The rationale of the Futures Clinique
The Futures Clinique is not only a concrete workshop, but a threefold process (Fig. 1). It begins with a careful and thorough composing of a thought-provoking background material, which is sent to the participants prior to the workshop session. The background paper introduces the theme and goals of the given Futures Clinique, but especially places them into a broad socio-economic context. In addition to providing useful and focused information, the paper is to offer interesting and fresh foresight points of view to the theme in order to inspire and evoke enthusiasm on the subject matter among participants. In order to nourish ideas and to help mapping the environment from which futures evolve, the background paper can also present some interesting and important current phenomena, trends and weak signals. As in scenario construction, for Futures Cliniques a critical building block is identification and analysis of drivers and uncertainties [22, 24]. Therefore, a broader list of seminal drivers for change (megatrends, trends, weak signals and wild cards/black swans) or emerging technologies can be presented to facilitate in outlining the setting for a future society. More obvious drivers such as megatrends and trends are accompanied by elements of high uncertainty and ambiguity, i.e. weak signals and black swans.
The Futures Clinique incorporates participatory elements from the very beginning. As the background material is sent to the participants, a set of pre-questions is also delivered. The participants are asked to offer their knowledge by giving answers to some essential questions concerning the subject matter. The answers are used to plan the working at the workshop, but answering the questions also orientates the participants towards the upcoming session. The participants can also add to the list of drivers for change, provided with the background material.
The second phase of a Futures Clinique process is the actual set of workshop sessions. Typically, a Futures Clinique is organised within 1 day. Ideally, it may be organised in a series of several 1-day Futures Cliniques, each building on the results of the previous one. The Futures Clinique begins with an intensive dose of Futures Provocation, a presentation introducing the basic concepts of futures thinking and futures research, the central ideas of the background paper and the answers received to the pre-questions. Alongside providing essential information, the function of the presentation is to provide a transition route to futures space. It is to steer the participants away from conventional thinking and toward a fresh forward-looking mindset, using peripheral vision [5]—to provoke novel ideas. The introduction of the principles of futures thinking and futures research does not only aid in anticipating futures but also liberates and expands thinking on present issues. Although it is useful, e.g. for a strategy process to look further in time than a few years, a free-minded thinking of the futures open up new insight and possibilities also at the present.
As apart from conventional scenario processes including the business-as-usual option, Futures Clinique gives a special emphasis on possible, preferable and “improbable” futures. The idea is to concentrate more on possible transformations than “probable”, conventional outcomes—to come up with more or less radical ideas, possibilities and solutions. On the other hand, differing from traditional future workshop methods, the emphasis is not on concrete problem solving so that the focus would not be narrowed to the tangible and practical. The Futures Clinique working evolves from abstract to concrete, but the stress is on free ideation on the possible futures of the subject matter. Methods, such as the Futures Wheel, are used to give the ideation a loose structure, and background material—such as a list describing various weak signals—to offer some starting points for the ideation. At the end of the workshop, the results of an intensive and forward-looking ideation are used to come up with radical solutions and innovation drafts, to be elaborated further in another session or in another Clinique. The results may also be taken by some of the participating stakeholders to be further processed in their own organisations.
Choosing the participants
A crucial factor in ensuring alternative thinking is the assembly of participants. A Futures Clinique should never include participants only from one organisation or from one sector or industry even. The participants should represent as wide a range as possible of different sectors, industries, occupations, generations or age cohorts, tastes etc. As with other workshop methods, a wide variety of participants is to ensure the foresight being democratic and to make sure that as few as possible of different views about the future would be missed or neglected. In Futures Cliniques, however, the diversified set of participants is also a pivotal part in facilitating radical thinking and imaginary, complex futuring. The participants are encouraged to freely express their views, despite how un-orthodox or “impossible” they may seem. This is easier if the participants come from different organisations and backgrounds. Each participant can also nourish his/her own thinking with the ideas received from others.
Visual methods to multi-sensory futuring
In order to evoke imagination and non-conventional thinking, visual means are also utilised right from the beginning of a Futures Clinique workshop. Visualisation may be applied in various ways. Typically, a method called “Futures Window” is utilised. It is designed to visualise and identify weak signals, and also help participants to come up with new ones [9]. Futures Window is a cavalcade of selected, ambiguous and even cryptic images, shown as a Powerpoint slideshow and accompanied by instrumental music. The images are chosen by the futurists in charge of the Futures Clinique. Music and visuals are effective in arousing intuition and emotion as contrasted to verbal and conceptual thinking, which are more linear and “logical” modes of thought compared to visual and emotional thinking. Intuition and emotion are valuable in enhancing imaginative, non-routine thinking, and on the other hand in forming holistic, value-oriented images of the future. Often the interpretation of visual stimuli is also highly diversified.
Other means of applying visual techniques is to use actual pieces of art for analysis and foresight focused on the chosen topic. The participants are asked to interpret futuristic paintings as containing seeds of tomorrow’s landscapes or developments. Cartoons can also be used as material for detecting weak signals and as an approachable way to conceive the futures through visual means. Cartoons as a method to spot weak signals was tested in two Futures Cliniques held at Technology Centre Innopark. Cartoon strips were selected randomly from Finnish newspapers of a given period, and attached to large sheets of paper. The sheets were put up on walls. The participants browsed through the strips and wrote their futures-oriented interpretations on them on post-it pads. By the end of the day, the space was filled with various sheets of paper with a mass of different ideas and interpretations attached. As the participants were surrounded by the ideas they had come up with during the day, the abstract thoughts and visual stimulations were made concrete, tangible and easily memorized. Using papers on walls to embody abstract ideas of the futures was inspired by the concept of paper spaces by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang [21]. Pang claims that filling the space with “concrete” futures visions creates a cognitive and physical space that literally surrounds groups in futures workshops. The process itself of creating these spaces can promote a sense of a common vision for the future. The paper medium also allows interaction and creation—the ideas can be easily combined and classified, they can be annotated, extended, argued over and also played with [21].
The structure of a Futures Clinique
The actual Futures Clinique usually has three sessions and is conducted both in joint sections and in parallel small groups. The maximum number of participants in one group is seven, based on the experience gained from different-sized groups. The joint sections are located at the beginning where all participants hear the Futures Provocation and view the Futures Window, and again at the end where the results are presented, cross-fertilised and discussed in interaction. The parallel small group sessions take place between the joint sections. It is quintessential that each group has a moderator who instructs the participants and also encourages open generation of ideas to fuel up the reflection.
Session I: gaining perspective
In session I, the small groups start discussing the subject matter. The main topic of a Futures Clinique may be quite broad, but it always should set the time horizon, e.g. “Energy Futures 2030”. The theme can also be more focused, e.g. “New Concepts of Urban Planning in 2020”. The idea is for participants to share their views on the chosen topic, formulate what their personal preferred futures consist of and fertilise their own thinking and ideas with others’ views. The most relevant and interesting drivers are being sought and discussed, and then chosen for closer scrutiny from the list of drivers provided for the participants.Footnote 4
The method of Futures Wheel [7] is used to give the ideation and discussion a structure. A Futures Wheel consists basically of an inner and outer circle (=wheel) drawn to a large sheet of paper (approx. 2 × 1 m). Ideas evolved in the initial discussion are written down to post-it pads and placed on the inner wheel. This phase usually lasts for an hour.
After the initial discussion and ideation, in the second phase of session I, the ideas collected are worked out on a more concrete level. Groups start to discuss factors and measures that would advance the collected ideas, or on the other hand hinder them as bottlenecks. Finally, the groups are encouraged to come up with innovation drafts or seeds of innovation that would embody the ideas. The ideas are again written down to post-it pads, and placed on the outer circle of the wheel. Each participant writes his or her own ideas.Footnote 5
Session II: focusing the foresight lense
After the Futures Wheel has been finished, session II begins. The purpose of session II is to classify and clarify different aspects of the ideas generated during session I. As a tool, a PESTEC table is usually used for this purpose. PESTEC is a futures table drawn as a matrix on a large sheet of paper with the following dimensions: P = political, E = economic, S = social, T = technological, E = ecological and C = cultural/customer/citizen. The groups are invited to classify the central ideas of the Futures Wheel into the different sections of the PESTEC, and also to possibly add new ideas to each section. This is especially encouraged if some section contains fewer ideas or elements than the other ones. Possible effects and consequences of the Futures Wheel’s ideas can also be added. The most crucial ideas can be filtered out of the mass of reflections, for example by voting. It is important, however, that some other ideas than the most voted ones are also attached to the PESTEC table. After each section of the PESTEC has been filled, the groups are instructed to discuss the PESTEC as to outline the big picture the individual ideas are beginning to comprise. After the discussion, the participants can vote for two most important ideas on each section to distill the core ideas for a scenario. Finally, each group gives its initial scenario sketch an illuminating and catchy name.
Session III: digging up the diamonds
As the final, summary session, session III is the one with the most options on how to be carried out. The self-evident way is to continue clarifying and elaborating the previous sessions into a scenario narrative. Scenario narrative is a lively, fictional story of one possible future. The body of the narrative is built of the ideas of the PESTEC table that received most votes within a group (see “Session II: focusing the foresight lens” section). The body is then complemented with other ideas of PESTEC or the Futures Wheel. After the ingredients are chosen, a polemic and lively story is written based on them. The story can be illustrated with drawings by the participants. Peter Schwartz even suggests that the drive to tell stories about the future may be “hardwired” into the human brain [24].
Another option is to leave out the scenario narrative. If this option is chosen, session III is organised so that the groups can exchange their PESTECs of Futures Wheels and cross-fertilise them through visiting and complementing each other’s group results.
After the three sessions, all participants gather to hear each group’s presentations and to discuss the results. Time allowing each group can go through their whole small work process, but most often it suffices that each group present their scenario narrative, which sums up their work. This is especially the case if there are more than three small groups. Narratives are important and effective ways of communicating futures images. Futures literacy, as Miller [17] proposes it, is strengthened through imaginative storytelling. The ways we act and perceive the present are deeply influenced by the way we imagine the future. Futures literacy is about developing the storytelling capacity, the narrative capacity, to invent alternative worlds, to understand system boundaries. Miller points out that futures literacy is also what we are doing when we extrapolate. Futures Cliniques are co-creative catalysts for futures storytelling and thus for futures literacy at large.