Planting the Seeds of the Future

Anticipatory Experimentation is a new and emerging methodology for social, organizational and person change. It is based on a process of exploring deep assumptions about the future, reimagining the future we want to create, and developing small experiments that bring our preferred  future into the present.  It is a way of bringing the preferred future into the present through experiments that can scale for impact. 

What makes it unique?

Anticipatory Experimentation connects an exploration of the future with a pathway to envision, design and enact change in the present. Most futures studies and foresight methodologies are divorced from action in the present. They are good at exploring the futures but are weak at enacting it. Likewise, many of the design professions are strong at ideation, but the ideas are not informed by a critical assessment of futures. Anticipatory Experimentation integrates exploring futures and action in the present. 

Does it work?

While Anticipatory Experimentation also started out as a seed of an idea in 2016, it has been tested and used in a variety of professional settings, with professional associations, peak bodies, UN bodies and governments. A list of projects and reports based on Anticipatory Experimentation can be found below.  

How does it work?

Anticipatory Experimentation has 5 steps. 

  • Challenge the Used Future
  • Develop a preferred future or just new assumptions about the future 
  • Ideation of options and strategies to enact a preferred future 
  • Design and conduct real world experiments 
  • Evaluate the experiments 


The methodology and framework is robust and flexible. A variety of methods and techniques can be used within each step.  

A comprehensive course

This is not a quick course that provides shallow understanding. This is a comprehensive course that offers depth knowledge. It includes a presentation of theory for each step and at least two techniques that can be used for each step. It also includes ample reference readings,  an action learning component (opportunity for applied practice) and discussion time. 

Structure of Course

The course is a 6 session program. Each session is 2 hours 30 min long. The first 5 sessions are run over a month. The last session is 3 weeks after the 5th session.

  • Introduction and overall theory and concepts

  • Critical Futures Assessment

  • Creating a New Vision and New Assumptions

  • Ideation in the Emerging Futures

  • Designing and Running Experiments

  • Evaluation and Evolving

Personal and group streams

The course has two learning steams, a personal stream and a group stream. In the personal stream learners apply Anticipatory Experimentation to their personal lives. Using a workbook and guided by the facilitator, the participant explores the futures of the personal issue / challenge they choose, and develop an experiment for this.  In the group stream, the participants together decide on a social issue or challenge to apply Anticipatory Experimentation to together. 

Specific methods and techniques

As part of a comprehensive course, at least two techniques are taught and used for each of the 5 stages of Anticipatory Experimentation, for a total of 10 specific techniques. These include but are not limited to: 

  • Vision Cycles

    Timeline method for interrogating the used future

  • Integrated Visioning

    A method for integrating disowned futures and selves

  • Futures Action Model

    A method for ideation in a global futures and action context

  • 4-S Experimentation

    A method for creating experiments that drive learning

  • Causal Layered Analysis

    A method for questioning and revisioning unconscious assumptions about the futures

  • Emerging Issues / Weak Signals Analysis

    Methods for understanding the dynamics of disruptive change

  • Three archetypes ideation

    A method that draws on Three Horizons to generate intervention ideas

Instructor(s)

Dr.

Jose Ramos

José Maria Ramos is director of the boutique foresight consultancy Action Foresight, is Senior Consulting Editor for the Journal of Futures Studies, and is Senior Adjunct Professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast. He has taught and lectured on futures studies, public policy and social innovation at the National University of Singapore (Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy), Swinburne University of Technology (Australia), Leuphana University (Germany), the University of the Sunshine Coast (Australia) and Victoria University (Australia). He has over 50 publications in journals, magazines and books spanning economic, cultural and political change, futures studies, public policy and social innovation. He has also co-founded numerous civil society organizations, a social forum, a maker lab, an advocacy group for commons governance, and a peer to peer leadership development group for mutant futurists. He holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature, a Masters degree in Strategic Foresight, and a Ph.D. in critical globalisation studies. He has a passion for the coupling of foresight and action, which has included both theoretical work through published articles, consulting work for federal, state and municipal governments, as well as citizen experiments in methodological innovation. He is originally from California of Mexican ancestry. Born in Oakland, he grew up in a very multi-cultural suburb of Los Angeles. After living in Japan and Taiwan, where he studied Japanese and Mandarin, he moved to Melbourne Australia to be with his wife, De Chantal. They have two children, son Ethan and daughter Rafaela. His other great passion is in considering who we are as planetary beings, which includes his ethnographic study of alternative globalizations, writings on planetary stigmergy, and research on cosmo-localization. This line of work connects him to the truth that we are all brothers and sisters inter-dependent with our planet and each other for our survival and wellbeing - our shared commons.

Course Fees

  • Regular: $490 
  • Early Bird Discount: $390
  • Previous student or client -$100 discount
  • Enrol with a colleague  -$100 discount
  • Low income bracket / country - $200 discount


*Maximum discount is $200 if multiple discounts are used. Please email me at [email protected] and I will send you the coupon code to apply the discount.

