Forecasting and Management of Technology, Second Edition

12.5 Visions

Bringing the future home to the present requires images of the future. That is what forecasts are intended to provide. The future is very much an open system with fuzzy, impenetrable boundaries in both space and time. Images of the future must accommodate uncertainty and be adaptable, yet provide focal points to guide present actions. They also must include both contexts and goals. Such visions can be used by decision makers to guide present decisions and actions.

A vision of the future is a believable and easily communicable story about the future of a technology that is both concrete and open-ended—a real “grabber” that invites buy-in. It is concrete in the sense that it can carry one from the present reality to the future by providing a credible narrative. It is open-ended in that it is a bold outline without subheadings and closed definitions that clearly points to plausible futures.

Creating visions combines observation, analysis, intuition, and imagination. Formal and informal observations of sociotechnical development patterns provide the raw material to drive a vision. But they need to be interpreted and structured according to the conceptual framework of organizational beliefs, assumptions, and goals. The tools presented in this book can be applied directly to observations of the present and past. Intuition thrives on rich input and builds on creativity (Chapter 4), the results of analysis, and, perhaps, more speculative futurist writings such as science fiction. ...