Evolution of Foresight Global Patterns - a comparative study

Subject Areas : Futurology

Ardeshir Sayah Mofazali ¹ , Katayoun Jahangiri ² , Mohammad Rahim Eivazi ³

1 - Faculty member of the Institute for Humanities and Social Studies (Futures Studies Research Group) and Futures studies PhD student at Institute for Humanities and Social Studies
2 - Associate professor, health in disaster and emergencies department; school of health, safety and environment; Shahid Beheshti University of Medical science (Corresponding Author)
3 - Professor of Future Studies University of Imam Khomeini (RA)

Received: 2015-05-31 Accepted : 2015-07-24 Published : 2016-11-21

Keywords: Futures studies- foresight- ex,

Abstract :

Dramatic changes in the world make organizations have encouraged more thoroughly contemplating about future. Lots of changes including globalization, technology progression, amplified complexity in decision-making, have compelled organizations to precisely identify and prepare for further altered futures. Today, the term "foresight" has been widely applied and denote a sort of approaches that deliberate on thinking about the long-term future, strategic decision-making processes and intelligent estimations. Foresight concepts needs a systematic set of executable patterns. From the 1990s, the patterns are used with different approaches, they were renovated from casual to systematic state. These patterns which produced by scholars represent the verified processes that are confirmed in various futures studies' projects and try to guarantee the accuracy of the foresight outcomes. Despite various efforts in developing foresight patterns exist, the patterns has a wide range of diversity in form and content. The main objective of this paper is to identify how to classify global foresight patterns and recognize the evolutionary process of foresight patterns over time and subsequently changes on foresight patterns in past twenty years. In order to provide the most appropriate response to this question set of criteria have been identified and based on that current foresight patterns are compared with each other. The methodology used in this paper in terms of data collection and literature review is qualitative. In this article eleven global foresight patterns have been studied comparatively. Each of these models represents a way of thinking, looking to the future and planning for future. The results of these study illustrated in comparative tables and demonstrate that the main axis of the plain foresight patterns have been untouched, correspondingly the evolutionary process of adding key topics for ease of implementation and validate the results of the studies.