• What is Foresight?
• The stages in the foresight process
  • Design
  • Analysis
  • Surveys
  • Scenarios
  • Strategy and innovation
  • Examples of exercises
• Methods and tools
  • The Toolbox
  • Software
  • Training
  • References
• The history and memory of foresight
  • The history and memory of foresight
  • The basics of foresight
  • Collections and archives
• Consulting

Foresight

Methods and tools

These tools were initially designed by Michel Godet and François Bourse.

It should be remembered that foresight thinking is not limited to the use of these tools, whose virtues and limitations should be understood before they are used. Michel Godet puts it this way: ‘I often refer to “the dream of the nail and the risk of the hammer” to indicate that two symmetrical errors should be avoided when using strategic foresight tools: ignoring the fact that the hammer exists when there is a nail to be hammered in (this is the dream of the nail) and, on the contrary, on the pretext that we know how to use the hammer, ending up believing that every problem resembles a nail (this is the risk of the hammer). This shows that we need to both disseminate tools and dissuade neophytes from using them indiscriminately’.

The ‘Prospective Workshops’ collaborative tool enables users to hold online workshops without time or place restrictions thus facilitating group work either live or delayed. The outcome is more immediate results.

Ask the right questions and identify the key variables. Structural analysis is a tool for structuring collective thinking.

A futuring tool based on the Régnier Abacus principle: the abacus investigative method (Régnier Abacus) uses experts’ views expressed through color-coded votes and followed by debate on topics of common interest. The Color Insight tool enables users to update futures studies, even on-line (topics, reminders, selecting experts, following up on answers, highlighting results…).

Sharing a prospective database and building scenarios using morphological analysis. This software assists practitioners in morphological analysis and includes two modules “Prospective Radar” and “Morphol”.

A tool which seeks to estimate the balance of power among actors and study convergences and divergences on a certain number of related stakes and objectives. It may yield understanding of the stakes involved in alliances, and the conflicts within an ecosystem of actors as well as supply an analysis of the probable results for the stakes involved (consensual/non-consensual objectives). It can also help an actor in decision-making by putting in place his/her policy (the objectives he/she puts forth).