Welcome

Welcome from Sandy Thomas

Professor Sandy Thomas
Head of Foresight
The Government Office for Science

Foresight launched our first strategic futures toolkit, Suggestions for success, in 2005. Since then, the use of futures work and evidence-based analysis in Government and beyond has been strengthened by the efforts of our Horizon Scanning Centre. We have many more examples of good practice to draw from and to share.

Not every futures technique is covered. In fact, it could be that the nascent futures industry may not even fully agree on a full list of techniques that could be covered! Certainly, we have presented a wide and, hopefully, independent perspective. The featured case studies focus mainly – though not entirely – on Foresight and other parts of the public sector.

To my mind, the most important lesson gleaned from our work so far is that good analysis alone is not enough. The best futures work is a journey that is informed by good evidence and analysis and involves a dialogue between analysts and their customers. This helps to ensure that outputs will have relevance to current concerns and it will encourage strategists to maintain a balance between tackling short-term issues and taking action now to seize future opportunities. We hope that the approaches we explain here in Exploring the future: Tools for strategic futures thinking will allow you to build on your capacity to understand complex emergent issues, to respond flexibly to uncertainties, and to generate innovative and resilient strategies.

Finally, if you wish to take a more active role in our futures work, please consider joining our Futures Analysts’ Network, or attending one of our coaching sessions held throughout each year.

The toolkit awaits. I hope that you enjoy using it.

Sandy Thomas