United States Department of Agriculture

Forest Service Northern Research Station General Technical Report NRS-175 December 2017

Ten Principles for Thinking 

about the Future: a Primer for 

Environmental Professionals

David N. Bengston

Environmental

Collapse

Present

Expected

Future

Preferred

Future

Historical Roots

of the Future

High Tech

Transformation
Manuscript received for publication 8 August 2017

Published by

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December 2017

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Abstract

Every decision we make is about the future, but most of us are never taught how to think 

critically about it. This guide addresses this issue by identifying and reviewing 10 principles for 

thinking about the future, along with related strategies for improving environmental foresight. 

The principles and strategies are drawn from the transdisciplinary field of futures studies. Taken 

together, these principles and strategies can help guide environmental planners, managers, and 

policy makers toward well-considered expectations for the future.

The Author

DAVID N. BENGSTON is a research social scientist and environmental futurist with the U.S. Forest 

Service, Northern Research Station, 1992 Folwell Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55108, dbengston@fs.fed.us.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks George Kubik, Andy Hines, Lynne Westphal, and an anonymous reviewer for 

many helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this paper.

Cover Art

Tree with limbs representing plausible futures. Artwork by Haley Anderson, used with permission. 

Quality Assurance

This publication conforms to the Northern Research Station’s Quality Assurance Implementation 

Plan which requires technical and policy review for all scientific publications produced or funded 

by the Station. The process included a blind technical review by a reviewer who was selected 

by the Assistant Director for Research and unknown to the author. This review policy promotes 

the Forest Service guiding principles of using the best scientific knowledge, striving for quality 

and excellence, maintaining high ethical and professional standards, and being responsible and 

accountable for what we do.
CONTENTS

Introduction............................................................................................................. 1

1. The Future is Plural ............................................................................................ 3

2. The Future is Possible, Plausible, Probable, and Preferable................ 5

3. The Future is Open ............................................................................................ 7

4. The Future is Fuzzy ............................................................................................ 8

5. The Future is Surprising.................................................................................10

6. The Future is Not Surprising.........................................................................11

7. The Future is Fast..............................................................................................13

8. The Future is Slow............................................................................................15

9. The Future is Archetypal................................................................................16

10. The Future is Inbound..................................................................................18

Conclusions............................................................................................................19

Literature Cited .....................................................................................................21

General Technical Report NRS-175
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1

INTRODUCTION

History is a required subject in school, and rightly so. 

We need to understand the forces that have shaped the 

past and present. History is taught from elementary 

school through college. Some environmental and 

natural resource professionals have even had a course 

in environmental history. But very few have had 

a single class—or even a short course—in futures 

studies or strategic foresight. Most have never heard 

of these terms. We have not been taught principles for 

thinking about the future or strategies for improving 

foresight, despite the critical importance of clear 

forward thinking for our personal, professional, 

organizational, and societal success. Every decision 

we make is about the future, every policy and plan is 

based on implicit or explicit assumptions about the 

future, but the vast majority of students in educational 

systems around the world are never taught how to 

think critically about it (Bishop and Hines 2012, Lum 

2016). Instead, we develop intuitions about the future 

informally through popular culture, which is filled 

with fanciful and recycled images and ideas. These 

have been called legacy futures (Cascio 2012) and used 

futures (Inayatullah 2008)—ideas that emerged decades 

ago and are stuck in our heads as default images. 

Legacy futures related to nature and natural resource 

management derive from many sources, including 

classic environmental literature. Persistent images of the 

future of nature and our relationship with the natural 

world include:

• The dismal assessment of the future of 

population growth and agricultural production 

of Thomas Malthus (1798),

• John Muir’s 19th-century preservationist vision 

(Muir 1997),

• The utilitarian preferred future of Gifford 

Pinchot (1947),

• The biologically impoverished dystopia of 

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962),

• Julian Simon’s cornucopian dream of limitless 

natural resources (Simon 1981), and

• The Club of Rome’s models of resource depletion 

and limits to growth (Meadows et al. 1972).

Whether you agree or disagree with these visions of 

the environmental future, their influence has been 

felt for generations. But these legacy futures may not 

reflect our relationship with nature today, let alone the 

many possibilities for a significantly different future 

relationship with nature in a rapidly changing world.

In addition to legacy futures, our thinking about the 

future is often saddled with views of the future as frozen 

in the “permanent present,” in part due to our brain’s 

hard-wiring, which makes it difficult to imagine real 

change (Sommers 2012). As the renowned economist 

John Maynard Keynes (1937: 13) said: “[T]he idea 

of the future being different from the present is so 

repugnant ... that we, most of us, offer a great resistance 

to acting on it in practice.” Peck (2009) asserts that one 

of the most important challenges we face is to open 

people’s minds to the idea that the present and the 

recent past may not largely define the future.

Lacking formal training in thinking about the future, 

being immersed in outdated images, and being stuck in 

the permanent present, we acquire ideas and intuitions 

about the future in a haphazard way and end up with 

defective mental maps of the future. These maps are 

limited and often counterproductive. Many individuals 

and organizations rely on narrow, idiosyncratic, and 

backward-looking views of the future. Common but 

unhelpful ways of thinking include seeing the future 

as predictable, a dice game, scary and unknowable, 

unchanging, or predetermined. These modes of thought 

are inadequate for the complex and changing world we 

live in today. Environmental decisionmakers require 

high-quality foresight to successfully deal with the 

growing pace and complexity of change. Lum (2016: 

vii) defines foresight as “insight into how and why the 

future will be different from today.” Developing robust 

foresight requires a type of critical thinking that is the 

focus of this paper.

This paper reviews and synthesizes core principles for 

thinking about the future and related strategies for 

developing environmental foresight. These principles 

and strategies are drawn from the transdisciplinary 

field of futures studies (Bengston et al. 2012, Cook et 

al. 2014) and the large body of work of academic and 

consulting futurists. The principles distill what leading 

“[A]ll decisions are about the future.”

~ Kenneth Boulding (1973: v)
2

futurists have learned through decades of study from 

a variety of disciplinary perspectives and theoretical 

frameworks. For more than 50 years, futurists and allied 

scholars in other disciplines have thought deeply and 

creatively about the nature of the future, developed 

many insights about change that shapes the future, and 

created practical strategies and methods for developing 

useful foresight. 

The following sections outline 10 principles for thinking 

about the future along with a set of strategies to apply 

each principle to planning and decisionmaking. This is 

not a comprehensive review, but it is based on a wide 

reading and synthesis of the futures research literature. 

There is some overlap in the strategies presented 

because many are applicable to more than one principle. 

There is also a degree of paradox in some of the 

principles because the future often unfolds on multiple 

paths that contain paradox and contradiction (May 

1996). Taken together, the principles and strategies 

described here can help guide environmental planners, 

managers, and policy makers toward well-considered 

expectations for the future.
3

1. THE FUTURE IS PLURAL

The Principle

A core principle for thinking about the future is that it 

is plural: Rather than a single future, there are countless 

possible alternative futures (Dator 2002, de Jouvenel 

1967, Masini 1993b). The idea of plural futures is a 

widely held belief about the nature of the future among 

futurists, but plural futures are foreign to our normal 

pattern of speaking and thinking (May 2002). In 

everyday English usage we refer to “the future” as if it is 

singular; futurists often talk about “the futures” (Dator 

2002).

