scenarios. The framework is illustrated with multiple examples. Since SDs' practice uses processes similar to scenario practice, mutual enrichment between the communities can be highly successful.

Urban living is changing. Citizens explore new lifestyles in practice and envision alternative urban futures. Companies, as significant stakeholders in cities, are building urban infrastructure and serving citizens' needs. To succeed in the future, companies must be able to navigate the complexity and diversity of evolving cities. However, former corporate foresight research on cities is sparse. This participatory corporate foresight study examines city life in 2040 by engaging a group of London citizens with a lead user profile. A qualitative multimethod approach, consisting of online diaries, a futures imagining workshop, and in-depth interviews, explores citizens' images of the future and lifestyle changes. The lifestyle adjustments experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic period have acted as a catalyst for novel personal and communal futures. The broad range of visions included both continuity and discontinuity, with a moderately optimistic undertone, and featured communal, infrastructural, ecological, and technological aspects of life. These visions emphasized sustainability in multiple areas of life and demonstrated the dynamic relationship of the past, present, and future. The methodological contribution of this paper lies in its multimethod approach, which enabled an agile collection of textual and audio-visual datasets in both online and face-to-face contexts. This agility is particularly relevant in a corporate foresight context, where companies must balance efficiency, depth, and applicability while operating under resource constraints. The article also extends the lead user approach's use from individual products and services to the city environment and urban lifestyle in general.