Applying Foresight to Create a Vision of the Future

Note: this is a research excerpt from Roxanne Nicolussi’s “Bigger Thinking for Smaller Enterprises”, published in 2017 and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Development of a shared vision is made possible through a foresight approach called ‘visioning’. Visioning provides a process for which organizations can collaboratively design their ideal future. Kotter (2007) explains that “without a sensible vision, a transformation effort can easily dissolve into a list of confusing and incompatible projects that can take the organization in the wrong direction or nowhere at all”. Foresight approaches allow strategy development to be an inclusive process: allowing its users to be authentically involved in the process of creating a shared view of their organization’s future.

Visioning is a process by which an organization defines its long-term purpose. A vision is a description of what an organization hopes to be in the future — a snapshot of what success is for the organization (“What is Strategic Visioning”, 2013). Visions are crafted to put forward transformational goals, measure progress, build capacity, and build shared purpose. Rather than concentrating on current and persistent dilemmas, the focus of visioning processes is to clearly articulate future desirable states.

A foresight approach considers a wider range of issues and change across industries. This can include emerging issues and general societal trends. They take a big picture…