Five Frameworks of Foresight (FFF) provides a comprehensive overview of five different foresight frameworks, methodologies and strategies developed and used by Dr. Jose Ramos, over his career. 

The course is meant to pass the baton to current and emerging practitioners, to use and adapt a variety of ways of thinking about foresight practice in their own contexts and work. 

Jose has worked as a researcher and practitioner in futures studies / foresight for 25 years, in dozens of organisations and contexts. Over that time he has learned from many people, experimented with a variety of approaches and created unique tools and methods. He has been privileged to learn from some of the best thinkers and practitioners in the field. 

FFF provides a breath of thinking about how to apply futures studies and foresight in a variety of contexts. Participants will be left with greater flexibility in their thinking about how to apply various research and engagement strategies, with a wider variety of options. 

Modules

  • Five Modes of Foresight

    This module provides a historical overview of futures research and thinking, and provides insights into five modalities that have emerged in the field, that can be used and adapted within research and application.

  • Anticipatory Experimentation

    This module provides an overview of the anticipatory experimentation methodology (Bridge Model). AE is an approach to using futures as a way to seed small experiments that can be scaled for impact, in a variety of contexts.

  • Mutant Futures

    This module provides an overview of Mutant Futures. Mutant Futures is an approach to aligning inner story and purpose with meaningful social narratives of change that inspire us. Mutant Futures asks us what new inner selves and what new hybrid methods is the future asking us to bring forth.

  • Participatory Futures

    This module provides an overview of Participatory Futures. Participatory futures is a way of combining futures thinking with public and civic engagement, from small to large scale applications. It employs highly creative hybrid approaches such as play and gaming, immersion and experience, deliberation processes, creative expression, and a variety of ways of sensing.

  • AAA Governance

    AAA governance (pronounced "Triple A Gov") is an approach to institutional and organizational governance that puts forward the need to combine anticipation, agility and adaptation as core cultural properties for an organization to thrive in the 21st century. The AAAGovernance model explores the dimensions of anticipation, agility and adaptation, how they form synergies, and the challenges and strategies for embedding them within organizations.

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.