Institute For The Future

A Couple Highlights From Our Foresight Practitioner’s Workshop

One of my favorite things from last week’s Foresight Practitioner Training was the combination of discussions around understanding methodological tools coupled with practical discussion about strategies for engaging colleagues in long-range projects.

I spent a fair amount of time during breaks discussing different strategies for taking abstract concepts and ideas about the future and making them tangible and relevant for decision-makers. For instance, one of the participants gave us permission to share this photo from their own work in response to working through strategies for using a persona tool:

As you can see, the personas here are full-sized cardboard cutouts—they may not walk or talk, but giving them size and space in workshops, as I was told, gives the persona an unavoidable presence in a meeting. It struck me as the kind of tactic that, while subtle, can dramatically strengthen the conversation and focus in a session on person-centered design and innovation.

Participants included representatives from a wide variety of industries including health care, mobile technology and financial services—though almost all of the participants had significant experience in innovation or foresight work—and the result was a really open, valuable conversation that most of the group plans to continue—and we’re really excited to be able to continue the conversation with them.

We’ll be holding our next training in early March of 2015. If you couldn’t make this session, we hope to see you then.