Bishop (1998) maintains that viewing the future as 

plural is superior for understanding and preparing for 

the long-term future because single, clear predictions 

give a false sense of certainty. “Futurists believe that 

basing a decision on a single prediction is like putting 

all your eggs in one basket” (Bishop 1998: 40). The goal 

of futures thinking is to help decisionmakers prepare for 

a range of plausible futures, rather than the impossible 

task of making accurate long-term predictions. There 

is no way to definitively prove that the future is plural, 

but the multiplicity of possible futures is apparent in 

eminent historians’ counterfactual histories, which 

reveal how dramatically differently events could have 

unfolded and that nothing in the past was inevitable 

(Cowley 2001, Ferguson 2000).

There are many alternatives to the plural view of the 

future. For example, a cyclical view was common among 

ancient cultures, in which future events are fixed and 

determined with no substantive change, repeating in 

an endless circle (Staley 2007). Another “single future” 

belief widely held in Western societies is the view that 

events are progressive —the future will inevitably be 

better than the past and present. This belief about the 

future was central to early Christian culture, other 

religious traditions, the Enlightenment and Scientific 

Revolution, and Marxist views, and today is held by 

many technological optimists and utopian thinkers.

Another alternative to the plural view of the future 

comes from science. The prevailing view in science 

has been of a predictable, single future. Traditional 

forecasting focuses on extrapolating past data to predict 

a single future, usually with a sensitivity analysis in 

an attempt to account for uncertainty in key variables 

(Fig. 1). In contrast, futures research recognizes 

fundamental uncertainties in key drivers of change 

and the presence of “unknown unknowns” (Ilmola and 

Rovenskaya 2016), and explores a much wider range of 

alternative futures.

Foresight Strategies

Adopting the premise of plural futures has many 

implications for strategies to improve environmental 

foresight, including the need for multiple 1) attitudes 

toward or perspectives on the future, 2) theories of 

change, and 3) methods to explore possible futures. As 

Inayatullah (1996: 509) notes, it is essential to maintain 

a “biodiversity of thought” about the future.

First, if there are many possible futures, there is no 

one correct attitude toward it—multiple attitudes 

and perspectives are needed. To get a more complete 

picture of the full range of possible futures, futurists 

frequently recommend adopting multiple attitudinal 

lenses, such as optimistic, pessimistic, status quo, and 

transformational perspectives (Bishop 1998, May 

2002, Schwartz 1996). In another approach to multiple 

“It is important that the future be seen as a number of 

possible alternatives. Futures, not future.”

~ Eleonora Masini (1993b: 8)

Figure 1.—Traditional forecasting (one future) compared to 

futures research (multiple futures). Adapted from Weeks et al. 

(2011).
4

perspectives, Linstone (1981, 2010) has argued that 

organizational/societal, personal/individual, and 

technical perspectives should be adopted to provide 

greater insight into technology assessment and other 

futures contexts. If we cling to one attitude, such 

as technological optimism or doom-and-gloom 

pessimism, we limit our thinking to a single possibility 

or narrow range of similar possibilities.

Second, gaining insight into plural futures requires 

multiple theories of change. Diverse theories of change 

drawn from different fields of study help generate 

foresight and aid in the exploration of a wider range of 

possibilities. For example, Peck (2009) reviews theories 

of change from many disciplines with relevance for 

studying the futures, including theories from physics, 

complexity sciences, biology, and various schools 

of psychology. According to Peck (2009: 108), some 

possible futures “may only be comprehensible or 

apprehensible through the lenses of many very different 

theories.” Noble (2000) reviews theories of social 

change from Adam Smith to postmodernism, none of 

which, he posits, has a monopoly on validity.

Finally, gaining insight into plural futures calls for the 

use of multiple methods. Every method has limitations 

and multiple methods are needed to shed light on 

different aspects of plural futures (Bell 1997, Day 

and Schoemaker 2006). Since the work of pioneering 

futurists at RAND Corp. in the 1950s (Rejeski and 

Olson 2006), futurists have developed and adapted 

scores of methods, which range from: 

• expert-based (e.g., Delphi, foresight panels) 

to participatory methods involving diverse 

stakeholders (e.g., futures wheels, scenario 

workshops),

• evidence-based (e.g., horizon scanning, 

modeling) to methods that emphasize creativity 

and imagination (e.g., wild-card brainstorming, 

visioning), and

• quantitative (e.g., cross-impact analysis, 

quantitative scenarios) to qualitative (e.g., 

causal layered analysis, qualitative scenarios).

All comprehensive approaches to futures research 

utilize multiple methods to strengthen foresight and the 

robustness of findings, such as Voros (2003), Hines and 

Bishop (2013), Dator (2009), and Lum (2016).

The efficacy of strategies that use multiple attitudes, 

theories, and methods to help understand plural 

futures has been shown by research in political science, 

cognitive psychology, and behavioral economics 

(Gardner 2012, Tetlock 2005). For example, political 

scientist Philip Tetlock’s long-term study of 82,000 

predictions by 284 experts found that the experts were 

only slightly better than random guesses, regardless 

of their educational level, years of experience, 

or disciplinary background. The one factor that 

distinguished significantly better predictions was 

whether the experts were classified as “hedgehogs” or 

“foxes,” after philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s (1978) essay 

“The Hedgehog and the Fox.” Experts who had a single 

narrow and inflexible worldview and strong ideological 

convictions (hedgehogs) were significantly poorer 

prognosticators than those with flexible worldviews, 

a pragmatic approach, and the ability to see more 

complexity and nuance (foxes). Hedgehogs know one 

thing (e.g., a single overarching theory of how the 

world works, or how the economy works), but foxes 

know many things (i.e., they are generalists with broad 

knowledge and many perspectives and theories). 

Futurists, like foxes, tend to be generalists (Bell 1997), 

and natural resource professionals need to be foxes 

when thinking about the future.
5

2. THE FUTURE IS POSSIBLE, 

PLAUSIBLE, PROBABLE, AND 

PREFERABLE

The Principle

Futurists often distinguish four separate but 

interrelated types of alternative futures: possible, 

plausible, probable, and preferable, for example, 

Henchey (1978), Hines and Bishop (2006), and Masini 

(1993b) (note that some, such as Amara [1981], Bell 

[1997], and Toffler [1978], distinguish three types—

possible, probable, and preferable). Considering all 

four types of futures yields a more comprehensive 

and insightful forward view. Possible futures are by 

far the largest and broadest class of alternative futures 

because the realm of possibilities is vast (Fig. 2). This 

category includes futures which seem highly unlikely 

or “far out” because they may involve technology that 

does not currently exist or extremely low probability 

events. Possible futures may go beyond the bounds of 

plausibility. Futurists are reluctant to reject implausible 

ideas out of hand because “[t]he world is ... full of 

things that intelligent and well-educated people at 

one time believed to be impossible” (Bell 1997: 78). 

