Design is Dangerous

The design professions have exploded onto the world scene over the past decade, ushering in a new trans-disciplinarity which is increasingly applied in many contexts. And yet, design is dangerous. Designing in an unconscious way, without understanding or challenging our own design assumptions or biases, or exploring the potential consequences of design decisions, means that…

Anticipatory Experimentation Method

The Anticipatory Experimentation Method (AEM) or ‘Bridge Method’ is a method for bringing the preferred future into the present through experiments that can scale for impact. It is a bridge between a preferred future and real-world experiments that bring that future into being. It combines a visioning approach with an ideation method that can bridge future vision…

Systemic Leadership and Strategic Foresight

The world is in flux with technology, social and political change at an unprecedented rate.  Everyday there is a new headline that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.  COVID-19, Trump, climate change, arctic current reversal, murder hornets, the list goes on. It’s easy and understandable to feel apprehensive about the future. This…

Systemic Leadership and Strategic Foresight

Action ​F​or​esight​ ​will be running a​ course​ titled​ Systemic Leadership and Strategic Foresight in January 2020. The course aims to help people develop “Anticipatory leadership“ (leadership ​through future awareness) ​and ​”​Systemic leadership​” (​leadership through alignment between personal, organisational and societal futures). The course helps participants to use the future to be able to tackle problems creatively,…

Leapfrogging Sustainable Development: Exploring the strategic futures of production and policy through cosmolocal and commons-based design

A cosmolocal and commons based design course was held 0n September 20-21 2019 at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai, entitled: “Leapfrogging Sustainable Development: Exploring the strategic futures of production and policy through cosmolocal and commons-based design” The philosophy behind cosmolocalism emphasizes documenting innovation and keeping this knowledge open, so that it can be…

Leapfrogging Sustainable Development: Exploring the Strategic Futures of Production and Policy through Cosmo-local and Commons-based Design

Two aspects of my life are coming together for the first time. My work with a number of collaborators (Michel Bauwens, Sharon Ede, etc) to conceptualize and articulate cosmo-localism, plus my work over the past decade to meld foresight and action through action research approaches. The result is a course on cosmo-local design. We will…

The structural, the post structural and the commons: meta-networking for change

This is a chapter originally published as: Ramos, J. (2016) The structural, the post structural and the commons: meta-networking for systemic change,In Pease B., et al. (Ed)Doing Critical Social Work, Allen and Unwin Introduction This chapter takes up the challenge posed by the editors of this volume, to articulate new forms of critical social and…

Anticipatory Innovation

Innovation is an obsession in our current society. We are enamored with technological innovations, we celebrate innovators. We want to be them. And yet when you look closely at the various crises and risks around the world, it becomes clear that the human propensity for innovation is again and again repeatedly at the heart of…