? Back to the Strategic Foresight Network Dashboard
Imagining different futures to design inclusive and anticipatory policies today
Are we fit for the futures we are hurtling towards?
The complexities that we are facing are not short term, they are multi-generational. If we commit to long-termism and set appropriate benchmarks, not as an aspiration, but rather as a commitment to start changing the set of incentives that allow SDG acceleration, and this then allows us to back-cast more ambitious policy and programmatic goals.
Foresight pushes us to move beyond thinking in linear ways, into thinking long-term and systematically about disruptions. To build on the momentum around the practice of futures and foresight over the last few years, UNDP in Asia and the Pacific (RBAP) is leveraging this critical opportunity to embed strategic foresight as part of how we inform and design forward-looking policy, strategy, and decision making — to ensure that our capabilities, systems, policies and infrastructures are fit for navigating uncertainty and mitigating strategic risk.
We are doing this through the RBAP Strategic Foresight Network.
RBAP systems approach to integrating foresight
RBAP is methodically applying strategic foresight in the way we decide, design, and deliver. This means getting better at systematically looking and planning for what is ahead. We are taking an applied systems approach to build the processes, knowledge, capabilities, and culture to be anticipatory, in our internal ways of working, and in what we offer externally.
Embedding foresight to improve anticipatory decision making is fundamentally a risk-and-opportunity management approach, so that we can effectively see, manage, and respond to short and long-term risk signals. By doing so effectively, business units will be able to:
- Navigate uncertainty, and mitigate current and future strategic risks
- Use this data and understanding to inform current and future decision making
- Clarify UNDP's positions and relevance in the event of the escalation or mutation of trends, signals or shocks
Linking foresight to anticipatory policy and governance involves FOUR mechanistic pillars:
More information available in the documents attached below.
The Network
The Strategic Foresight Network is a community of practice that provides an opportunity to probe, learn, be curious and build our collective capabilities for rigorous strategic foresight. We share resources, knowledge, learning and co-design the UNDP RBAP approach to strategic foresight to help us achieve our policy and strategic ambitions.
The Network has the following outputs:
 |
Foresight Muscle: to develop a cohesive understanding and capabilities of what strategic foresight is, and how it is linked to strategy and policy design. |
 |
Knowledge and Institutionalization: To collectively work together on shared knowledge products, including institutional processes for horizon scanning. |
 |
Culture and Communications: To host events, share ideas, approaches, and networks so that we continuously build a muscle of curiosity, conversation and our shared future ambitions. |
Who is this for?
The Network is open to UNDP personnel across RBAP and beyond — as well as allies and associates outside of UNDP — who are experimenting with futures and/or foresight approaches in their work. We seek participants who are keen to use foresight to drive strategic, policy or programmatic change and willing to be generous in their sharing of their knowledge and wisdom.
? Back to the Strategic Foresight Network Dashboard. Click to register your interest in the Network.
Please log in or sign up to comment.