“Wild cards” are a type of possible future that have 

low probability but high impact if they were to occur 

(Petersen 1997). Examples of possible wild cards are 

abrupt climate change (Lenton et al. 2008), a massive 

solar flare that causes long-term disruption of global 

electronics and communications (Riley 2012), and 

rapid advancement of nanotechnology (Drexler 2013). 

Events such as these have low probability but would 

have massive impacts.

Plausible futures are a small subset of possible futures 

but are still a relatively large category. They encompass 

futures which most people would consider believable 

and are consistent with our current understanding of 

science, technology, and social and economic systems. 

Hines and Bishop (2006: 128) characterize plausible 

futures as having “a discernable pathway from the 

present to the future.”

Probable futures are a subset of plausible futures 

that are considered reasonably likely to happen. The 

probable future considered “most likely” is based on 

a continuation of current trends and is often called 

the business-as-usual, baseline, or “official” future. 

Traditional forecasting focuses on the business-as-usual 

future based on past trend data. Of course, current 

trends may not continue and therefore an extrapolation 

of current trends may be a poor indicator of where we 

are headed. Marcus (2009) notes that trends are about 

the past and it is more important to ask what critical 

factors could move trends in different directions. 

Futurist Herman Kahn (1982: 82) succinctly stated, 

“The most likely future isn’t.” In other words, even 

what is considered to be the most likely future may 

actually have a low probability given the complex 

nature of social-ecological systems and the frequency of 

discontinuous change and surprise.

Finally, preferable or preferred futures are of a different 

nature than possible, plausible, and probable futures, 

although they can overlap with any of these three 

categories as illustrated in Figure 2. Preferable futures 

are concerned with what we individually or collectively 

want to happen in the future. They are explicitly 

subjective and derive from value judgments. Preferable 

futures for an organization or community are often 

developed through a visioning or preferred futuring 

process, such as Lippitt (1998), Hicks (1996), Hines and 

Bishop (2006), and Ziegler (1991).

“Futurists use the concept of alternative futures to 

understand how change might play out in the future.”

~ Peter Bishop and Andy Hines (2012: 39)

Figure 2.—Four types of futures. Adapted from Bishop and Hines 

(2012).
6

Foresight Strategies

The possible, plausible, probable, and preferable 

typology involves a much wider range of alternative 

futures than most of us are used to thinking about, 

especially the broad scope of possible and plausible 

futures, which can include wild cards. Three strategies 

to expand futures thinking are briefly discussed 

next: 1) scanning broadly, 2) the use of techniques 

to enhance creativity and imagination, and 3) 

participatory methods that incorporate diverse ideas 

and perspectives.

Horizon scanning is a core futures method that aims 

to identify and interpret the meaning of emerging 

issues and weak signals of change that could shape the 

future (Bengston 2013, Day and Schoemaker 2006). 

Scanning broadly for future possibilities requires 

exposure to diverse information and ideas. Schwartz 

(1996) suggests scanning nontraditional sources and 

seeking out potential trends on the edges of society 

rather than the mainstream. Some professional 

scanners recommend including speculative fiction, 

poetry, film, music, and art to develop an awareness of 

deeper cultural currents and changes in society (Coote 

2012). The future often appears first on the margins 

(Masini 1993a), so scanning the fringes can be an 

effective strategy for expanding our beliefs about what 

is possible and plausible.

Breaking out of a narrow range of alternative futures 

requires imagination and intuition. Lombardo (2006: 

180) states that identifying “possible futures is not 

simply a logical process—it is visionary, intuitive, 

and creative.” Creativity is needed to see beyond the 

constraints of linear change and the expected future 

(Fobes 1996). A special issue of the Journal of Futures 

Studies focused on “Intuition in Futures Work” 

(Markley 2015). Futurists use a variety of techniques to 

stimulate fresh, outside-the-box thinking, for instance, 

Cornish (2004: 123-124), Michalko (1998, 2000), and 

Sommers (2012). Examples of these techniques include 

various forms of brainstorming with diverse groups, 

examining problems from multiple perspectives, and 

mind-mapping techniques and software.

Another critical strategy to expand our futures 

thinking is to engage diverse viewpoints. Diversity has 

many tangible benefits: Complex problems are often 

solved better by diverse teams of capable members 

than by nondiverse teams of experts (Page 2007) and 

diversity fosters innovation (Østergaard et al. 2011). 

Participatory futures methods have long been used to 

incorporate a diversity of viewpoints. Examples include 

participatory scenario planning, public Delphi, Future 

Search conferences, the futures wheel, and preferred 

futuring methods. All of these methods and others, if 

properly carried out, engage diverse perspectives to 

explore a wide range of futures.
7

3. THE FUTURE IS OPEN

The Principle

Futurists frequently assert that “the future is open,” 

by which they mean it is not fixed and we have 

opportunities and freedom to influence the future 

in a positive direction (Bishop 1998, Dator 2002, de 

Jouvenal 1967, Slaughter 1993). There are physical, 

biological, and social constraints on what is possible, 

at least within a certain timeframe, but within the 

realm of possibility the future is mostly open and our 

choices and actions can help create it. On his “Open the 

Future” Web site, environmental futurist Jamais Cascio’s 

answer to “Why do we think about the future?” is that 

futurists “think about the future because we believe 

two fundamental things: 1), that the future matters; 

and 2), that we still have a say in the future we get. The 

shape of tomorrow arises from the choices we make 

today” (Cascio 2015). Cascio further believes that we 

can create a future that is open in the sense of being 

democratic, transparent, participatory, and filled with 

many viable options.

The assumption of an open future offers hope and 

opportunity: Positive change is possible. The future is 

a domain of freedom and empowerment because we 

can choose and act to bring about a desirable future 

(Bell 1997). If we are not locked into a particular 

path that will dictate our future, we can explore and 

pursue alternatives. As Slaughter (1993) observed, the 

openness of the future is what makes it worth studying. 

Open futures are a critical dimension of thinking about 

the future because of the powerful role of images of the 

future in shaping behavior (Costanza and Kubiszewski 

2014, Polak 1973). The idea of open futures is closely 

related to preferred futures, discussed in the preceding 

section.

Foresight Strategies

Visioning is an essential strategy related to the principle 

that the future is open. A core method in futures 

research, visioning is a vital step in most comprehensive 

futures projects (Hines and Bishop 2006). Visioning 

typically involves a participatory process for envisioning 

a preferred future, that is, a compelling statement that a 

group or organization wants to create based on shared 

deep values and purpose (Bezold 2009c). According to 

Lippitt (1998), shared visions of the future should entail 

several components: clarity, shared understanding, 

specific imagery, strategic orientation, and group buyin. Images of preferred futures are significant because 

they enhance options and possibilities in the present 

(Slaughter 1995). Costanza (2000: 1) expressed the 

importance of a positive vision of our environmental 

future: “The most critical task facing humanity today 

is the creation of a shared vision of a sustainable and 

desirable society.”

