and George Cole
Introduction
Strategic foresight (SF) is a policymaking approach that provides organisations with a mechanism to think about the future. It fosters the creation of robust policies that are responsive to a variety of potential futures. While many organisations use SF, very few of them produce robust strategies to address the intrinsic uncertainty about the future. This article briefly explores how organisations can effectively leverage SF to produce better policies.
To understand how SF is currently implemented in organisations, it is important to examine its history. The 20th century was shaped by a series of seismic events: World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War, to name just a few. Various public figures foresaw these events and advocated for policy change, but policymakers ignored their warnings. For example, Winston Churchill warned that Hitler’s territorial aggression would bring war and required a forceful response, yet appeasement policy continued.
The failure of policymakers to recognise the signs of World War II and to conceive responsive policies motivated the development of what was termed ‘future studies’. Future studies refers to the loosely connected group of intellectuals who, in the 1950s and 1960s, sought to predict the future using theories of international relations and economics, and advocated for policies tailored to those predictions. Early on, prominent futurologists such as Daniel Bell and Herman Kahn consistently made successful predictions. This initial predictive accuracy created the false idea that future studies is an empirical discipline. However, the escalation of the Vietnam War in the 1970s and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1980s were not forecast by futurologists.
Nowadays, there is a common understanding that as the globalised world trends towards dynamism, unpredicted seismic events occur more frequently. The failure of future studies to predict the future – and to link these predictions to policy decisions – led to the emergence of SF as a new methodology to design policies, by attending to the uncertainty of the future.
Implementing Strategic Foresight in Organisations
Before exploring the details of how organisations can benefit from SF, it is important to showcase the differences between effective and non-effective implementation of SF.
Effective SF encourages organisational thinking about a wide range of possible futures to produce versatile policies. It enables organisations to develop long-term strategies that are flexible and adaptive to future needs and challenges. The United States Coast Guard’s (USCG) 1999 ‘Project Long View’ (‘Long View’) SF exercise, the ‘EU health policy in 2040’ (FRESHER) scenario, and Finland’s Government Foresight Report on Climate and Energy Strategy are illustrative examples of effective SF in policymaking organisations. In these cases, organisations used diverse scenarios to spawn robust strategies. Let’s have a closer look.
- In the Long View exercise of the USCG, SF experts incorporated the attentiveness to diverse futures by leading participants through ‘horizon scanning’, a process of identifying trends and variables likely to affect the organisation in the future. Participants identified four variables with binary options: ‘the role of the federal government (limited or substantial), US economic vitality (strong or weak), threats to US society (low or high), and the demand for maritime services (low or high)’. The different permutations of these variables and their values created sixteen scenarios. Participants selected five of these scenarios as representing a diverse set of possible futures. This scenario selection decision is key to the success of the exercise. Rather than using scenarios that represent the ‘most likely’ predicted futures, as often occurs in institutional SF, the selected scenarios were chosen for their variety, a decision that incorporates the uncertainty of the future into the exercise. Such representation is essential for linking SF to the creation of robust policies, which are designed to be implemented immediately and ‘serve the organisation well no matter how the future unfolds’. Long View created 10 robust policies, and their utility became apparent soon after the exercise’s conclusion, when the 2001 9/11 terrorist attacks tested the USCG in a wholly unpredicted environment. A post-9/11 USCG review found that the slow implementation of the 10 robust policies hampered the organisation’s immediate response to 9/11. The review also found that if the policies had been immediately implemented, as originally planned, the USCG would have been more effective in their immediate response to 9/11 and in their long-term response to the changed operational environment.
- The EU’s scenario ‘EU health policy in 2040’ (FRESHER), is a strong example of effective institutional foresight that attends to diverse futures. Focusing on modelling uncertainty, FRESHER used horizon scanning to identify eight key trends in the EU health policy environment. Using those trends, FRESHER participants modelled many unique scenarios and chose four as representing diverse futures (see Figure 1, Scenario Building Process – Foresight Fresher). The four selected scenarios, ‘Desolation Health’, ‘The Rich Get Healthier’, ‘We Will Health You’, and ‘Healthy Together’, were modelled using quantitative and qualitative methods. These scenarios were then used as the basis to spawn robust policies, which mirror the scenarios’ focus on modelling uncertainty by emphasising versatility for all futures and providing organisational benefit in both the near and long term.
