Strategic Foresight Books
Winter is coming. I know right? Time’s a moving! But it’s not all gloom and darkness. Personally, we associate winter with curling up near a warm fire, lost for hours in new books. With this in mind, we thought it would be nice to compile a brief list of some of our favourite futures books for those looking for a good holiday/winter read (or maybe a stocking stuffer for their favourite futures enthusiast).
For a bit of additional context: the books are presented in no specific order. This list is also by no means exhaustive. There are tons of other great futures book we’ve read and that we’re looking to add to our library. For this post, we limited ourselves to books we physical had on hand.
We’ve also taken a photo of the cover as well as a randomly selected spread to help you gauge the type of content it contains. Don’t read too much into the pages we chose to photograph - it’s literally wherever the book settled in our hands!
Also, as a fun aside you can see how my phone decided to auto-adjust the colours of my floor based on the books photographed…
How to Future: Leading and Sense-Making in an Age of Hyperchange
An approachable book that describes the key tenets of futuring in a down-to-earth manner. It’s an excellent guidebook and resource for helping educate others on the values of strategic foresight.
The BLDG BLOG Book
This is probably one of the oldest books (from the purchase date) in my library. At the time, I didn’t realize it was a book dedicated to urban speculation, landscape futures, and architecture. All I knew is that I loved the content so, so much. Fast forward a couple years and the BLDG BLOG Book is a big inspiration to the work featured here on this blog.
Create the Future: Tactics for Disruptive Thinking
This is two books in one. Depending which way you flip it, you either get a book about disruptive thinking and future disruption or you get one about innovation tactics and how to realize your dreams. Either way, it’s a high-energy read of some tactics for implementing more disruptive thinking and actionable change within your organization.
The Trend Forecaster’s Handbook
This is a large book that outlines The Futures Laboratory’s approach to foresight and trends research. It’s filled with beautiful imagery and well-laid out content.
Foundations of Futures Studies, Volume 1
A denser, more academic read of the role and development of futures studies. It describes key methods and delves into more of the theory and concepts of the field.
Foundations of Futures Studies, Volume 2
Much like Volume 1, Volume 2 takes an academic look at the field of futures. This second volume is more concerned with investigating and describing ways of framing preferable futures, especially as it pertains to human values.
Dark Matter and Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary
This little book is less focused on strategic foresight and futures, but definitely has some overlap with the field. It’s helpful in framing how design can shift the world through both small and large moves.
Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming
One of the oft referenced books in design fiction. Dunne & Raby’s book explores the creation of critical and speculative artifacts for encouraging discussion on key future topics.
Strategic Foresight: Learning from the Future
This book acts as a guidebook for discovering and applying a foresight lens to your process. It does a good job of describing the overall use case of strategic foresight within organizations and businesses.
4 Steps to the Future: A Quick and Clean Guide to Creating Foresight
This book by Richard A. K. Lum provides an excellent framework for systematically investigating the future. As you can tell, it’s been well read with annotations and water damage (yes, we read it with wet hands in the tub). Nevertheless, this is one of our favourite foresight guidebooks. Short, to the point, and easy to follow with some excellent frameworks.
What the Foresight: Your Personal Futures Explored. Defy the Expected and Define the Preferred.
This book is more of a workbook for applying strategic foresight to our personal lives (Personal Futures). It’s a little different than the other books listed in this series, but it’s still a good resource to have to understand how to frame future discussions with personal agency.
Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight
This book is kind of like an encyclopedia of different guidelines (techniques, tools, and methods) used by foresight practitioners. Some chapters are more comprehensive than others, but it still provides a useful resource for understanding what types of tools are used within various phases of a foresight project.
Futures Thinking Playbook
This one’s also a bit left field as it’s more of a children’s exercise book but it provides a nice look at how to make futures thinking more accessible to younger minds. It’s divided into sixteen sections to help teachers and students explore futures (and critical thinking) together.
Design Roadmapping: Guidebook for Future Foresight Techniques
This book brings you on a journey through design, strategy, and foresight. Helping the design practitioner leverage the power of futures thinking in the creation of a clear strategic design roadmap.