There are many approaches to visioning, going back to 

the early years of futures research. For example, “future 

workshops” to create visions of preferred futures were 

organized and conducted in Europe by futurist Robert 

Jungk beginning in 1962 (Jungk and Mullert 1987). 

The 3-day workshops began with a day of thoroughly 

critiquing the situation being addressed, followed by a 

day of brainstorming about possible solutions. The most 

promising ideas were then selected democratically and 

small groups developed them into feasible projects. The 

workshops concluded with an implementation phase 

in which constraints and obstacles were examined 

and a plan of action was developed. While Jungk and 

others were conducting future workshops in Europe, 

Americans Edward Lindaman and Ronald Lippitt 

created a similar method called Preferred Futuring. 

Various forms of Preferred Futuring have been used by 

tens of thousands of organizations in recent decades 

(Lippitt 1998).

Many other approaches to visioning have been 

developed, including Dator’s (2009) preferred futures 

visioning process and the Institute for Alternative 

Futures’ aspirational futures method (Bezold 

2009a). Bookman (2000) describes one of the few 

comprehensive examples of visioning applied to an 

environmental concern: an effort to develop a shared 

vision of coastal areas in the United States and a 

subsequent national dialogue to disseminate the vision.

“Within the limits of the possible, the future is open.”

~ Wendell Bell (1997: 150)
8

“Men, forever tempted to lift the veil of the future—with the aid of computers 

or horoscopes or the intestines of sacrificial animals—have a worse record to 

show in these ‘sciences’ than in almost any scientific endeavor.”

~ Hannah Arendt (1978: 159)

envision the future are also used to recall memories. 

That means most of us can only imagine what we 

already know.” We are biologically predisposed to not 

imagine the possibility of significant change and are 

often trapped in the “permanent present.”

Finally, even the way we typically talk about the future 

in Western cultures can trick us into thinking that 

our knowledge is much more robust than it is. Just as 

referring to “the future” in the singular is a hindrance to 

understanding its plural nature, saying that “the future 

lies ahead” (as if we can see it in our path of vision) and 

“the past is behind” leads us to believe the future is clear 

and predictable. Some cultures take the opposite view. 

For example, traditional Hawaiians believed that we 

face the past—which we can “see” in our memory—and 

“the future lies behind” and is out of sight (Dator 2002: 

16). In the language of the Tuvans (an ethnic group in 

Russia), the word for the future is the same as the word 

for “go back,” and the word for the past is the same as 

the word for “go forward.” Hence, like native Hawaiian 

culture, Tuvans believe the past is ahead of them while 

the future lies behind (Rymer 2012).

Despite our necessarily constrained knowledge of a 

fuzzy future, imperfect understanding can still provide 

useful, even invaluable, guidance (Cornish 2004). 

Foresight does not have to be perfect to help us make 

better decisions and avoid mistakes. Even limited 

insight into the future may be the most useful type of 

knowledge (Bell 1997, de Jouvenel 1967, Lombardo 

2006). In the business world, for example, if your 

foresight is just slightly better than your competitors’, 

you have a significant strategic and competitive 

advantage. In natural resource management, fuzzy 

foresight can be used to strengthen resilience and to 

develop management strategies that are robust in the 

face of uncertain alternative futures.

Foresight Strategies

Futurists have developed a wide range of methods, all of 

which can be thought of as tools to deal with imperfect 

knowledge about the future. Scenario planning provides 

useful mental maps of plausible futures rather than the 

4. THE FUTURE IS FUZZY

The Principle

Knowledge of the future is always imperfect and 

severely limited (Cornish 2004). As de Jouvenel (1967), 

Bell (1997), and others have noted, there are no facts 

about the future. This seems obvious, and yet large sums 

of money are spent every year on sophisticated efforts 

to accurately predict the future in finance, business, the 

environment, and many other fields. Unfortunately, 

the track record of these efforts has been poor at best 

(Lipset 1983, Makridakis et al. 2010, Pilkey and PilkeyJarvis 2007, Sarewitz et al. 2000, Sherden 1998).

Our ability to accurately predict and our knowledge 

of the future of complex social-ecological systems 

are necessarily limited for several reasons. First is the 

nature of complex systems, including their emergent 

nature and sensitive dependence on initial conditions 

(Gleick 1987). Emergent properties of a system cannot 

be predicted from the parts (de Haan 2006). Sensitive 

dependence on initial conditions implies that one may

be able to predict the behavior of a complex or chaotic 

system with a reasonable degree of accuracy in the short 

term, but not in the medium or long term. Carpenter 

(2002) notes that ecological forecasts are filled with 

irreducible uncertainties due to drivers of change 

beyond the scope of ecology (e.g., anthropogenic 

climate change, demographic change), unknown 

feedbacks in coupled social-ecological systems, and 

unpredictable human actions.

Second, knowledge of the future is imperfect because 

human perception is biased in many ways. Hammond 

et al. (1998) review eight key cognitive biases that 

affect our decisionmaking and views of the future. For 

example, recallability bias causes us to give unwarranted 

weight to recent, dramatic events, and confirmation 

bias leads us to seek out and accept information 

supporting our existing views and to discount opposing 

information. Sommers (2012: ix-x) cites recent 

neuroscience research suggesting that our brains are 

hard-wired to not believe or even imagine unfamiliar 

futures because “the same neural networks we use to 
9

impossible task of accurate prediction (Staley 2007). 

Horizon scanning involves identifying and interpreting 

the meaning of emerging issues and weak signals of 

change that could shape the future (Bengston 2013). 

The Delphi method (Gordon 2009) and foresight 

panels (Bengston and Olson 2015) are ways to elicit 

expert judgment about possible future developments. 

Causal layered analysis is a structured approach to look 

beneath the surface and beyond the level of rational 

discourse and debate in a futures exercise to the deeper 

levels of different fundamental beliefs and worldviews, 

and to the deepest level of myths and mythic metaphors 

(Inayatullah 1998, 2004). Glenn and Gordon (2009) 

provide a comprehensive review of these and many 

other futures research methods.

Beyond the specific methods of futures research, a 

general strategy to cope with the fuzziness of the future 

is to take a “learning approach,” that is, to continuously 

explore the future as it unfolds and as new information 

becomes available. The idea that futures work needs to 

be an ongoing process is widespread (Masini 2006; May 

1997, 2002; Schwartz 1996). An example of a learning 

approach is de Jouvenel’s (1967) “surmising forum,” a 

continuous marketplace of futures thinking in which a 

wide range of ideas are discussed and critiqued in order 

to generate images of attainable and preferred futures.
10

“The most surprising future is one which contains no surprises.”

~ attributed to Herman Kahn

not previously known or understood and behaves in a 

new and unforeseen way (Walker and Salt 2006).

Foresight Strategies

Many strategies have been developed for dealing with 

surprising change. One approach is to systematically 

search for, assess, and monitor potential surprise, 

especially wild cards. For example, Markley (2011) 

described a four-level typology and a related method 

for monitoring emerging awareness of wild cards and 

their credibility, and Mendonça et al. (2004) proposed a 

method based on the type of wild card, the subject area 

affected (e.g., economic, environmental, technological), 

and the nature and magnitude of potential impacts. 

