Three Horizons: The Patterning of Hope

by Bill Sharpe

Overview

Three Horizons is a simple and intuitive framework for thinking about the future. The framework explains how people often manage to disagree so violently about their visions of the future and how to achieve them - and it offers a practical way to begin constructive conversations about the future at home, in organisations and in society at large. The three horizons are about much, much more than simply stretching our thinking to embrace the short, medium and long term. They offer a co-ordinated way of managing innovation, a way of creating transformational change that has a chance of succeeding, a way of dealing with uncertainty and a way of seeing the future in the present. In this beautifully illustrated book, Bill Sharpe introduces the Three Horizons framework as a prompt for developing a 'future consciousness' – a rich and multi-faceted awareness of the future potential of the present moment – and explores how to put that awareness to work to create the futures we aspire to.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781911193876
Publisher:	Triarchy Press Ltd
Publication date:	06/16/2020
Sold by:	INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	150
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Bill Sharpe is an independent researcher in science, technology and society. He was a research director at Hewlett Packard Laboratories where he led research into everyday applications of technology and introduced scenario methods to HP to support long-range research and innovation. Since leaving HP he has specialized in science, technology and policy studies for business strategy and public policy foresight. With a background in psychology he is particularly interested in drawing on leading edge research in cognition and systems thinking to find new ways of tackling complex problems. He is a member of International Futures Forum.

Table of Contents

Introduction PART I: THREE HORIZONS A Heated Conversation The Future in the Present The Three Horizons A Shared Future Consciousness PART II: THE PRACTICE OF FUTURE CONSCIOUSNESS Seeing Everything as Patterns Putting Ourselves in the Picture Convening the Future: From Mindsets to Perspectives PART III: JOURNEYS IN THREE HORIZONS Case Studies: Introduction Case Studies Case Studies: Summary Pushing out to Sea PART IV: THE PATTERNING OF HOPE Knowing and Living Stepping into Future Consciousness Hope Transformative Society Navigating on the Open Sea Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

How can an eclectic group of experts, with very different worldviews, come to a shared vision for the future? Using the Three Horizons framework, skilled facilitators achieved the seemingly impossible and enabled the Carnegie Commission for Rural Community Development to agree a compelling, inspiring and hopeful blueprint for the future of rural communities. Now Bill Sharpe reveals the full potential for this way of thinking to generate practical hope in all kinds of complex policy areas. Kate Braithwaite, Operations Director, UnLtd

Every so often a new futures method comes along that opens up new ways of seeing the future. Three Horizons is such a method. It links the present to possible futures and embodies ways of identifying strategic and innovation challenges. Bill Sharpe, one of the Three Horizons pioneers, has written a valuable primer on its theory and emerging practice. Andrew Curry, The Futures Company

Three Horizons provides a valuable tool for understanding the complexity hidden in past trends and the choices always implicit in the apparent determinism of future possibilities. An intelligent approach to seeing into the future demands both insight into the underlying forces driving surface events and the imagination to know that what appears self-evident may be only the result of a pattern of logic that fails to take fully into account the future play of those forces. Bill Sharpe's book helps us break out of the Newtonian deterministic thinking that so often blinds us to the choices we have made and reveals our power to alter them. Garry Jacobs, Chairman and CEO of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences

We need to pass from worrying about the future to constructively engaging upon its creation. For all those interested in this task, this book delivers a powerful way of thinking about that future in qualitatively different horizons. If we want transformation to be more than just an aspiration, then we need to position it and to understand the dilemmas that define progress towards a better society. This book helps with that positioning and puts discipline into the process of foresight. Professor Peter Kawalek, Manchester Business School

Three Horizons is more than a tool to describe the Litany of change. It's also a way to surface different perspectives on an issue in a very overt way, and to move beyond those seemingly intractable perspectives to collaborative ways of thinking about possible futures, or 'holding transformational dialogue which informs our action in the complexity of the present while respecting the unknowability of the future... Maree Conway, Founding Partner: The Centre for Australian Foresight, writing in The Association of Professional Futurists' Compass Newsletter.

'Three Horizons: The Patterning of Hope' by Bill Sharpe is a tremendous book for anyone who works on profound change. ...My key takeaway: rather than aiming for distant, definitive visions, we would be better to act from a shared awareness of the future potential in this present moment. David Bent, Social entrepreneur and consultant to the UK Cabinet Office

From the Publisher