Abstract
There is a widespread recognition that many societal challenges need responses that bring about transformational change in individuals, organizations, and institutions. For this, we need foresight approaches that can work with the intrinsic uncertainties of the future while enabling full engagement of our human capacity for creative response and learning. This chapter introduces Three Horizons as a practice that can help people to bring about change in the face of the complexities and uncertainties of the future. Experience has established that it can do this because each of the horizons captures a qualitatively distinct experience of the future in the present and these three perspectives taken together constitute a powerful expression of anticipatory capacity. The chapter proposes a synthesis between the practice of Three Horizons and the theoretical position that anticipatory decision-making requires a second-order paradigm in which the role and presence of the observer/decider is fully acknowledged. The anticipatory present moment is put forward as such a second-order framework, and it is shown how this achieves the synthesis. The theoretical understanding brought by the APM analysis supports the position that the horizons can be regarded as three foundational modes of human anticipatory capacity.
References
Bell, W. (2011). Foundations of futures studies: Human science for a new era: Values, objectivity, and the good society. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
Bennett, J. G. (1966). The Dramatic Universe. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Burt, G. (2010). Revisiting and extending our understanding of Pierre Wack’s the gentle art of re-perceiving. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 77(9), 1476–1484.
Curry, A., et al. (2008). Seeing in multiple horizons: Connecting futures to strategy. Journal of Futures Studies, 13(1), 1–20.
Fazey, I., et al. (2015). Past and future adaptation pathways. Climate and Development, 8, 26–44.
Gell, A. (1996). The anthropology of time. Oxford: Berg.
Goodman, P. S. (1967). An empirical examination of Elliott Jaques’ concept of time span. Human Relations, 20, 155–170.
H3Uni. (2016). H3Uni Resource Library. Retrieved 1 Dec 2016, from www.h3uni.org/resource_library
Haasnoot, M., et al. (2012). Exploring pathways for sustainable water management in river deltas in a changing environment. Climatic Change, 115(3), 795–819.
Hodgson, A. (2013). Towards an ontology of the present moment. On the Horizon, 21(1), 24–38.
Hodgson, A. (2016). Time, pattern, and perception. Phd, University of Hull.
Hodgson, A. (2017). Second-Order Anticipation. In R. Poli (Ed.), Handbook of Anticipation. Dordrecht: Springer.
Kahane, A., & Van Der Heijden, K. (2012). Transformative scenario planning: Working together to change the future. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Kok, K., et al. (2011). Combining participative backcasting and exploratory scenario development: Experiences from the SCENES project. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 78(5), 835–851.
Leach, M., et al. (2010). Governing epidemics in an age of complexity: Narratives, politics and pathways to sustainability. Global Environmental Change, 20(3), 369–377.
McCann, J. E., & Selsky, J. (1984). Hyperturbulence and the emergence of type 5 environments. Academy of Management Review, 9(3), 460–470.
Müller, K. H., et al. (2016). Second-order science: The revolution of scientific structures. Wien: Echoraum.
Ogilvy, J. A. (2002). Creating better futures: Scenario planning as a tool for a better tomorrow. New York: Oxford University Press.
Poli, R. (2011). Steps toward an explicit ontology of the future. Journal of Futures Studies, 16(1), 67–78.
Poli, R. (2017). Introduction. In R. Poli (Ed.), Handbook of Anticipation. Dordrecht: Springer.
Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155–169.
Sharpe, B. (2013). Three Horizons: the patterning of hope. London: Triarchy Press.
Sharpe, B. (2015). Three Horizons: The patterning of hope. Journal of Holistic Healthcare, 12(1), 4–6.
Sharpe, B., et al. (2016). Three horizons: A pathways practice for transformation. Ecology and Society, 21(2), 750–764.
Van Notten, P. W., et al. (2003). An updated scenario typology. Futures, 35(5), 423–443.
Voss, J.-P., et al. (2007). Steering for sustainable development: A typology of problems and strategies with respect to ambivalence, uncertainty and distributed power. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 9(3–4), 193–212.
Wack, P. (1985). Scenarios: The gentle art of re-perceiving. Unpublished manuscript, Harvard Business School.
Wise, R., et al. (2014). Reconceptualising adaptation to climate change as part of pathways of change and response. Global Environmental Change, 28, 325–336.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Sharpe, B., Hodgson, A. (2017). Anticipation in Three Horizons. In: Poli, R. (eds) Handbook of Anticipation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31737-3_82-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31737-3_82-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-31737-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-31737-3
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities