Their use of scenario planning as a business strategy helped them prepare for and gain competitive advantage during major adverse events in the oil industry, such as the 1973 oil crisis and the 1980s oil bust. Royal Dutch Shell was an early adopter of scenario planning in the business world. This multi-scenario approach has long been utilized as part of business, military, public policy, and emergency preparedness strategic planning efforts.,, The practice originated in the 1950s, when the RAND Corporation first began using scenario techniques to develop U.S. Because the future is not predetermined or predictable, multiple scenarios are created for a single foresight project. Many of the popular foresight models and frameworks are designed to produce scenarios, which are stories describing plausible alternative futures. Several of the most popular approaches cited in the published literature are discussed in the journal article. A number of different foresight models and frameworks exist. , The second task includes assessing the implications and critical issues associated with the alternative functional futures to inform the design and implementation of feasible and responsive strategic options. The first task includes mapping futures, which consists of developing functional views of alternative futures. Conversely, strategic foresight looks ahead and asks what may be coming, how it might affect us, and what we can do today to start moving toward a preferred outcome.Įngaging in strategic foresight involves the completion of two distinct, yet interrelated, tasks.
Traditional strategic planning reviews evidence from the past and asks how we might do things better, faster, or more proficiently in the future.
Strategic foresight is a complement to, and not a substitute for, strategic planning. It can also uncover points at which today’s decisions and actions can be leveraged to move toward desirable futures. Identifying and monitoring these signals can reduce the likelihood of being unprepared for or surprised by emerging trends and changes as they arrive in the mainstream. Instead, the roots of multiple plausible futures exist today in the form of weak or early signals of potential change. Strategic foresight recognizes the future is not predetermined or predictable.
Strategic foresight is a practice rooted in futures studies designed to help better understand, prepare for, and influence the future. This blog defines strategic foresight and introduces the foresight framework tailored for OSH. It also presents a working foresight framework tailored for OSH and offers recommendations for next steps to incorporate strategic foresight into research and practice to advance worker safety, health, and well-being. The article reviews several published foresight approaches and examples of work-related futures scenarios. Equal parts science and art, strategic foresight includes the development and analysis of plausible alternative futures as inputs to strategic plans and actions. This future-oriented way of thinking and planning can help OSH professionals more actively anticipate, and even shape, the systems influencing the future of worker safety, health, and well-being. How do we effectively plan for the future of occupational safety and health (OSH) when numerous social, technological, economic, environmental, and political trends are influencing work, the workplace, and the workforce? The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and others in the OSH field are working to ensure we are ready to address the challenges of the future when they arrive.Ī new paper in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Healthproposes integrating strategic foresight into OSH research and practice.
0 kommentar(er)
