INTRODUCTION

Chapter Five. Defining Futures Fluency

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This is an early effort at defining futures studies and foresight -- or the linked processes that I call futures fluency. I have found this conceptual map to be simple enough that people can easily remember it (very useful characteristic in teaching and training), inclusive enough that I can fit the work of each of my futures colleagues into one or more of the five key activities mentioned, and scalable: this model is as applicable to individual foresight as it is to community foresight, organizational foresight, or national foresight.

However, I conceived this and drafted it in the early nineties. While I have cleaned it up some, it is still substantially the rather simple essay that I designed to explain futures studies to the non-futurists on my dissertation committee. An ongoing project is the expansion of this chapter into seven separate, and much more detailed chapters which would include more up-to-date case studies and methods exemplars, as well as an accompanying workbook offering a facilitator's guide to those methods amenable to group process work. If you want to see a more recent, and far more detailed draft of this conceptual framework, visit Futures Fluency: An Overview of Futures Studies.