Methodology

CSF’s methodology serves six key purposes: defining focus, environmental scanning, sense making, developing possible futures, designing strategies and monitoring.

Overview

The Centre for Strategic Futures (CSF) has developed its own set of foresight tools, to go beyond Scenario Planning to deal with emergent or sudden and discontinuous trends. Called “Scenario Planning Plus” (SP+), it retains Scenario Planning as its core, but taps on a broader suite of tools more suitable for the analysis of weak signals, and thinking about black swans and wild cards.

 SP+ serves six key purposes:

  1. Defining Focus – to establish the nature of a problem, tools such as complexity theorist Dave Snowden’s Cynefin Framework Problem Definition are used. This framework divides problems into five domains -- simple, complicated, complex, chaotic and disorder -- in order to categorise problems and find appropriate solutions based on the domain they belong to.

     

  2. Environmental Scanning – to systematically examine the external environment to understand its nature and pace of change, and to identify potential challenges and opportunities. Tools include Emerging Issues Analysis, where we engage a wide range of thought leaders in various sectors to identify critical emerging issues.          

     

    For more information on how we use this tool, please see Emerging Strategic Issues and Wildcards Programme below.

  3. Sense Making – to use raw information to piece together a comprehensive and comprehensible picture of an issue. For instance, we use Driving Forces Analysis and Prioritisation as a tool to examine how potential trigger events can alter existing trends, and then prioritise them based on their potential impact on stakeholders. Another tool is the Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats (SWOT) framework, used to systematically think about an issue from four key angles in order to identify which areas need the most attention.

     

  4. Developing Possible Futures – to create narratives and models to understand plausible future states. Tools include Scenario Planning, where stories of plausible future scenarios are used to challenge assumptions and trigger thinking about long-term strategies, and Backcasting, which starts with defining a desired or feared future, and then working backwards to identify the policies or programmes that will connect the present to the future.

     

  5. Designing Strategies – to craft strategies by taking into account insights into the future using tools such as War-Gaming, in which strategies and conflict simulations are explored within a fictional scenario game.

     

  6. Monitoring – to track relevant indicators of anticipated futures or implemented strategies. One such tool is Early Warning Systems, used to analyse risks, monitor and warn of potential critical threats, and build a response capability to these threats.

 Future_Deck_Card         

 

 Emerging Strategic Issues and Wildcards Programme (ESI Project) 

The ESI Project is an example of how we combine SP+ tools -- Environmental Scanning and Sense Making -- to identify, filter and prioritise strategic issues that have not yet surfaced as critical, have some evidence of future occurrence, and have potential to impact Singapore significantly, should they occur.

Our first ESI Project was completed in 2010 in conjunction with scenario planning consulting group Global Business Network. We interviewed thought leaders from diverse backgrounds, ranging from those in the public, private and academic sectors to members of the public, to generate a diversity of ideas. This was part of a deliberate effort to avoid groupthink, by seeking views and obtaining fresh insights from outside the Government. Fifty ESIs were identified and ranked according to likelihood, impact and level of institutional surprise.  

In the second iteration of the ESI Project, called ESI Project 2.0, our work was inspired by  consulting firm Arup’s Drivers of Change cards to present our top 48 ESIs on a deck of cards we called the Future Deck. This was designed to trigger conversations on public policy, and emerging issues and trends.

View Future Deck here.

ESI Project 2.0 sparked several follow-up research projects within the Singapore Government, including one on the impact of automation on the Singapore workforce, and what it will mean to be Singaporean in the future.

 Foresight_Glossary(s)

FORESIGHT: A GLOSSARY

What is a “black swan”? What are “wicked problems”?

The work of imagining, anticipating and planning for the future has acquired a language of its own. This Foresight Glossary is a guide to the concepts, toolsand methodologies commonly used in the Singapore Government foresight space. Each entry provides a definition and overview of a concept or term, along with a listing of resources for further information.

View the Foresight Glossary here.