Foresight is the practice of exploring the future.
The goal is to help individuals and organizations to better prepare for long-term opportunities or potential issues. Unlike forecasting methods, foresight does not attempt to define specific events or trends in the future. Instead, foresight methods and tools support the development and exploration of multiple possible "futures", none of which is expected to exist. Foresight – like thought experiments performed by physicists and philosophers throughout time – help both scholars and practitioners to imagine, design and analyze a hypothetical situation that, while possible, is not likely to be pursued.
Multiple groups benefit from using foresight techniques:
For the university. At the start of the 21st century, leading foresight researchers are demonstrating that a science of foresight is imminent, driven in part driven by advancing simulations enabled by computers and new thinking in complex adaptive systems. A knowledge of foresight provides students with a robust foundation for strategy and the tools for living more effectively in the present. The ability to think ahead is an essential skill for those who stay within academia or pursue a career in industry.
For industry. Clear foresight helps companies better evaluate their opportunites for innovation. By exploring futures, a company may realize that its most strategic opportunity is to change the "rules of the game" within a particular industry (or industries). Especially in new product development, foresight offers the highest value in areas of rapid and far-reaching change.
For the public sector. Governments and NGOs often rely on foresight methods to explore possible futures and better understand the repercussions of actions that organizations and citizens might take.
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Dr. William Cockayne, Ph.D. |
Bill Cockayne is a technically trained foresight and innovation expert whose work extends both practice and research. He has 15 years of industry leadership with companies such as Apple Computer, DaimlerBenz, Eastman Kodak, and Scout Electromedia (a company which he co-founded in 1999). In addition to this real-world experience, Bill has extensive teaching and research experience at leading universities, both in the U.S. and abroad, is the inventor of multiple patents, and has written a range of publications, including the book Mobile Agents. He is currently the Associate Director of the Stanford Humanities Lab, the founder of Change Research (San Francisco & London) and an Affiliate at the Institute for the Future (Palo Alto). Bill has a doctorate in Mechanical Engineering, Design Research, from Stanford University and a masters of science in Computer Science.
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Dr. Larry Leifer, Ph.D. |
A member of the Stanford faculty since 1976, Larry Leifer currently directs the Center for Design Research (CDR) at Stanford University. Special interest projects include: 1) development of a collaborative engineering environment for geographically distributed product development teams; 2) instrumentation of that environment for design knowledge capture, indexing, reuse and performance assessment; 3) development of tele-assistive robots for physically limited individuals; and 4) development of pedagogically informed technology for distributed collaborative learning. In 1997, he was appointed founding director of the Stanford Learning Laboratory (SLL) by Stanford's Office of the President and Provost with a mandate to explore the opportunity and risks associated with information technology across the university's education enterprise. Larry continues to oversee the highly successful ME310 lab course at Stanford University, where students build and test new product designs in international industry-sponsored projects.
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Micah Lande |
Micah Lande is a Ph.D. student at Stanford University in Mechanical Engineering and Design. He is an 2005 Institute Scholar of the Institute for the Scholarship of Engineering Education, which is part of the NSF Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education. Micah has worked on design projects for Herman Miller, DaimlerChrysler, Daikin Air Conditioning, Electronic Arts, International Development Organization, Wild Planet Toys, and Stanford's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. Micah holds a master's degree in Learning, Design and Technology and a bachelor's degree in Product Design from Stanford University. He brings diverse perspectives to his research since he has also been a toy designer, a substitute science teacher, a product manager, and a computer teacher at summer camp.