Expertise

December 17, 2014December 17, 2014

Foresight

Strategic foresight helps people to understand how the future may be different to the present, and how to create a preferred future for their organisations. Anticipating changes in their operating environments allowing for proactive planning, strategy development, risk management, operational agility, innovation and new business development.

Strategic foresight approaches and techniques can be used in a variety of settings. Policy makers want to be able to anticipate changes affecting particular regions,, and develop proactive policy. Corporate and business thinkers need to understand key industry shifts if they wish to develop new strategic intent, business and innovation strategies.

Social development professionals need to understand the challenges that will be faced by communities in the future, and develop action strategies to address these.

Strategic foresight integrates an eclectic mix of thinking and methods, such as forecasting, systems analysis, communications / discourse analysis, organizational psychology, participatory development processes, and organisational learning and development.

Many of our projects use and incorporate strategic foresight approaches.

Our publications in the area of foresight / futures studies include:

Foresight in a Network Era: Peer-producing Alternative Futures

Anticipatory Governance: Traditions and Trajectories for Strategic Design

Forging the Synergy between Anticipation and Innovation: The Futures Action Model

The Futures of Power in the Network Era

December 16, 2014September 11, 2023

Living Labs

Living Labs bring together researchers, businesses and end-users to co-create a solution to a real life problem. End-users participate in all stages of the Living Lab experiement, and real-life spaces and places are used to host the research process.

Participants in a Living Lab work together to understand end-user needs, create design solutions, develop prototypes and test commercial products.

Living Labs can be hosted by businesses, universities, communities or anyone interested in developing new services.

Throughout the Living Lab process, special emphasis is placed on end-user involvement and the use of real life contexts throughout the development cycle of the product or service.

This enables the production of products or services which can change peoples’ lives.

Action Foresight has recently completed a project called

“Exploring the asset protection needs of Australians living on low-incomes: a living lab pilot“.

December 15, 2014September 11, 2023

Anticipatory Design

We have been guided by a passion and vision to link foresight and action. The link between design thinking and foresight has become more prominent, with renewed emphases on social innovation, social entrepreneurship and co-creativity.

A new generation of design thinking is emerging, trans-disciplinary, engaging across art, science and technology, commons-oriented and deeply collaborative and participatory. Service design thinking has become an important approach in the interface between creative industries, enterprise creation and social innovation. Service design both incorporates the use of foresight as leverage in conceptualizing services and innovations in the context of social change, and incorporates a participatory and (design ethnography) orientation so that design is tightly coupled with end users.

Applications for Anticipatory Design ranges from project development, and social innovation incubation to larger scale urban design foresight and anticipatory policy development.

Projects in this area includes:

Creating the Age Friendly City: An Initial Evaluation

Bendigo a Thinking Community

Financial Resilience Living Lab

Publications in this area include:

Forging the Synergy between Anticipation and Innovation: The Futures Action Model

From Social foresight to social entrepreneurship: pathways to sustainability

Anticipatory Innovation

December 10, 2014September 11, 2023

Collaboration / Co-creation

Team formation and collaboration is a universal feature of working life – and one of its greatest sources of challenge and difficulty.
Only a healthy, learning-oriented team can effectively implement visionary initiatives that take root and thrive.

We can teach members of your organization simple, structured methods of communication, personal practices of self-awareness and an easy-to-grasp type model of team complexity to guide participants toward better teamwork that unleashes learning and reduces stress.

December 10, 2014September 11, 2023

Action Research

Action research is an approach to organizational inquiry where researchers provide consulting services in close collaboration with key people in an organization.

Action research is a valuable approach because the research process is directly informed by the needs of organizational members (instead of research being outsourced or disconnected from organizational life).

We specialize in linking strategic foresight with action research methodology. This means that your organization’s exploration of changing dynamics in your sector (issues and trends) and the preferred future vision you hold for your organization, is coupled directly to the development of actionable and intelligent strategic pathways and the development of capabilities.

We have over a decade of experience exploring and designing approaches that suit client’s diverse needs.

Projects that have taken Action Research approaches include:

Financial Resilience Living Lab

The Foresight Epidemic

Bendigo a Thinking Community

Community Pulse Project Strategic Evaluation

Publications developing Action Research approaches include:

Forging the Synergy between Anticipation and Innovation: The Futures Action Model

Futures Education as Temporal Conscientization

Dimensions in the confluence of futures studies and action research

Empowering Entrepreneurship Through Foresight and Innovation

Action Research As Foresight Methodology