Course curriculum

  • 1

    Instructions for this course

    • How the course is organized

    • Origins

  • 2

    Welcome and some background

    • Where did AEM come from?

    • Why we need to link futures thinking with action and experimentation

    • Problem # 1 - Perpetuating Used Futures

    • Two metaphors

    • The need for hope and power in our era
  • 3

    Week 1 - Introduction - the five steps in summary

    • Worksheet

    • Step 1: Challenging the used futures

    • Step 1 journal question - Challenging the used future

    • Step 2: Creating a new future (vision) or just new assumptions

    • Step 2 journal question - Vision or New Assumptions

    • Step 3: Ideation

    • Step 3 journal question - Ideation

    • Step 4: Running real world experiments

    • Step 4 journal question - Experimentation

    • Step 5: Evaluating, adapting and scaling for impact

    • Step 5 journal question - Evaluate, adapt, scale

  • 4

    Week 2 - Critical Futures Assessment - challenging the "Used Future"

    • Placeholder - critical futures

    • Method 1 - Vision Cycles

    • Method 2 - Causal Layered Analysis

  • 5

    Week 3 - New Assumptions and new vision

    • The power of perspective

    • Method 1 - Emerging Issues Analysis

    • Method 2 - Visioning

  • 6

    Week 4 - Ideation

    • What is ideation?

    • Method 1 - Futures Action Model / Game

    • Method 2 - Three archetypes of 3H
  • 7

    Week 5 - Designing Experiments

    • The philosophy of experimentation

    • Method 1 - 5s

    • Method 2 - Action Review

  • 8

    Week 6 - Evaluation

    • Evaluation as a field

    • Method 1 - Open Inquiry?

    • Method 2 - Jess Dart

  • 9

    What is the Anticipatory Experimentation Method?

    • The Anticipatory Experimentation Method (AEM)

    • Video presentation overview of AEM

    • AEM Steps

    • Here is a personal story on how it works

  • 10

    Next Steps...

    • Anticipatory Design Cycle

    • AEM is a form of action research

    • This was an introductory course ...

    • More resources

    • Before you go...

    • Thank you and farewell!

A hybrid approach

Anticipatory Experimentation uses critical futures studies, action research and elements of design thinking. Critical futures studies provides a way to question and challenge old assumptions about the future, and to generate new futures from new perspectives.  Action research provides a way to enact a cycle from envisioning, to prototyping, to testing and to evaluation. Design thinking supports the usability, functionality and value that can be channeled into our personal, organizational and social lives.  

Examples, Uses and Reports

 Anticipatory Experimentation has been used in over a dozen applications. Following are a list of examples of applications: 

  • Bhutan MoLHR and Bhutan UNDP - Anticipatory Experimentation was used as the methodology to explore the workforce futures of Bhutan in a 5-15 year timeframe, and to develop strategic interventions and experiments
  • Centro workshop on Violence Against Women - Anticipatory Experimentation was used to explore the challenge of violence against women in Mexico
  • Queensland Alliance for Mental Health - Anticipatory Experimentation was used to help QAMH explore the futures of community mental health and design strategies of change
  • Australian Inst. for the Conservation of Cultural Material - Anticipatory experimentation was used to explore futures of cultural conservation and develop intervention strategies 
  • Laboratorio Para La Ciudad - Anticipatory Experimentation used to support foresight research and facilitation for the municipal government of Mexico City  

  • Anticipatory Experimentation has also been used in over a dozen futures workshops, such as the Mutant Futures Program 

Cohort Times

*NOTE: Participants can choose either cohort

Cohort 1

Hong Kong, Hong Kong    Mon, 12 Apr 2021 at 6:45 am HKT     

Seoul, South Korea      Mon, 12 Apr 2021 at 7:45 am KST     

Melbourne, Australia    Mon, 12 Apr 2021 at 8:45 am AEST    

Los Angeles, USA        Sun, 11 Apr 2021 at 3:45 pm PDT     

Mexico City, Mexico     Sun, 11 Apr 2021 at 5:45 pm CDT     

New York, USA           Sun, 11 Apr 2021 at 6:45 pm EDT     

São Paulo, Brazil       Sun, 11 Apr 2021 at 7:45 pm BRT     


Cohort 2

Melbourne, Australia           Mon, 12 Apr 2021 at 8:00 pm AEST       

Seoul, South Korea             Mon, 12 Apr 2021 at 7:00 pm KST        

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia         Mon, 12 Apr 2021 at 6:00 pm MYT        

Mumbai, India                  Mon, 12 Apr 2021 at 3:30 pm IST        

Dubai, United Arab Emirates    Mon, 12 Apr 2021 at 2:00 pm GST        

Cape Town, South Africa        Mon, 12 Apr 2021 at 12:00 noon SAST    

London, United Kingdom         Mon, 12 Apr 2021 at 11:00 am BST       

São Paulo, Brazil              Mon, 12 Apr 2021 at 7:00 am BRT        

New York, USA                  Mon, 12 Apr 2021 at 6:00 am EDT        


Anticipatory Experimentation begins September XX 2023

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