Foresight 3.0 – overview

The Foresight 3.0 methods and tools have emerged since the 2000s, from experience of foresight applications and capacity building in many countries.  The wider Synergistic ‘Foresight-wise’ theme was first publicly launched at the 2001 UNESCO summit on futures literacy. A series of international dialogues then led to a Special Issue in Foresight (near complete). A recent application is the large scale foresight project for UNIDO in Ukraine, as on http://www.recpc.org/circular-economy/

The rationale behind this is the synergistic method and Pathways Toolkit for mobilizing the collective intelligence and co-evolution of human systems – social, technological, economic, ecological, political, cultural, etc (Ravetz 2020: Ravetz and Miles 2016).

Why Foresight 3.0  (‘FS3’)? – what is it & how to do it? Broadly…

• Foresight emerged as a practice of inter-connections – present / future:  external / internal change etc.
• But now the scale of current challenges has moved on: e.g. multiple ‘post-truths’: existential risks of climate change etc: extreme globalization: systems transformation, etc.
• So there is an opportunity where Foresight theory and practice can move forward – we frame this as Foresight 3.0…
• Basically this is foresight with the added dimension of a ‘collective foresight intelligence’, in the community of practitioners, and in the surrounding society.

This agenda can be summed in three dimensions –

• Wider community of stakeholders, beyond the elites / experts
• Deeper layers of value and meaning, beyond the material
• Further horizons of transformation, beyond ‘problem fixing’

Foresight 3.0 is then a double track agenda:

3. Foresight produced by: a ‘3.0’ system of ‘collective anticipatory intelligence’ (information, analysis, deliberation, co-production) within the FS3 team;
4. Foresight produced for, by, with: a ‘3.0’ system of ‘collective anticipatory intelligence’, and the transformations leading towards it. This includes mutual communication, learning, innovation, co-production, between a wider stakeholder community, with deeper layers of value & meaning). 

As to what is a ‘collective anticipatory intelligence’:  the framework of ‘co-evolution’ with its 3 ‘modes’ is a useful guide (see the ‘summary & self-assessment’ in Table 1):

• Foresight 1.0: a functional / technical framing of direct problems and solutions: (generally includes embedded assumptions).
• Foresight 2.0: an evolutionary framing of problems & solutions, in terms of competition, incentives, innovations, ‘winner takes all’ mindset.
• Foresight 3.0: a co-evolutionary framing of problems & solutions: in terms of the synergies & opportunities from mutual communication, co-learning, co-innovation, co-production: between a wider stakeholder community, deeper layers of value, and further

Table 1: Foresight-3.0 – summary & self-assessment

Sources

Foresight 3.0 program pages – Synergistics | Foresight-wise theme

Ravetz, J, & Miles, I.D, (2016) Foresight in cities: on the possibility of a “strategic urban intelligence”, Foresight, Vol.18(5), pp469-490, http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/FS-06-2015-0037  

Ravetz, J, (2020), Deeper City: collective intelligence and the pathways from smart to wise. NY, Routledge: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315765860