Futures Playbook - Aurecon

Navigate Uncertainty. Anticipate. Act.

Are you ready to shape the future?

The future is both exciting and full of opportunity but can also be a place of uncertainty and trepidation. To help you find a way through disruption, we are sharing the plays that Aurecon uses to anticipate and take charge of change.

The Aurecon Futures Playbook is a set of plays, tools and processes, we use to explore and make sense of our potential futures. Based on strategic foresight frameworks and theories, these plays are designed to help you identify and categorise different drivers of change, identify impacts and implications, and ultimately identify actions to take.

These plays are best shared as a workshop, part of team-based processes or can be adapted based on your needs. They fall into three categories:

Dynamics + Patterns

Dynamics + Patterns

Identifying, analysing and understanding the drivers of change likely to impact you.

This will help you to navigate uncertainty, by identifying which drivers matter, and what they look like.

Implications + Insights

Implications + Insights

Exploring and identifying the impacts, insights and implications of change. This forms an important part of being able to anticipate change.

Strategy

Strategy + Action

Developing actions to address the futures you face, and act on what you see.

What is Futures Research?

Futures Research draws on the fields of Futures Studies and Strategic Foresight, disciplines that focus on how to interpret, analyse and respond to the future.

In Futures Research we take a systematic and methodical evidence-based approach to understand the range of uncertainties we face over the long term.

Armed with this understanding, we identify strategies to anticipate and manage this complexity.

Through this work we seek to get ahead of disruption and create opportunity from what is emerging, as opposed to being disrupted by it.

Learn more about how Aurecon can help you navigate your future.

The Futures Playbook by Aurecon is licensed under CC BY 4.0

The Futures Plays

Dynamics + Patterns

Uncertainty Impact Mapping

Understand the characteristics of the issue or question to generate the right strategic response.

6–8 45–60 minutes Easy

Dynamics + Patterns

Futures Triangle

Deconstruct what is driving change, and the actions to take based on where they come from.

6–8 1.5–3 hrs Moderate

Dynamics + Patterns

The Black Menagerie

Identify your wild cards, and where they might come from.

6–8 30–60 minutes Easy

Dynamics + Patterns

Three Horizons Mapping

Categorise your opportunities based on when they might be impacted.

6–8 45–60 minutes Easy

Implications + Insights

Futures Wheel

Identify the impacts and consequences of change or an event.

6–8 1.5–2 hours Moderate

Implications + Insights

Trend Implication Analysis

Explore the impacts and implications should the trajectory of a trend change.

6–8 1–2 hrs Moderate to Hard

Strategy

So what? Now what?

Identify actions to be taken in the present.

6–8 15–30 minutes Easy

How can Aurecon's Futures team help you?

At Aurecon we seek to systematically and methodically understand the futures we face so we can identify actions and steps to reach the futures we want.

We draw on our digital engineering and advisory expertise to help clients and partners to better navigate uncertainty, anticipate change and act effectively. We can help you:

  1. Identify and understand the range of trends, emerging issues and weak signals that could impact your business using Horizon Scanning
  2. Demystify the long-term using Horizon Mapping
  3. Explore the complexity and non-linear change with Systems Mapping
  4. Identify and assess the technologies that will impact your businesses with Technology Mapping
  1. Develop a clear understanding of the range of your future with Scenarios
  2. Identify and unpack the impacts and implications of change through Implications Analysis
  3. Stress test your strategies and action plans against potential futures
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