Petersen (1997) maintains that there are always early 

warnings of impending wild-card events, but we 

frequently miss them because we tend not to think 

about such events and the precursors that might signal 

their approach. By identifying potential positive and 

negative surprises in advance through regular wild-card 

brainstorming, early indicators can be identified and 

monitored and plans to deal with their impacts can be 

developed.

Another foresight strategy for dealing proactively with 

surprise is use of the futures wheel method to anticipate 

surprising consequences of change (Barker and Kenny 

2011, Bengston 2016). Significant change produces a 

cascade of direct and indirect unanticipated consequences. 

The futures wheel is a “smart group” method that uses a 

structured brainstorming process to uncover and evaluate 

multiple levels of surprising consequences of all types of 

change. The output is a map of possible direct and 

indirect, positive and negative impacts that can be 

analyzed to develop strategies to promote desirable 

consequences and avoid undesirable ones.

Many other strategies have been developed for dealing 

with surprising futures, including scenario planning to 

consider a much wider range of possible futures and 

reduce surprise (Bishop et al. 2007), developing policies 

to increase adaptive capacity (Bennett et al. 2003, Holling 

1978), creating plans that will be resilient to surprises 

(Makridakis et al. 2010), and taking rare events seriously 

rather than treating them as outliers to be ignored 

(Makridakis et al. 2010, Taleb 2010).

5. THE FUTURE IS SURPRISING

The Principle

Related to the preceding principle of imperfect 

knowledge or fuzziness is the principle that the future 

will surprise us. Holling (1986: 294) defined surprise as 

occurring “when perceived reality departs qualitatively 

from expectation,” and he characterized surprise as a key 

concept for understanding interactions between humans 

and the environment. Although change can be smooth 

and continuous—a trend line producing an expected 

future—it is often discontinuous and surprising, and even 

expected futures tend to arrive in unexpected ways and 

with surprising consequences (Saffo 2007). Extensive 

empirical research has shown that people consistently 

underestimate uncertainty and the possibility of rare 

events (Makridakis et al. 2010, Tversky and Kahneman 

1974). Futurists assert that the most surprising future 

would be one with no surprises (Cornish 2004). Noting 

the prevalence of discontinuous change and surprise, 

Fuerth (2012: 10) observed that “[in] a complex 

universe... the only certainty is surprise.”

A distinctive aspect of futures thinking is the inclusion 

of “wild cards,” a type of surprise characterized by low 

probability and high impacts (Petersen 1997). But there 

are many types of surprise that characterize and will 

help shape the future. Toth (2008) reviewed various 

typologies of surprise and proposed his own three-part 

typology. First, “anticipatable surprises”—also referred to 

as “inevitable surprises” (Schwartz 2004) and “predictable 

surprises” (Watkins and Bazerman 2003)—include 

known but unexpected events (for example, a 500-year 

flood) as well as unknown events for which there are 

precursors or weak signals that could be discerned given 

a concerted effort to connect the dots (for example, 

a scientific paradigm shift). Second, “conjecturable 

surprises” are not preceded by early indications but are 

plausible in hindsight once they transpire. Although 

much more difficult to identify in advance, conjecturable 

surprises nevertheless may be detected by a combination 

of imagination, expert knowledge, and luck. Finally, 

“out-of-the-blue surprises” defy detection by even the 

most creative minds and techniques. A hypothetical 

example of an out-of-the-blue surprise is when a social 

or ecological system moves beyond a threshold that was 
11

“It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.”

~ Voltaire (Redman 1959: 99)

spirituality as people seek to fill a void created 

by an emphasis on the material world.

• The decline in the sense of community in 

our society (Putnam 1995) may be offset by 

the countertrend of the rise of new forms of 

community (Putnam and Feldstein 2004).

• Adoption of a new technology may be slowed 

or halted by a countertrend of ongoing 

innovation and advances in the existing 

technology that was being replaced: “When a 

competitive technology arrives on the scene, 

don’t assume that the old technology will roll 

over and play dead” (Martino 1987: 149).

• A buildup of hazardous biofuels in forests, 

caused in part by aggressive fire suppression, 

will eventually result in an increase in the 

number of large, intense wildfires, eliminating 

the excessive fuel load (Olson et al. 2015).

Foresight Strategies

An important strategy related to the principle that the 

future will not be surprising is to include a historical 

review of the subject area of interest in futures projects, 

such as Dator (2009), Hines and Bishop (2013), and 

Marcus (2009). Reviewing history improves our 

thinking about the future by reminding us of important 

changes that have occurred in the past and also that 

“not every expected transformation actually came to 

pass; some things have remained largely unchanged 

over history” (Lum 2016: 9). Identifying what has 

changed and what has remained the same in the past 

helps us uncover patterns that may drive change in the 

future.

Another strategy is to include unchanging components 

known as “predetermined elements” in scenario 

analysis and other futures methods (Schwartz 1996, 

Wildlife Conservation Society Futures Group and 

Bio Economics Research Associates 2007). These 

are unsurprising constants that seem highly likely to 

continue no matter which scenario comes to pass. 

Examples are most demographic change, growing 

urbanization, economic globalization, and continued 

loss of biodiversity. Schwartz (1996: 111-112) identifies 

6. THE FUTURE IS NOT SURPRISING

The Principle

The frequency and important consequences of 

surprising change might lead one to think that if we 

could step 20 or 30 years into the future, it would be an 

unrecognizable landscape. But in many ways—perhaps 

most ways—the future will look a lot like today and 

will not be surprising. As Saffo (2007: 130) has argued, 

“Even in periods of dramatic, rapid transformation, 

there are vastly more elements that do not change than 

new things that emerge.” Harmon (1979) calls this the 

principle of continuity and points out that over time 

most aspects of culture and the institutional framework 

of a society continue without significant change. 

Dramatic social, technological, and environmental 

change is fascinating, but the inclination to see sweeping 

and surprising change emerging everywhere is a great 

liability for futurists and forecasters. The future contains 

continuity and change, stasis and flux (Bishop 2012, 

Lombardo 2006, Millet 2011, Naisbitt 2006, Staley 

2007).

Stability-reinforcing, anti-change forces are termed 

“stabilities” by Lum (2016). Common stabilities include 

rules, customs, and traditions; physical or logistical 

constraints that dampen or prevent change; ingrained 

patterns of behavior; and powerful stakeholders, 

entrenched leaders, or others who benefit the most 

from the status quo. Economic factors also frequently 

reinforce stability, such as a technological innovation 

that is technically feasible and widely expected to have 

transformative effects but proves to be too costly and is 

therefore never adopted (Schnaars 1989).

Another factor promoting stability and continuity is 

the dynamic of “trend/countertrend,” in which trends 

often create pressures for their opposite or countertrend 

(Weiner and Brown 2005). For example:

• Rising prices for a commodity create pressure 

to conserve the commodity or develop 

alternatives, which drives prices down.