Figure 1: FRESHER Scenario Building Model (Scenario Building Process – Foresight Fresher)
- At the EU Member State level, Finland’s Government Foresight Report on Long-term Climate and Energy, initiated in 2009, exemplifies SF driving impactful policy. This forward-looking report examined potential climate and energy scenarios up to 2050, assessing risks and opportunities to guide national policy toward a sustainable, low-carbon future. By developing various pathways, it enabled Finland to proactively explore options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing renewable energy use, and fostering a resilient, low-carbon economy. Finland’s foresight project used scenario planning techniques, and the final report presents four scenarios for its energy and economic future. Efficiency Revolution envisions energy efficiency doubling, renewables powering all, and urban centres leading a service-based economy. ‘Sustainable Daily Mile’ focuses on decentralised service centres, reduced consumption, and eco-friendly industries such as bio-refineries. ‘Be Self-sufficient’ prioritises local energy and food production, with households and regions largely self-reliant. ‘Technology is the Key’ concentrates on the population in southern Finland, with high energy demand met by nuclear power, carbon capture, and efficient resource use in technology-driven industries. These scenarios shaped Finland’s approach to sustainability, embedding foresight into its policy planning as a crucial tool for navigating long-term challenges.The foresight report’s recommendations laid the groundwork for the Climate Change Act, enacted in 2015, which committed Finland to carbon neutrality by 2035. The Act set an ambitious framework for reducing emissions, mandating regular updates, and annual climate reporting to align with evolving foresight data. This legislation required periodic assessment of Finland’s climate strategy, ensuring adaptability in response to future developments. Through this foresight-driven, adaptable framework, Finland has emerged as a leader in EU climate action. Its model of integrating foresight into governance demonstrates a progressive, strategic approach, reinforcing the importance of long-term, evidence-based planning in shaping effective climate policy.
In summary, effective SF provides organisations with a mechanism to anticipate the future and develop robust policies grounded in this forward-thinking approach. All the above cases demonstrate how effective SF workshops leverage diverse scenarios to produce strong and adaptable policies.
By contrast, ineffective SF mainstreams status quo assumptions by using prediction as the basis for policy decisions. Prediction-based methodologies such as contingency planning and backcasting are used as a mechanism to check current policies against predicted ‘likely’ futures.
Contingency planning is the act of predicting likely futures to assess the capabilities of existing strategy and create policies tailored to those predictions. This practice is often mislabelled as scenario planning. However, true scenario planning is different from contingency planning because it uses diverse future scenarios, rather than narrowly selected, rigidly predicted futures, to form strategies that are beneficial regardless of the future.
Backcasting links ineffective SF methodologies to the weak policies it produces. Backcasting uses a desirable future as the endpoint and works backwards to develop policies that will manifest that future. This is different to how, in true SF, diverse future scenarios inform robust policies that are agile to all possible futures. Both contingency planning and backcasting rely on the future occurring as predicted, which rarely happens. Let us examine a few examples of ineffective SF:
- An organisation that encountered the downfalls of contingency planning and backcasting is the United States Department of Defence (DoD). The DoD’s planning process is better characterised as contingency planning than as scenario planning. The policies emanating from such exercises are contingent on the realisation of anticipated futures, rather than responsive to diverse scenarios. Although the DoD claims to use SF, it has been criticised for not adequately responding to ‘a major event affecting the organisation’s capabilities’ in the 21st century, such as the 9/11 terror attacks, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Global Financial Crisis, and the Covid-19 pandemic (Strategic_Foresight_in_US_Agencies_FINAL.pdf). The DoD’s poor response could be linked to their reliance on prediction-based planning, rather than using effective SF strategies to produce robust policies.
