Frameworks & Methodologies

We apply leading foresight and futures thinking methodologies, selecting the most suitable approach for each challenge (non-exhaustive list):

 

• Visioning
  Craft a vivid, shared vision of a preferred future to inspire, align, and mobilise stakeholders. Visioning serves as a north star for strategic transformation, helping organisations focus beyond immediate challenges and act with long-term intent.
   

• Futures Literacy Labs
  Facilitated spaces to explore different types of futures—expected, preferred, and alternative—while surfacing assumptions and blind spots. These labs build collective capacity to anticipate change, embrace uncertainty, and co-create informed responses.
   

• Causal Layered Analysis (CLA)
  A powerful method for unpacking the layers beneath issues: from surface-level data to systemic causes, worldviews, and deep cultural narratives. CLA helps reframe problems and imagine transformative change by shifting underlying paradigms.
   

• Three Horizons Framework
  A time-based model that enables organisations to simultaneously manage short-term performance and long-term innovation. It maps current realities (Horizon 1), emerging disruptions (Horizon 2), and visionary futures (Horizon 3) to guide strategic evolution.
   

• Futures Triangle
  Analyses the interplay between the push of current trends, the pull of desirable futures, and the weight of the past. This framework helps map opportunity spaces and identify barriers to change within complex systems.
   

• Futures Wheel
  A structured visual tool for exploring first-, second-, and third-order consequences of a change or event. It reveals cascading impacts, potential unintended outcomes, and areas of strategic leverage.
   

• Cross-Impact Analysis
  Examines how trends, drivers, or events might influence each other in dynamic and sometimes non-linear ways. This method helps build more robust, interconnected scenarios and challenge linear assumptions.
   

• System Dynamics Modeling
  Uses simulations and feedback loops to model complex, adaptive systems over time. Ideal for testing policy impacts, anticipating unintended consequences, and visualising long-term change dynamics.
   

• Horizon Scanning
  A structured approach to identifying weak signals, emerging issues, and disruptive innovations before they hit the mainstream. It sharpens anticipatory intelligence and informs early strategic responses.
   

• Trend and Mega-Trend Analysis
  Investigates current and long-term patterns reshaping industries, societies, and technologies. This method identifies drivers of change, accelerators, and tipping points to inform future-facing strategies.
   

• Weak Signals & Wild Cards
  Detects subtle early signs of change (weak signals) and high-impact, low-probability events (wild cards). Together, they expand thinking beyond the expected and support resilience in the face of surprise.
   

• ​Speculative design
  A practice that uses design to explore and critique possible futures. Rather than creating solutions for today’s problems, it poses “what if?” questions to explore alternative futures.
   

• Artifacts from the Future
  Tangible objects or media outputs designed as if they were produced in the future. They make futures feel real, provoke conversation, and encourage critical thinking.
   

• Scenario Planning
  Develops multiple, plausible future contexts to explore strategic options and stress-test decisions. It enhances agility by helping leaders rehearse responses to uncertainty and complexity.
   

• Strategy Windtunneling & Policy Stress Testing
  Evaluate how strategies & policies perform across diverse future scenarios to expose vulnerabilities and enhance resilience. These techniques strengthen adaptability and future-proofing in long-range planning and policy outcomes.
   

• Technology Roadmapping
  Maps the trajectory of emerging technologies and their alignment with strategic goals over time. It supports investment prioritisation, R&D focus, and innovation orchestration across ecosystems.
   

• Delphi Method
  A structured forecasting method that gathers expert insights through iterative rounds to reach informed consensus. Useful for exploring complex, uncertain issues where expert judgement is key.
   

• Backcasting
  Starts with a defined desirable future and works backward to identify strategic steps, enablers, and policy shifts needed to reach it. Backcasting promotes transformative thinking anchored in long-term vision.

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We also use a range of custom-designed games built around key foresight methods to make workshops more engaging, interactive, and true to each approach.

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The choice of approach depends on the specific characteristics of each project, including:
 

• Context

• Stakeholders invloved

• Objectives and motivations

• Desired Outcomes

• Complexity of the subject

• Available resources

A key distinction exists between futures designed for transformation (anticipation for emergence) and those aimed at planning and preparation (anticipation for strategy, innovation, and risk management). Each approach requires different methodologies.

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For a foresight initiative to be effective, efficient, and generate meaningful impact, it must be rigorously framed from the outset. This framing consists of three core components:

Defining the Domain

Establishing the scope of futures to be explored requires clarity on:
 

• Focal Issue: The subject or domain under investigation

• Geographical scope: The spatial boundaries for analysis

• Time horizon: The timeframe over which scenarios will be considered

• Key stakeholders: Internal and external actors influencing the focal issue

Purpose and Outcomes Assessment

Defining the intended use of futures insights ensures alignment with strategic objectives. Key considerations include:

 

• Expected Outcomes: Organizational-level impacts (e.g., innovation, strategic resilience) and individual-level benefits (e.g., awareness, engagement)

• Success Metrics: Research methodologies such as surveys, interviews, or other assessment tools to measure effectiveness

Project Logistics

Managing the operational aspects of a foresight project involves critical decisions on:
 

• Composition of the project team

• Project duration and milestones

• Number and format of foresight workshops (if applicable)

• Resource allocation

• Selection of foresight methods, based on the expected outcomes

Foresight is inherently interdisciplinary, drawing on a diverse range of fields to provide a holistic perspective on the future. The frameworks and methodologies we apply integrate insights from adjacent disciplines, including:

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• Social Sciences

• Psychology & Neuroscience

• Management Science

• Complexity Science (e.g., the Cynefin framework)

• Systems Thinking & Design Thinking

• Behavioral Science

• Theories of Change

• Historical Analysis
   

As the field evolves, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is playing an increasingly critical role in foresight practice—both as a tool for analysis and as a subject of study in its own right.

 

By leveraging these diverse disciplines, we ensure that our futures thinking remains rigorous, adaptive, and forward-looking.

Beyond rigorous desk research—spanning trends, megatrends, existing scenario work, horizon scanning, emerging issues, and Delphi studies—effective foresight and futures thinking rely on dynamic, participatory workshops.

 

We use proven facilitation methods, including liberating structures, to create a safe and inclusive space where every voice is heard. The richness of diverse experiences, perspectives, and roles is what drives meaningful insights, robust strategies, and real impact.