Spark Works
Position: Service Designer
Zurich, Switzerland
How can we get people to discuss the unthinkable?
We live in a world where change shapes everything around us. At the same time, we are globally witnessing the impact of a pandemic on our planet, society, and organisations.
A year ago most of us would have never imagined a future where a pandemic was forming our lives, businesses, and regulations. However, this scenario soon became a tangible reality for all of us. This idea of an unthinkable scenario taking place in our present made us rethink our own perception of the Future.
Some time ago, Jiske and I stood in front of a blank whiteboard with the idea of mapping out our new perception of the Future. We knew that the meaning of the word “Future” had become blurry and that the unimaginable was closer to us than we thought. With this idea in mind, we decided to frame a challenge around two questions: ‘How do we spark conversations about the Future?’ And, ‘How can we get people to discuss the unthinkable?’
After interesting discussions and research, we were standing in front of our wall of the Future, and it looked amazing! It was clear that we wanted to leave the past and the pandemic behind, and think forward and long-term. Based on the first input we built different models, validated them, and built again. After all these iterations, we reached the first version of our
first Spark Works Future Thinking Canvas.
At Spark Works, I worked turning challenges into opportunities together with different industries, businesses, and teams. As we saw continuous change and challenges in and around Spark Works, we decided to turn the current global situation into an opportunity to embrace uncertainty by reflecting, thinking, re-imagining, and acting upon the Futures. The Future Thinking Canvas is a great way to spark your imagination, step out of your usual way of thinking, and allow you to see opportunities from a different angle.
Webpage: https://www.sparkworks.ch/future-thinking-canvas
The Futures Thinking canvas:
Futures Thinking / Design Thinking / Innovation / Developing and training on Futures Thinking tools
Watch, Reflect, Think, Re-Imagine, and Act.
Strategy is all about making choices for the Future. But in reality, since there are no concrete facts about the Future, the evidence base will always be incomplete. Instead of coming up with a strategic plan,
we seek for stories. These stories about the Future based on our own context and perceptions are what switch our habitual way of thinking and allow us to explore the "unthinkable". These scenarios bring new opportunities to our landscape and prepare us to start acting with a positive attitude towards them.
To seek for these stories, we propose a five-step framework that
will help explore the Futures in a structured way. The Futures Thinking framework has a similar mindset to Design Thinking, however, they
act independently from each other. The journey of the exploration
f the unthinkable starts by changing our mind-set into an explorative one, applying divergent thinking and removing constraints of time
or possibility.
To explore the unthinkable Futures we start by watching around scanning our environment and reflecting on changes that are impacting us. We think about the uncertainties related to these changes and how to turn them into Future opportunities. We create stories by imagining Futures and combining extreme scenarios with opportunities. And we define actions that allow us to act and embrace these Future scenarios.
When we think about the Futures, it is not the prediction but the mindset that counts. With our Canvas, we hope to trigger a Futures Thinking mindset in you that will help you positively embrace uncertainty.
.jpg)
_jp.jpg)