• Growing secularism in society may eventually 

produce a countertrend of increasing 
12

change that is “in the pipeline” (e.g., a growing wave 

of retirements among baby boomers), and inevitable 

collisions (e.g., higher concentrations of greenhouse 

gases leading to climate disruption).

four types of predetermined elements to consider: slowchanging phenomena (e.g., the growth of populations), 

constrained situations (e.g., the need to suppress 

wildfire in populated areas to protect human life), 
13

“The faster the car, the further the headlights must go.”

~ Gaston Berger (1964)

An implication of fast and accelerating change is that 

the future may be approaching much faster than we 

think. Significant change is possible in a relatively short 

time. “Almost anything can be done in twenty years[,]” 

according to futurist and systems scientist Earl Joseph 

(quoted in Cornish [2004: 5]). It took just 4 years to 

build the first atomic bombs, despite many experts’ 

insistence that it could not be done. And it took 8 years 

from President Kennedy’s goal of going to the moon 

to the Apollo 11 landing. Rapid shifts in social norms, 

attitudes, and behaviors are also possible, such as the 

change in attitudes toward smoking and in smoking 

rates, legal acceptance of gay rights and same-sex 

marriage in the United States, and possible future shifts 

in attitudes regarding climate change (Ross et al. 2016).

Rapid change sometimes occurs in a punctuated and 

discontinuous manner, rather than following a smooth 

steep or exponential curve—periods of abrupt change 

separate longer periods of low change or relative 

stability (Biggs et al. 2016, Lombardo 2006). Alternating 

periods of slow, continuous change and rapid, 

discontinuous change form a pattern of punctuated 

equilibrium, as in the theory of biological evolution 

(Gould and Eldredge 1972), which can result in regime 

shifts in social-ecological systems and massive higher 

order impacts.

Foresight Strategies

Active and continuous horizon scanning is a strategy 

widely used in the business world and military to stay 

one step ahead of increasingly rapid change (Bengston 

2013). Also called environmental scanning, horizon 

scanning is a process for finding and interpreting the 

implications of early indicators of change in the internal 

and external environments of an organization or field. 

There are many approaches to horizon scanning, such 

as Hines (2003), Juech and Michelson (2012), and 

Slaughter (1999), but the core elements (Hines and 

Bishop 2006: 69) are:

• Finding: exploring for “scanning hits,” that is, 

early indicators of change;

7. THE FUTURE IS FAST

The Principle

The idea that change is occurring at a rapid and perhaps 

accelerating pace is widespread in society and among 

futurists. Alvin Toffler’s classic Future Shock describes 

“the roaring current of change” and the stress and 

disorientation that individuals and organizations feel 

when they experience “too much change in too short 

a time” (1970: 3-4). An acceleration of the rate of 

change in recent decades has been observed, especially 

accelerating technological change but also social and 

environmental change (Colvile 2016, McNeill and 

Engelke 2016). The period following World War II has 

been termed the “Great Acceleration” (Hibbard et al. 

2007), a time of significant increase in the scope, scale, 

and intensity of many types of change and its impacts 

on social-ecological systems (Fig. 3). Perhaps it is no 

coincidence that the post-WWII period also marked 

the rise of modern futures studies (Kuosa 2011, Rejeski 

and Olson 2006), as a response to accelerating change.

Some futurists and futures organizations focus on 

accelerating or exponential change and its powerful 

potential role in shaping the future. Examples are 

the Acceleration Studies Foundation (http://www.

accelerating.org/index.html) and Singularity University 

(http://singularityu.org/). Ray Kurzweil’s “Law of 

Accelerating Returns” proposes that the rate of change 

in technology and a wide range of human systems tends 

to increase exponentially (Kurzweil 2000, 2001). The 

acceleration in the pace of technical change is due to 

using our best technology to build the next generation 

of technology, and the rate of improvement in speed, 

efficiency, price-performance, and power speeds up 

from one generation to the next: “The first computers 

were designed on paper and assembled by hand. Today, 

they are designed on computer workstations with the 

computers themselves working out many details of 

the next generation’s design, and are then produced 

in fully automated factories with only limited human 

intervention” (Kurzweil 2005: 40).
14

Another strategy for developing foresight in the context 

of fast change is a “learning approach” or continuous 

exploration of a rapidly evolving future (also discussed 

as a strategy for the fuzziness of the future, Principle 4). 

Foresight becomes dated due to rapid change and needs 

to be continuously monitored, evaluated, updated, and 

revised according to new data and changing conditions.

• Analyzing: developing insights about what is 

found;

• Framing: developing a framework for 

organizing insights; and

• Applying: using the insights in planning and 

decisionmaking to increase organizational agility 

and resilience to respond quickly to rapid change.

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

YEAR

TRILLION US DOLLARS BILLION

% LOSS (AREA) ATMOSPHERIC CONC., PPM

YEAR

YEAR

YEAR

Figure 3.—Four of the "Great Acceleration" graphs, showing a rapid and accelerating pace of change for (a,c) two 

social-economic indicators in three groups of countries and (b,d) two ecological indicators. Brazil, Russia, India, China, 

and South Africa are the BRICS economies. Thirty-five other countries are members of the Organisation for Economic 

Co-operation (OECD). GDP is gross domestic product. Source: Steffen et al. (2015).
15

“People are especially sensitive to changes that occur quickly and 

are prone to ignore changes that happen slowly.”

~ Robert Olson (2016: 4)

the future and unfold gradually, our species generally 

has failed to exercise foresight intelligence—that is, to 

recognize, diagnose, plan and act to address those perils 

before it is too late to do so.”

Slow change frequently eludes the public policy 

attention it deserves for a variety of reasons (Olson 

2016). For example, evolutionary psychology has 

found that our brains evolved to respond best to 

threats that are imminent and abrupt, making it easy 

to ignore changes that happen slowly. Our perception 

of slow change is vulnerable to distortion by a 

number of cognitive biases, such as social discounting 

(undervaluing future risk), short-term bias (reluctance 

to accept short-term costs now to avoid much larger 

costs in the future), and optimism bias (believing that 

we face lower risks than others do). Slow change also 

generally fails to meet the criteria of newsworthiness, 

making it difficult to attract public and political 

attention.

Foresight Strategies

Most if not all foresight methods are well-suited for 

dealing with slow change because they take a longterm view of the future—far longer than the short time 

horizon of traditional policy analysis and planning—

and often explicitly examine possible long-term 

consequences of current trends and developments, both 

fast and slow. The time horizon in scenario planning, 

for example, is often several decades, enough time to 

observe and explore the future effects of slow change. 

Olson (2016) maintains that tackling slow problems 

requires building foresight capacity in organizations 

and throughout society, and suggests a “permanent 

engagement” strategy to make slow change more visible, 

continuously discussed, and acted upon.

