(Update 4 – 22 January 2013) – see below for list of posts in this section.

Strategic Foresight and Warning (SF&W) is at once process and analysis.

By SF&W analysis we mean all methodologies and related issues allowing for the development of an understanding grounded in reality that will generate best anticipatory products, useful to decision-makers and policy-makers for carrying out their mission.

The larger SF&W analytical method can be seen as following the following steps, with use of various methodologies and related challenges for each step:

An example of what is involved in step 1 is given here with the bibliography and links on the one hand, with the Red (team) Analysis Weekly on the other. A more detailed discussion of step 1 and 6 can be found in the section scan & monitor.

The second (Creating the model I & II) and third (Determining criteria; Variables, values and consistency in dynamic networks and finally Using ego networks in foresight analysis) steps of the foresight part of the method will be developed with the use of The Chronicles of Everstate as example.

Part of the content of steps 2 and 3 may move from one to the other step. If fully dynamic networks with precise timeline and Bayesian networks were constructed, then the first part of step 3 (identify values, timeline and probabilities) would be included in step 2. Here it is part of step 3.

The monitoring part of step 6 is done for various issues through The Sigils, as well as through The Weekly. These real life indications allow checking the validity of the scenario, and updating the model used for each issue, as done, for example, in the section on end of year predictions. They also allow identifying new emerging issues ( the feedback on step 1).

List of posts

• Taleb’s Black Swans: The End of Foresight? January 21, 2013
• Trial by Fire for Foresight: The 2012 Predictions of The Economist December 3, 2012
• Pattern – Higher Global Temperatures, Earlier Impacts and the Shale Fuels Bounty November 19, 2012
• Pattern – Towards Polarization in the Western World? November 16, 2012
• Assessing the “Strategic” in Surprise October 15, 2012
• Visualising the Steps to Foresee the Future and Get Ready for It July 2, 2012
• Constructing a foresight scenario’s narrative with Ego Networks January 2, 2012
• Variables, values and consistency in dynamic networks December 18, 2011
• Revisiting influence analysis December 4, 2011
• Creating a Foresight or Warning Model: Mapping a Dynamic Network (I) November 13, 2011
• Creating a Foresight or Warning Model: Mapping a Dynamic Network (II) November 13, 2011
• Foresight method September 28, 2011