Let's just suppose that we agree that foresight ought to have a return on investment. In that case, how would we go about measuring such a thing? It is entirely possible that we could devise new models of foresight evaluation, but a shorter route would be to take existing models of investment appraisal and to adapt them for the purposes of foresight evaluation. The financial community has a long history of doing just this. Would to be possible to commandeer some of their models to put to work in evaluating foresight?
We have stated before that one of the objections to using foresight as a better aid to strategic planning is the utilitarian nature of the methods used. However, in this case, they can also be a strength. We can readily see that it is worth undertaking a project if the benefits outweigh the costs. It is also true in reverse, an activity is not worth undertaking if the costs outweigh its benefits. In commercial language, it fails to meet the action threshold. There are problems with these approaches, but let's set those aside for the moment to focus on the core of the technique. It might help to examine the cost side of the equation before going on to review the question of appraising the benefits.
This approach is best suited to what the evaluator community calls project evaluation. When reviewing the prospective costs of a project, the starting point has to be what it is that the project hopes to achieve. What is it examining? Over what time horizon? With what deliverables in mind? So many foresight projects go astray because this clear vision of what the project is about is absent at the beginning. A degree of clarity is needed at the outset because that will dominate the structure - and the cost base - of the whole project ahead.
If you are certain what it is that you want to look at, the next question to resolve is who is to be involved in the process. In many respects, that is a question of determining which stakeholders have a voice in the process, and which stakeholders are not consulted. In some projects the core stakeholders appear obvious, in others less so. Those close to the subject being reviewed might expect a voice, whilst those affected by it remotely may not. This involves a balancing act for the project managers. On the one hand, a more diverse group will yield more robust results. On the other hand, including too many voices will reduce the effectiveness of the core of the project. In this sense, a camel is a horse designed by a committee.
At some point the project will have to take a view on tool selection. If we have defined the problem to be examined, if we have determined who will be conducting the examination, we then have to take a view on how the examination will be conducted. This is the point at which we encounter the question of uncertainty. We want to choose the right tool for the job, but we cannot know for sure a priori which is the right tool for the job. We can only say that, on a balance of probabilities that a given tool is likely to yield useful results.
This is where the staffing question and the tool selection issue start to become inter-dependent. Some tools require a wider input than others, Some tools require a more intensive time cost than others. It is at this point that we may have to scale back our ambitions for the project because the budget won't support the initial scale of those ambitions. The process of adjustment may tend to be adaptive in how it rolls out. However, if the project is to go ahead, then eventually a compromise will be reached on the cost side. It is then we can turn to the prospective benefits.
We have already stated that the project will have a focus in the future. This could be a forecast of a future state or, more likely, the discernment of the broad contours of the future. The project is likely to aim at producing insights into the future from which we can profit by preparing for that future today. This is an area which can prove to be quite problematic.
To start with, our view of how the future might unfold could be wrong. There is considerable uncertainty about future states. The prospective benefits to our actions are remote - they lie a long way off from the present - and may not be clearly defined. The benefits are likely to be less quantifiable than the costs and the impact of our actions might not be experienced in quite the way we previously anticipated. We could do the right thing for the wrong reasons and the wrong thing for the right reasons. There is no way of knowing a priori exactly how things will turn out. The future out-turn could be broadly in line with our original thoughts or it could quite equally be very different. The right foresight tools should enhance the likelihood of the former and lessen the chance of the latter, but nothing is guaranteed.
If foresight is a means to gauge a volatile, uncertain, complex, and adaptive world; then the tools it uses are likely to reflect that state of being. This means that when we measure the return on investment on foresight, we ought to include a statement to the effect that the process contains a wide margin of error. At the end of the day it will be up to the client to determine whether or not a specific project is likely to provide sufficient benefits to justify the cost. What the foresight professional can do is to help frame that judgement in a fairly systematic way.
Stephen Aguilar-Millan
© The European Futures Observatory 2021
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