8. THE FUTURE IS SLOW

The Principle

Abrupt and rapid change attracts the most attention, 

but the future is also powerfully shaped by slow, 

continuous, incremental change (Bishop 2012, Olson 

2016). Examples of slow change having significant 

cumulative long-term impacts abound: 

• Global population has been growing by just 

1.18 percent annually and the rate is slowing, 

but that is enough to increase from 7.3 billion 

today to 11.2 billion by the end of the century 

(United Nations Population Division 2015);

• The growth of antimicrobial resistance is slow 

but over time could seriously threaten public 

health as the prevention and treatment of a 

wide range of infections become ineffective 

(World Health Organization 2015);

• Over the past 20 years, the slow encroachment 

of development has resulted in the loss of a 

tenth of global wilderness, representing an area 

twice the size of Alaska and about half the size 

of the Amazon (Watson et al. 2016).

Numerous additional examples of gradual change 

could be cited: aquifer depletion, loss of topsoil, 

infrastructure decay, and the slow adoption of some 

major technologies. Perhaps the ultimate example of 

slow change with massive long-term consequences is 

climate change, with its effects emerging gradually over 

many decades—unless we reach a major tipping point 

and experience abrupt climate change (Lenton et al. 

2008). In a discussion of the challenges of mobilizing 

individual and collective action to deal with climate 

change, Ross et al. (2016: 363) observed: “When it 

comes to confronting environmental perils that lie in 
16

“I eventually decided that all of the many images of the future that 

exist in the world can be grouped into one of four generic piles.”

~ Jim Dator (2009: 6)

Third, the Discipline future is an image of a society that 

is tightly structured around a set of fundamental ideals 

that could include environmental, spiritual, religious, 

political, or cultural values. The rationale for this 

archetype is that our current system is unsustainable 

or undesirable, and that we need to dramatically 

reorganize our social-ecological and economic systems 

so that they are in line with values and rules that will 

promote stability and sustainability. Expressions of 

Discipline futures include Barnosky’s (2014) strategies 

for avoiding a looming Sixth Mass Extinction, and 

Dator and Park’s (2012) call for Korea to shift from a 

consumer society to a “Conserver Society,” drawing on 

Korean cultural traditions that could facilitate such a 

transition.

Finally, Transformation is an archetype of the future 

that is usually “high tech” but could also be of a 

“high spirit” variety, involving transformation driven 

by significant shifts in values and culture. In the 

high-tech version of the Transformation archetype, 

the power of exponential growth in technology 

transforms every aspect of life. Rapid development and 

adoption of disruptive technologies such as artificial 

intelligence, advanced robotics, nanotechnology, genetic 

engineering, synthetic biology, and others create a world 

that may be unrecognizable to us today. Kurzweil’s 

(2005) The Singularity is Near: when Humans Transcend 

Biology and Drexler’s (2013) Radical Abundance: how a 

Revolution in Nanotechnology will Change Civilization

are well-known examples of Transformation futures.

MacDonald (2012) independently validated Dator’s 

archetypes by analyzing many sets of scenarios 

developed by futurists and identifying four main 

archetypes, which he termed Progress, Catastrophe, 

Reversion, and Transformation, each of which has 

two variants. Dator emphasizes that each of the four 

archetypal futures has many variations.

Foresight Strategies

Archetypal images are a useful way to think about the 

future and can be used to create specific scenarios. 

Their use in developing scenarios in a foresight project 

is not meant to constrain the scenarios. Instead, the 

9. THE FUTURE IS ARCHETYPAL

The Principle

Neither the past nor the future exists. As Staley (2007: 

14) has observed: “Historians do not really study the 

past, but rather evidence from the past that has survived 

to the present . . .” Similarly, futurists cannot study the 

future directly—how do you study something that does 

not currently exist? “[A] futurist . . . must . . . examine 

evidence found in the present about the future” (Staley 

2007: 14). Therefore, one of the main tasks of futures 

research is to study people’s images of the future (Bell 

1997) because these images help shape actions today 

and have significant consequences for the future 

(Ostrom et al. 2002, Polak 1973). The futurist James 

Dator studied thousands of images of the future from a 

wide range of sources and found that they consistently 

fall into four general categories, which he calls the four 

generic futures: Continue, Collapse, Discipline, and 

Transformation (Dator 2009). These four archetypal 

futures each differ from each other in fundamental ways 

and are not simply variations around a single set of 

variables or drivers of change.

Continue, or Continued Growth, is an image of the 

future based on an extrapolation of current trends 

and expectations. This is the most common of the 

four archetypes because it is the “official” future of all 

governments, educational systems, and corporations. 

Continued economic growth is typically the focus of this 

archetype. There are many examples of expressions of this 

future which attempt to build a case for the inevitability 

of continued growth and prosperity, such as Diamandis 

and Kotler (2012), Kahn (1982), and Ridley (2010).

The second archetypal future is Collapse. Many 

different factors could cause or contribute to this future, 

including economic, environmental, agricultural, or 

moral collapse or decline. Pandemics, warfare, and 

other external threats could also cause collapse. Most 

people do not want to consider the Collapse future, 

although Dator (2009) and others point out that 

organizations, communities, cultures, nations, and 

civilizations collapse regularly due to a variety of factors 

(Diamond 2011, Perlin 1989, Tainter 1990).
17

for Alternative Futures, was influenced by Dator’s 

archetypal thinking (Bezold 2009b). This method 

includes an expected or most likely future based 

on extension of present trends, a challenge future 

that explores “what could go wrong,” a positive 

“aspirational” future, and a fourth scenario that includes 

“audacious or stretch goals” and considers an alternative 

path to a positive future (Bezold 2009a).

archetypes are used to help us break out of the “tyranny 

of the present” and envision categorically distinct 

alternative scenarios rather than a narrow range of 

possibilities or minor variations on the same future.

Many scenario analyses have used some variation of 

archetypal approaches, such as developing scenarios 

for an optimistic, pessimistic, present trends extended, 

and wild-card future (Curry 2012). The aspirational 

futures scenario method, developed at the Institute 
18

“One of the best ways to anticipate change in your sector is to spend time out of it.”

~ Michael Cameron (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation 2012)

• The cultural trend of a growing disconnect with 

nature, especially among children, could create 

a cascade of social, psychological, economic, 

political, and ecological consequences 

(Louv 2008, Pergams and Zaradic 2008), 

including profound effects on natural resource 

management.

• Virtual reality technology has many applications 

in tourism as well as the potential to disrupt the 

global tourism industry (Guttentag 2010).

Foresight Strategies

Thinking about the future in a way that produces 

useful foresight requires “outside-in” thinking, in 

other words, paying attention to external changes that 

could profoundly affect your field or organization in 

the future (Scearce et al. 2004). Outside-in thinking—

focusing on inbound change—can help organizations 

and individuals anticipate and prepare for external 

change.

A framework for outside-in thinking is shown in 

Figure 4. The center represents your organization, 

field, or the specific issue of concern. The middle ring 

is the immediate working environment and drivers 

of change, and the outer ring is the broader context 

and drivers. The broad context is often overlooked in 

planning, which can lead to both unpleasant surprises 

and missed opportunities. According to Scearce et al. 

(2004: 13), “outside-in thinking can inspire more open 

and imaginative thoughts about a range of potential 

changes and strategies that may not have been visible 

otherwise.”

