ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at some better known futures thinking tools and planning decision aids, such as roadmapping, futures wheels, mind mapping and scenario planning. These are now complemented by many computer-aided mapping tools on the internet that can facilitate workshopping and innovation. 1 Here ‘futures tools’ refer to planning aids designed to help us achieve future goals. They purport to take into account myriad factors like interdependency, complexity, unknown variables, and multiple stakeholders’ values and interests. Unlike most environmental management tools, they are geared primarily towards anticipating and preparing for future contingencies. That is, they can help to select alternative strategies or actions that will avoid or mitigate risks, factors or forces that might impede progress towards a given goal or project, such as getting a new product on the market or implementing an organizational agenda. Many such tools involve forecasting future market and scientific forces that may affect an organization or impede its goals. They set out to predict contingent forces in order to develop strategies. They help organizations manoeuvre around risks and threats to prepare for, or negotiate their way through, possible futures. This is despite the recognition that, in any forecasting methods, there are uncertainties that can alter these predictions and preparations almost beyond recognition. Thus we could say:
Traditional planning tools seek to ‘control the uncontrollable’
Assessment tools seek to ‘predict the unpredictable’
Life-cycle assessment tools try to ‘quantify the unquantifiable’
Futures tools help us to ‘expect the unexpected’
