FORESIGHT
Foresight is best understood as insight into how and why the future might be different from today. At VFS we apply a wide array of approaches to help our clients develop insight into how their world is changing, ranging from rigorous futures studies methods to systems thinking to crowdsourcing. We have worked with clients in a variety of industries and sectors, from small organizations to Fortune 50 companies.
Foresight Projects and Publications
As the world confronts the current COVID-19 pandemic, we offer a road mapping tool to help think through the impacts the pandemic will have on your organization. We sincerely hope everyone can stay safe during this time.
This Rapid Forecast briefly explores some of the futures of global pandemics in an effort to help frame and jump start discussions about relevant futures.
This article, written by Jon Cederquist, Anne Gibbon, and Richard Lum, explores some of the pathways that special operations forces may experience as the world moves through the current era of geopolitical transition.
Exploring the futures of maritime security through a set of original scenarios, this report begins an extend examination of trends such as climate change and human migration, as well as emerging issues such as land reclamation and novel security arrangements.
In this article, published on Small Wars Journal, Dr. Richard Lum introduces three of the many potentially critical emerging issues that will shape the futures of conflict and security.
Each year Vision Foresight Strategy (VFS) produces the Emerging Issues for Conflict and Security report (EI4CS), which identifies future issues that may play a role in shaping the nature and conduct of human conflict in the years ahead. A highlights sheet is available to download for free. The full 81 page report is available for purchase.
Each year VFS produces a helpful planning worksheet to jump start your new year. This year's worksheet features additional guidance taken from 4 Steps to the Future: A Quick and Clean Guide to Creating Foresight. Please enjoy and we hope your 2017 is a bright and wonderful year!
VFS's short annual exercise, Quick and Clean Conflict Scenarios, explores how current top of mind issues in conflict and security could play out together in the years ahead.
Using the 4 Steps model for scenario forecasting, our annual QC Scenarios provide some structure for thinking about the patterns and pathways that might emerge from the intersection of these top of mind issues.
This guide is a short, quick read that will help you get into that "strategic thinking" frame of mind. Fans of Dr. Lum's 4 Steps to the Future book will find this zippy read written in the same easy-to-play-with vein.
Scenarios, Black Swans, and Assumptions
A presentation given to the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in 2015, it introduces a futures approach to anticipating conflict and cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region.