Broad horizon scanning that includes social, 

technological, economic, environmental, and political 

(STEEP) contexts (Morrison 1992) is one way to 

promote outside-in thinking. Another widely used 

scanning classification system features six broad 

categories with the acronym DEGEST: demography, 

economy, government, environment, society/culture, 

and technology (Kotler and Keller 2008). Slaughter 

(1999), Voros (2001), and Hines (2003) focus on the 

importance of scanning a broad range of sources 

and draw on the work of integral philosopher Ken 

10. THE FUTURE IS INBOUND

The Principle

The study of the future is the study of change, and 

change can be inbound or outbound: “Our personal 

and organizational futures are shaped by two sets of 

forces: change that happens to us (from the external 

world beyond our control, which we call ‘inbound’ 

change) and change that we create ourselves (based on 

our decisions and actions, which we call ‘outbound’ 

change)” (Bishop 2012: 13). Individuals and 

organizations are often caught off-guard by inbound 

change because we focus most of our attention on what 

is occurring within our organization or field. Many 

of us read multiple magazines, journals, and online 

newsletters informing us about everything going on 

within our field, but little or nothing informing us about 

outside developments and possible inbound change that 

could help shape the future of our field. 

The penchant to focus on things happening within 

our sphere is understandable. We tend to think about 

things we are interested in and have some degree of 

control over. But neglecting careful consideration 

of developments in the world beyond can make us 

vulnerable to being blindsided by inbound change: 

• Digital outsiders Napster (launched in 1999) 

followed by Apple® iTunes® (debuted in 2004) 

transformed the way we share and listen to 

music and disrupted the music industry with 

inbound change.

• Few public school administrators in the 

United States in the early 1990s imagined the 

competition they would face from “outsiders” 

such as charter schools, online schools, privately 

run for-profit schools, and vouchers (Fang 2014).

• Self-driving, autonomous vehicles have the 

potential to dramatically shift the business 

models and value chains of dozens of industries 

including financial services, insurance, 

infrastructure, public safety, transportation, oil 

and gas, and of course the automotive industry 

(Simao 2015, Wayner 2013).
19

channel a possibility branching out from the 

present.

• These channels or alternative futures include 

a wide range of possible futures, a smaller but 

still large set of plausible futures, a subset of 

probable futures considered most likely, and 

preferable futures that define what we desire.

• The future is mostly open rather than fixed, and 

our choices and actions can influence it in a 

positive direction.

• Foresight is always imperfect and severely 

limited, but even limited insight into the future 

may be the most valuable knowledge (Cornish 

2004).

• The future is surprising and unsurprising, 

composed of both continuity and change. Some 

futurists believe that continuity dominates, 

with the vast majority of elements remaining 

unchanged. Others emphasize the potential for 

surprising and transformational change.

• The future is fast and slow. Environmental 

professionals must pay attention to both fast, 

abrupt change and slow, continuous change. 

It is important to not “miss the slow train,” as 

Olson (2016) describes it, by focusing only on 

rapid change.

• Four archetypal images of the future have been 

found (Dator 2009). These generic images can 

help us envision distinct alternative futures 

Wilber to achieve this breadth. The essence of this 

“integral futures” approach is a four-quadrant matrix 

that identifies four spheres of social life that should 

be incorporated in scanning to ensure the inclusion 

of both objective phenomena that are measurable (for 

example, from the scientific and social realms) and 

subjective phenomena that must be interpreted (for 

example, from the realms of art and morality).

CONCLUSIONS

The principles and related foresight strategies outlined 

in this paper represent the essence of futures thinking 

and practice. Developed mainly within futures 

research over more than half a century and presented 

here in the form of 10 principles, these fundamental 

precepts provide a structure for insightful thinking 

about the future. This framework is lacking in our 

everyday thinking, which is often haphazard and too 

narrowly focused on a simple continuation of current 

trends. Systematic futures thinking is also generally 

lacking among natural resource and environmental 

professionals and their organizations (Bengston et al. 

2012), resulting in a diminished capacity to adapt to 

accelerating change.

From the 10 principles, a picture emerges of the future 

as complex and paradoxical:

• The future is plural, like a braided river with 

many twisting and shifting channels, each 

Figure 4.—A framework for outside-in thinking. Source: Scearce et al. (2004).
20

rather than minor variations on the same 

future, a common shortcoming of traditional 

forecasting.

• Finally, change that shapes the future can 

be inbound or outbound. We often neglect 

inbound change, which can leave us vulnerable 

to being blindsided.

Futures thinking and exploration must be ongoing and 

institutionalized into routine planning and policy making 

to provide lasting benefits. A single foresight exercise 

quickly loses its value no matter how skillfully done and 

widely embraced. Institutionalizing foresight capacity 

can provide many benefits, including helping to: create 

a longer-term perspective, explore key uncertainties 

and potential surprises, decrease reaction time to rapid 

change, anticipate unintended consequences, and shape a 

preferred future (Olson et al. 2015).

One strategy for institutionalizing foresight is an inhouse approach: creating an internal futures unit staffed 

with several trained futurists, with enough budget and 

personnel to do high-quality and continuing foresight. 

This unit would be responsible for regular horizon 

scanning and high-priority projects exploring possible, 

plausible, and preferable futures using a variety of 

foresight methods. A growing number of federal 

agencies and all branches of the U.S. military have inhouse foresight units.

An alternative strategy is to have one person 

assigned specifically to contract with futures research 

organizations and think tanks, purchasing scans 

and futures surveys on a regular basis, and working 

closely with planners, managers, and policy makers to 

incorporate the findings into planning and strategies. 

Outsourcing foresight activities is a common 

approach in corporations, but it is important to ensure 

that foresight developed by outside consultants is 

relevant and incorporated into strategic planning and 

decisionmaking (Day and Schoemaker 2005). A hybrid 

approach to institutionalizing foresight, involving 

both a small in-house futures unit and regular use 

of outside experts, is often most effective. In-house 

foresight champions know the culture and the ways of 

the organization or field, and outside experts bring new 

ideas and perspectives.

The 10 principles described in this paper can help 

environmental and natural resource professionals think 

more deeply and productively about the future. The 

strategies related to the principles—briefly sketched 

out in this paper—can help us develop practical 

foresight, or “insight into how and why the future will 

be different than today” (Lum 2016: vii). The need for 

environmental foresight has never been greater in light 

of the increasing pace and complexity of change with 

the potential for sweeping environmental and social 

effects.
21

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Every decision we make is about the future, but most of us are never taught how to think 

critically about it. This guide addresses this issue by identifying and reviewing 10 principles 

for thinking about the future, along with related strategies for improving environmental 

foresight. The principles and strategies are drawn from the transdisciplinary field of futures 

studies. Taken together, these principles and strategies can help guide environmental 

planners, managers, and policy makers toward well-considered expectations for the future.

KEY WORDS: foresight, futures, strategies, futures research, futures studies

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Environmental

Collapse

Present

Expected

Future

Preferred

Future

Historical Roots

of the Future

High Tech

Transformation