The Future of Horizon Scanning: Embracing Emergence through Grounded Theory [Student Post]
In a world defined by deep uncertainty and accelerating change, identifying signals of change won’t be enough. The future of horizon scanning will lie in Anticipatory Futures Intelligence; measured by how well we can engage with emergence, surfacing signals, patterns, and insights, without forcing premature coherence.
This is where Grounded Theory (GT) offers real value. Not as a replacement for traditional foresight scanning methods, but as a complementary evolution, supporting inductive modes of working that embrace emergence, support uncertainty, and align with our shift toward anticipatory systems of knowledge and research.
Why Grounded Theory (GT)?
Originally developed by Glaser and Strauss (1967), GT challenges the dominant paradigm of hypothesis-driven research, emphasising theory-building from raw data through pattern recognition and constant iteration. Futurists similarly reject rigid framing – we explore, compare, cluster, and reframe. Our scanning and sensemaking processes occur simultaneously as we refine our understanding with each insight.
A Grounded Theory Approach to Anticipatory Futures Intelligence Scanning
So what would a GT-inspired approach to Anticipatory Futures Intelligence Scanning look like?
- Embrace Abductive Reasoning & Pattern Recognition
We’ll systematically make space for ambiguity, treating scanning as an ongoing and provisional meaning-making process which values flexibility (and plausibility) over certainty. Which means ‘one and done’ or bookmark scanning will be a non-starter. - Make Iteration the Default Mode
In GT, codes and categories are never final, they continue to be revisited, revised, and recontextualized. We’ll shift our epistemological scanning posture toward looping back, re-clustering, and reframing as new insights emerge. Our scanning will become a living dynamic system, rather than a static archive.
It’s worth noting that this process will demand a scan database system that supports flexible, dynamic re-tagging and theme formation over time.
- Practice Reflexive Scanning
Reflexivity will become critical to keep our sensemaking honest and adaptive while helping us recognize potential blind spots through pre-defined automated prompts surfaced in the flow of scanning. - Use AI as an Enabler
We’ll use AI-driven workflows embedded within our processes but spoiler alert – the best anticipatory intelligence scanners will still be human.
A Rigorous Methodology for Emergence
As a research process framed for emergence (Kenny and Fourie, 2014), GT provides a solid foundation for next-gen scanning infrastructure; evidenced in its legitimation of ‘not knowing’ as the beginning of insight, rather than a failure of categorisation.
The future of horizon scanning will lie in creating a transformative anticipatory knowledge system structured for new & dynamic ways of knowing. Instead of filtering signals to fit domain maps or research priorities, we will instead focus on cultivating the conditions for emergence, building meaning over time and allowing insights to unfold within our scanning systems.
What adjustments will we make to set up our future horizon scanning process as a structured knowledge system for emergence?
- Open Coding (Delve, 2022) – First Order Tagging[1]
We’ll retain the standard foresight tags that feel like home : STEEP, horizon, domain-specific keywords, we’ll also include interpretive layers as standard, to help situate the signal within our evolving understanding of change:
- Trajectory: Emerging, Accelerating, Declining
- Uncertainty: Wildcard, Unknown Unknown
- Signal Type: Strong, Weird, Outlier or S Curve Identifiers
- Narrative Pattern: Disruption, Restoration, Collapse
Signal-led : Identifying Deeper Emerging Themes
- Axial Coding (Delve, 2022) – Second Order Tagging
Inspired by GT approaches, we’ll extend our tagging beyond pre-defined taxonomies or primary tags to see what deeper themes are emerging within the scanning data that might extend our sensemaking.
- Look for relationships and connections amongst tagging groups
- Cluster the scan hits into many deeper fluid themes
Dynamic Clusters
- Selective Coding (Delve, 2022)
These tag codes will continually define, unify, separate and recombine emerging patterns across clusters, offering traceable sensemaking, synthesised into usable insight. How we recognise & represent patterns & emerging dynamics will be a core foresight competency. Like systems mapping, the value will lie in the dynamic connections we make – from news to poetry to provocations to statistics to art to indexes to data maps . . I’d like to see a predefined algorithm simulate that.
Signals as Chains of Custody
One of the most compelling contributions GT offers foresight is the idea of a traceable audit trail or chain of custody. In the future we’ll make our scanning dynamics more explicit to give our foresight work greater credibility and methodological integrity.
Iteration as Epistemology : Toward a Living Scanning System
Signals as Living Clusters both Dynamic and Evolutionary
Currently many of our personal foresight horizon scanning systems (eventually) assume static tags and fixed taxonomies based on project domain maps and/or our own keywords. In the future, even our personal horizon scan systems will host “living scan hit clusters” that evolve and change as our sensemaking progresses, helping us to explore emerging issues that shapeshift over time, representing an agile emergent knowledge system.
GT treats the process of tagging not as a technical step, but as a way of knowing (Navas and Yagüe, 2023), a core knowledge building process. For GT researchers, coding (tagging) is fluid, revisable and recursive. Similarly, as futurists we won’t code or tag scan hits once (or at one level), rather we’ll return to our scan hit databases to reconsider, reframe, combine and collapse our themed clusters as new patterns emerge. The future demands that we adjust our scanning posture, process and systems to build knowledge iteratively, and in relationship with what’s emerging. Scan hit hygiene is real & we’ll be doing more of it.
This iterative process isn’t just another step in our present workflow; it represents a nextgen sensemaking system for a world where certainty is low and emergence is high. This approach represents more than just a better tagging system; it’s a human posture that invites us to delay coherence, surface inductive meaning where certainty is low and meaning is provisional, and provide a chain of custody for rigour and impact.
As foresight knowledge and futures intelligence necessarily becomes more anticipatory, our methods must enable us to toggle between creativity and rigour, and they must support emergence, fluid meaning, and traceable synthesis in ways that catalyse agency, build credibility, encourage reflection and inspire re-imagination.
[1] I use the terms “tagging” (foresight process) and coding (grounded theory approach) interchangeably to describe the process of adding descriptors to scan hits.
Screenshot
Jen Stumbles is now in the final year of her Masters. Her academic work has explored environmental stewardship, education futures, digital ecosystems and social justice. A consistent thread throughout her work is the exploration of how technology can scaffold both rigorous research and human imagination. As she continues to develop more systematic approaches to strategic futures intelligence, understanding the right role for technology is something she thinks a lot about.
