3 PATTERNING
3 PATTERNING
Phase 3. Patterning- Including new perspectives and forecasting
This third phase is a very exciting one, where the perspective is shifted from understanding the now to what might happen in the future. Drawing further on the identified pivotal points and trends, patterns can be drawn and meaningfully projected in the future. Models that produce algorithmic forecasts can play a helpful role in this phase, but can at the same time never substitute for the need to perform foresighting activity through bringing together different actors’ reasoning, discussion, and engage in a collaborative exercise of‘ making sense’. Often models lack precisely this information that has been identified in phase 2, and therefore fail to recognize the trends in time for being able to react rapidly and avoid a delayed response. So this phase is also about using the knowledge gained in the first two phases in an open, collaborative and creative process, which maps what is happening and what might happen‘ if’. Here, a wide range of actors should be invited in order to step outside of what has been thought before.
Tasks to take in this phase could be:
Task 3-1: Identify a rich set of different actors who can provide insight and perceptions on bigger patterns of change. This can be actors from companies, universities, the civil society, grassroot movements, NGOs, etc. To find the right actors it might be important to analyse carefully what initiatives in the fields of interest are already on-going and who is driving them( that might be a crucial factor to connect to them afterwards). Engage in dialogue with them, bringing up in the discussions:
Task 3-1-1: Perspectives and trends and results of forecasting exercises, Task 3-1-2: Where the biggest gaps in our knowledge and thinking are, Task 3-1-3: What desired outcomes could be, Task 3-1-4: Which experiments could live up to the trends and scenarios and or even have a strong enough leverage effect to alter them, Task 3-1-5: Other important results from phases 1 and 2. Process the results from these meetings into shared, common knowledge, that is fed back to the involved actors.
Task 3-2: Engage in dialogue with citizens on the same issues( including the processed knowledge from expert meetings). Process the results from these meetings into publicly available documents, further building up shared, common knowledge.
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