- Another example that demonstrates how contingency planning and backcasting can lead to suboptimal decisions is the US Navy’s (USN) littoral combat ship (LCS) construction project. In 2022, after spending more than $100 billion on the project, the USN decided to suspend the construction and scuttle the majority of LCSs before the end of their lifespan. The decision was necessary because, in the USN’s words, the LCS is ‘not suitable for fighting peer competitors such as China’. (US Navy littoral combat ships). In planning the LCS project, the USN used contingency planning to predict the future threat environment and attempted to use backcasting to create ships with capabilities tailored to these predicted and desired conditions. But the USN erred in its predictions. It underestimated China’s development of advanced weaponry, and incorrectly predicted the location of naval contestations. These misjudgements and ineffective SF methodologies, such as contingency planning and backcasting, led to the creation of narrowly tailored capabilities for the LCS, resulting in its vulnerability in a present that diverges from USN predictions.
- In the EU, an illustrative example, is the SF exercise conducted by the Hungary’s Ministry of Defence (HUN MoD) from 2013 to 2014, targeting threats and opportunities for the period 2015–2030. Led by the Strategic Analysis Group (SAG), the exercise used a PESTEM framework (political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and military) to categorise and prioritise drivers of change. The process included identifying trends, prioritising them, and grouping them into ten themes, such as confrontational Russian foreign policy and migration pressures. Despite identifying these threats, SAG underestimated the immediacy and impact of Russian aggression and migration, limiting foresight effectiveness. This oversight affected Hungary’s defence preparedness in 2015 to support Assurance Measures after Russia’s Crimea invasion. Additionally, when mass migration surged, the Hungarian Defence Forces (HDF) were unexpectedly tasked with securing borders and building a 500 km fence, leading to the Defence Minister’s resignation.
- Another problem was SAG’s over-reliance on evidence- and expertise-based methods, which excluded creativity and scenario planning, and restricted exploration of alternative futures. Resource constraints led to dismissing scenarios, limiting foresight to ‘likely futures’ (contingency planning). Interaction-based methods were also underutilised, and the exercise relied on internal expertise without exploring diverse external perspectives. This narrow approach, focusing on probable outcomes instead of a broader spectrum of possibilities, reduced the impact of SF.
The Way Forward
Effective SF employs diverse scenarios to represent an uncertain future, enabling organisations to invest in robust policies that remain effective across various outcomes and help avoid costly, ineffective strategies. SF creates policies that offer organisational benefits in both the near and long term, regardless of future conditions. It requires relatively limited investment compared to the substantial benefits it can yield, providing broad guidance on whether policies are fit for purpose.
Experience from the past shows that for SF to be effective, organisations must make critical decisions and receive support from top management. The use of diverse scenarios informs the creation of agile policies that are beneficial to the organisation in diverse futures. By using a diverse set of variables to create unique scenarios, the USCG successfully managed to represent the unpredictability of the future.
Hiring external experts to lead the SF workshop guarantees the use of evidence-driven SF methods and prevents the influence of organisational biases.
Finally, a key requirement for the success of SF is the support of top management. Mainstreaming effective SF often requires changing the status quo. As policymaking organisations are usually oriented towards the short-term, efforts that divert organisational resources to long-term initiatives such as SF often lack support from mid-level staff. This dynamic occurred in the USCG, but its highly effective SF exercises remained in force because top management consistently supported them.
In conclusion, SF is becoming increasingly important for policymakers to effectively navigate an uncertain and complex future. Governments should systematically incorporate SF into planning and policy processes and the public administration needs to build robust foresight capabilities by nurturing key skills (for example, systems thinking, scenario planning, and trend analysis) and providing training in foresight methodologies. Creating a culture that values long-term thinking in public administration is critical for enabling proactive decision-making, and effectively addressing future challenges.
Want to stay up-to-date on EU Better Regulation?
If you’re interested in understanding more about Better Regulation: ex ante impact assessments, ex post evaluations and more, stay tuned for our upcoming courses!
The views expressed in this blog are those of the authors and not necessarily those of EIPA.