We have been doing a lot of thinking and work on horizon scanning at Houston Foresight. We revised our process several years back captured in the graphic below.
And in Spring 2018, we dedicated our annual Spring Gathering to “scanning the fringe.”
We also talk about it a lot in class. In particular, we’ve been trying to get better/more systematic about finding Horizon 3 scanning hits and “the fringe.” One of the student scanners sparked a response from me that maybe we should include in our how-to. “You might do some “snowball” searching in which you look at an interesting piece, and see what sources it has that might be more provocative, and follow them, and see where they lead you.” So, “snowball scanning?” I owe the thought to Dr. Oliver Markley who taught us snowball surveying…why not apply it to scanning. Be interested to hear your feedback. – Andy Hines
