Futures Directorate

The Futures Core of the Smith School

The Futures Directorate, led by Programme Director Dr Angela Wilkinson, plays a distinctive and important role as the core of the Smith School. It is based on methodologies developed at Rand Corporation, at Shell, and in the British Government under the leadership of the School’s Director, Professor Sir David King. These methodologies focus on building the foundations needed to develop and leverage informed and actionable foresight relevant to realising the role of enterprise in understanding, addressing and transforming environmental changes and sustainability challenges.

Low predictability and turbulent changes currently taking precedence in the world have revealed the limits of conventional, forecast-based strategy-, planning- and policy-approaches. In appreciating and addressing environmental changes and challenges there is a need to deal with complex, interconnected issues which transcend political borders, cultural power structures and industrial sectors. In tackling these it is both pertinent and timely to explore the role of enterprise with the environment, and to harness perspectives of the future to clarify what can and should be done today.

In contrast to efforts focussed on learning about the future, our activities emphasise the power of learning with futures to reveal and test the assumptions about the future that shape today’s actions and decision making.

Overview of Activities

The Futures Directorate was established in May 2010 and combines education and engagement, with research into and using futures methods. It provides a space in which the Research Areas of the School can come together with public-private partnerships to address challenges in a practically effective manner using futures thinking. This is achieved both through a series of programmes and through collaboration on smaller research projects funded by philanthropy, Research Councils and Foundations, private sector companies, and Government departments.

Research ‘using’ futures: The in-depth programmes conducted by the Futures Directorate each engage upwards of 50 experts and typically take two years to complete. The choice of programme is advised by the School’s Partnership Board. The first programme is on Low Carbon Mobility, with possible themes for further programmes including: freshwater water security; valuing ecosystems services; and marine enterprise.

Each programme is self-financed through a Stakeholder Board. The added value of each programme focuses on the new ideas, new relationships and new intentions needed to catalyse and sustain collaboration towards more rapid transitions to a low carbon and more sustainable world.

Research ‘into’ futures practices is also conducted with the aim of clarifying what works and why, and realising value and extending practices for actionable foresight.  Current projects include a study of the 40 year history of scenarios in Royal Dutch Shell to clarify how practices evolved over time and the value and benefits they delivered. Another project explores the WBCSD Vision 2050 Initiative to clarify the link between choice of futures methods and expected and realised benefits.

The SSEE is also the co-host of the bi-annual Oxford Futures Forum. The OFF brings together 70 participants – leading scenario practitioners and scholars from across the world in generative dialogue with another field of practice and scholarship. The aim of each Forum is to clarify confusions and misunderstanding about scenarios work. The first Forum resulted in the publication of two books. The third Forum (OFF11) will take place in April 2011 in Oxford and brings together the communities of complexity and scenarios.

The Futures Director is also one of the core faculty (and former Director) of the Oxford Scenarios Programme, one of the Executive Education offerings of the Said Business School.