SOFTWARE SANDBOXExploring Six Software Platforms

that support futures research & foresight

Dr Wendy Schultz, Infinite FuturesDr Richard Lum, Vision Foresight Strategy

SOFTWARE SANDBOX

1. Shaping Tomorrow2. Factr3. Sensemaker4. Futurescaper5. Co:tunity6. Sharpcloud

AGENDA, AMMORNING: 9.30 – 12.30• Lessons learned – challenges? Support?• Existing software - examples• Wishlist – mapping what we’d like• Sandbox explorations• Feedback

12.30 Lunch

AGENDA, PMAFTERNOON: 13.30 – 15.30Advising clients in and about a VUCA world

1. How do you, as foresight professionals, assess the time horizon of this VUCA world? Does it go on forever? End in 5 years? What comes next? 

2. What concrete recommendations do you make to clients about how to thrive and be effective in these conditions?

Thank you and safe journeys home!

LESSONS LEARNED• What challenges in data collection

and sensemaking do futures research and foresight pose for the practitioner?

• Which of these challenges in futures practice could be addressed by crowd-sourcing, asynchronous feedback or brainstorming, emergent impact and systems mapping, etc?

Pro Members’ Comments• Information overload; being able to categorize, store, retrieve • Scanning for appropriately weak signals out of the mass of signals • Cross checking • Continuous environment scanning and categorizing and make some sense out

of it• Big data somehow • Disconnect in the data collection process• Easier to collect, harder to see patterns • Being able to find other people’s analysis of the trends • Not having a sense of what you have missed, despite the mass of data available• Holes in data • What are the main emerging issues all over the world• Global map with bubbling emerging issues, kind of real time• To be able to sort and link the data you already tag/find• To be able to map it • More and more big gaps between those with big data and those that don’t• Able to coordinate between different outlets• Able to collect ongoing data

Quality + Design Criteria for Scanning• Quality: What makes excellence generally?

– ‘Gold standard’ suggested by Bishop + Gyford: a scan ‘hit’ identifies an emerging change that is objectively new even to experts, that confirms or is confirmed by additional scan data, and that has been identified in time for social dialogue, impact assessment, and policy formation.

– Scanning should produce results that challenge ‘business as usual’ assumptions and paradigms; a scan ‘hit’ will problematise the present.

• Design: What’s the aim for this specifically?– Security / risk preparation + response? – Policy / programme / service / product formulation?

• What are the trade-offs between quality and design?– Academic rigor in terms of foresight may produce complex, provocative

output difficult to communicate and use effectively.– Too great a focus on user comfort, culture, and expectations may

undermine the core purpose of scanning and thus its effectiveness.

Design tensions radar diagram

Design tensions: meta-themes

Design tensions: implicit trade-offs

Scanning Basics• Sell-by date: robust evidence loses freshness fast – rolling updates

are critical: scanning must be an on-going process.• Ubiquity and diversity: change erupts everywhere, and most

surprisingly from the fringes – so including the outliers, marginalised voices, and tail ends of the bell curves is a must, even if embarrassing. Learn to manage the risk of the ridiculous, because you need the ridiculous.

• Downside of density: constantly refreshed scan data from broadly diverse perspectives, coupled with conceptually robust analytic tools, is an ideal – but too much data is indigestible without analytic tools which often render the scan usable only to experts.

• Curation is critical: people create sense, and triage and sense-making, performed continuously, can help manage data density via triage and pattern formation – provided the theoretical and conceptual tools are explicitly designed into the scanning and futures process.

Scanning Basics, continued• Training, training, training: this is the only path to consistent, high-

quality scan input – and output. After all, what does the ‘expert’ in ‘expert model’ mean – topic expert, or futures expert? The greater the topical expertise, the less likely that someone is a useful futures thinker – disciplinary blinkers get in the way. Scanning requires mixed discipline team coordinated and trained by a futures researcher.

• Where’s it going? Scanning only makes sense in the context of an integrated futures process – scan data exist to generate impact cascades, cross-impact matrices, transformations to systems maps, scenarios, visions, strategies, and innovations. If the scanning system doesn’t have throughput to all of these tools built in, it will not succeed.

EXISTING SOFTWARE

What are some easily adapted common software platforms?

SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS• Easy capture via browser button widgets• Twitter - > Paper.li ( www.paper.li )• Get some random into your life– StumbleUpon ( www.stumbleupon.com )

• Collect, compare, and converse with your community– Pearltrees (www.pearltrees.com )– Pinterest ( www.pinterest.com )

http://paper.li/wendyinfutures Paper.li

www.stumbleupon.comSTUMBLEUPON

www.pearltrees.comPEARLTREES

www.pinterest.com

PINTEREST

GAMESparticipatory assumption re-arrangement

• Card Decks– mVIP (http://www.mobilityvip.com/deck/index.html)– Future eXplorer

(https://www.timescape.io/water-for-life)• Online MM– SuperStruct (http://archive.superstructgame.net/) – Urgent Evoke (http://www.urgentevoke.com/)– MMOWGLI Blackswan

(https://portal.mmowgli.nps.edu/blackswan-blog)

http://www.mobilityvip.com/deck/index.html

mVIP: Mobility Vision Integration Project

https://www.timescape.io/water-for-life

Timescape: Crowdsourcing Water for Life

http://archive.superstructgame.net/about

SuperStruct

http://blog.urgentevoke.net/2010/01/27/about-the-evoke-game/ Urgent EVOKE

https://portal.mmowgli.nps.edu/game-wiki/-/wiki/PlayerResources/About+MMOWGLI

MMOWGLI Black Swan

SOFTWARE WISHLIST: VISION• What other platforms are you using?

• If we were to envision our ultimate futures research and foresight software platform, what would it look like? What should it be able to do?

Pro Members’ Wishlist• Find breakthroughs in evolution • Dealing with timelines, trends and things visually on the same timeline;

building timelines• Collection priorities• Analysis priority• Something that culls(?) stories, lets you move stories around • Neural net software that would scan all available news sources for weak

signals• Software like personal brain, picks the best from all of our information

platforms• Anyone using Watson to do some of this stuff?• Identify experts related to the scan hits that we get• Have something that can do a form of archeology [to unearth older but good

ideas that have fallen out of fashion]• Something to do normative futures; to make collaborative work easier and

to put it in front of everyone (on the screen)

FORESIGHT PLATFORMS• BIG and BIG MONEY: Morphological

Analysis – scanning, systems analysis, scenarios, strategy – PARMENIDES EIDOS

(https://www.parmenides-foundation.org/application/parmenides-eidos/ )

– SINGAPORE RAHS – Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning System

(http://www.rahs.gov.sg/public/www/home.aspx )

https://www.parmenides-foundation.org/application/parmenides-eidos/ PARMENIDES EIDOS

http://app.rahs.gov.sg/public/www/content.aspx?sid=2955

RISK ASSESSMENT AND HORIZON SCANNING

SANDBOX EXPLORATIONS• DISCOVER change and develop insights

– SHAPING TOMORROW: Swiss Army knife – great array of tools including ‘auto-scanning’ ( www.shapingtomorrow.com ) and extracting insights

– Factr (http://www.factr.com/ ) share datafeeds; co-create insight• CROWDSOURCE change

– Sensemaker CrowdSensor and MassSense – Futurescaper (http://www.futurescaper.com/ ) co-create scenarios

• MANAGE UNCERTAINTY and make strategy– Co-tunity (http://www.cotunity.com/ ) asynchronous brainstorming– SHARPCLOUD: visual foresight decks (http://www.sharpcloud.com/ )

SHAPING TOMORROW( http://www.shapingtomorrow.com/ )

www.factr.com FACTR

http://cognitive-edge.com/sensemaker/ SENSEMAKER

http://www.futurescaper.com/ FUTURESCAPER

www.cotunity.com CO-TUNITY

http://www.sharpcloud.com/ SHARPCLOUD

SANDBOX SOFTWARE COSTS

• DISCOVER change and develop insights– Shaping Tomorrow: £9600 + VAT / year – 12 user licenses; or credits– Factr: still in alpha; contact them

• CROWDSOURCE change– Sensemaker CrowdSensor and MassSense: in development – Futurescaper:

• scan = £95 / $150 / €140 per month per admin + £25 / $39 / €35 per month per scanner;

• survey = £670 / $990 / €920 per engagement• MANAGE UNCERTAINTY and make strategy

– Co-tunity: for 1 analyst - €299/m; for 3 - €499/m; for 10 - €999/m– Sharpcloud: $800 / £500 / €700 per year; multi-year discounts

FEEDBACK (tbc)• Is there any software that will

automatically generate a vocabulary? (see the wordcloud in Shaping Tomorrow)

•