why futures studies/prospective/foresight?

The desire to know the future is as old as humanity.

However Futures Studies do not relate solely to the future, they are also used for better knowing the present. Both the present which surrounds us and the present which is in us; for every activity carried on during a futures study or a foresight exercise is also a training, implying efforts to understand oneself and understand the society (culture) to which one belongs.

Because the ‘prospective' is not only one certain type of approach, study or research: it reflects above all a mindset. One of the most fascinating and complex aspects of foresight is that it is about an opened system, where the only certainty is uncertainty. Hence the need for showing rigour, but also imagination and creativity, even audacity, and especially intellectual humility.

Futures thinking calls an integrated process and a long-term vision of the various possible choices, in full awareness of their respective impacts. The methods employed have utility only if they structure and make share a major understanding of the existing situation, the analysis of the causes of its evolution, the location of the drivers of change which can intervene.

This is why Futures Studies, as technical as they can become, will always remain an intrinsically political operation —to the full extent of the term— from the only fact that they deal with values, prospects, options and choices.

Tool of freedom, the future thinking forges also our responsibility.