I am very pleased to have nominated “Aspirational Futures” by Clem Bezold for an APF Most Significant Futures Work Award for 2014 in the category of “Methods and Practice.” Clem is the long-time head of the Institute for Alternative Futures and a member of the Houston Foresight Program’s Advisory Board.
Clem and IAF have long done pioneering work in the “visioning” space and this article published in the May 2009 Journal of Futures Studies captures the essence of the approach they have developed for combining scenarios and visioning.
Clem brings together what IAF has long called futures of the head (scenarios) and the heart (visioning) in the aspirational futures technique. It marries what might happen –baseline and alternative futures in out parlance at Houston Foresight — with a clear commitment to creating the future the client wants – its preferred future. It uses an archetype approach to develop the scenario and integrates in a vision process with the goal of creating an action plan. I think this technique makes an important contribution in bringing together mapping or understanding the future with creating the future. In this way it promises to help make foresight more useful and practical for clients. And that is something we simply cannot have enough!
The APF MSFW program, which annually reviews and recognized outstanding foresight work, both to recognize authors as well as promote examples of outstanding foresight work. Andy Hines
