For several years we and our audiences at the Houston Foresight program thought we saw likely patterns in how domains evolve over time using archetypes and Three Horizons. (We use a customized version of Jim Dator’s Archetype technique (see Evolution of Framework Foresight.)
We finally got together and did the research, looking at historical scenario sets, identifying those using or aligning with the archetypes and seeing, with the benefit of hindsight, whether the domains did in fact follow a pattern along the three horizons. The paper has been through revisions and is still in the pipeline. [It is taking such a long time – peer review is broken, but that’s for another post.]
The most significant change to the original graphic is that the super-talented Denise Worrell lent her talents to re-designing (Denise is part of the research team along with myself, Andy Hines, Heather Benoit, Lavonne Leong, Laura Schlehuber, and Adam Cowart). We explicitly added the three horizons label. We already had put for the idea of two versions of transformation, and we have used it enough now to say – we like it and it’s here to stay. We should be able to share an example publicly soon (another piece stuck in a review process). Also added some shading and redesigned the log.
A little sneak preview of the research findings. The key purpose of the research is to see if there is a pattern in the flow of a domain through via the archetypes across the three horizons. There are two obvious candidates.
- Baseline > New Equilibrium > Transformation
- Baseline > Collapse> Transformation
Of these two, we thought the answer was obvious. We appear to be wrong. Care to guess? – Andy Hines
