GLOSSARYGlossary of Tools and Terms
Foresight Tools
U Process – The U-Process is a methodology for shifting of mental models and addressing highly complex challenges. It is both a cutting edge “social technology” and a distillation of ancient wisdom for generating breakthroughs. In using the U-Process, an individual or team undertakes three activities or movements: Sensing the current reality of the system of which they are part, carefully and in depth; Presencing and reflecting to allow their “inner knowing” to emerge about what is going on and what they have to do; and then Realizing, acting swiftly to bring forth a new reality.
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Scenario Planning – Scenario planning is a method for learning about the future by understanding the nature and impact of the most uncertain and important driving forces affecting our world. It is a group process that encourages knowledge exchange and development of mutual deeper understanding of central issues important to the future of a given area of interest. The goal is to craft a number of diverging stories by extrapolating uncertain and influential driving forces. The stories, together with the process of creating them, have the dual purpose of increasing the knowledge of a given environment/context and widening perceptions of possible future events.
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Learning Journeys – A “learning journey” is a highly immersive field trip process designed to shift mindsets and assumptions about future realities and possibilities. They can illuminate new strategic directions, jump-start innovation processes, contextualize risk, test brand positioning, enable better alignment within a team, connect different parts of the business, or open the minds of top talent. No two learning journeys are alike – each is customized to a particular organization/client’s context and needs.
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Systems Thinking – Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static “snapshots”. It assumes that in order to fully understand why a problem or element occurs and persists, one needs to understand the part in relation to the whole.
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Dialogue
World Café – the World Café is an innovative yet simple methodology and conversational process for hosting conversations about questions that matter. These conversations link and build on each other as people move between groups, cross-pollinate ideas, and discover new insights into the questions or issues that are most important in their life, work, or community. As a process, the World Café can evoke and make visible the collective intelligence of any group, thus increasing people’s capacity for effective action in pursuit of common aims.
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Open Space – In Open Space meetings, events and organizations, participants create inspired and customized meetings by managing their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a central theme of strategic importance. Open Space is known for its apparent lack of structure and welcoming of surprises. Yet an Open Space meeting or organization is actually very structured, but that structure is so perfectly suited for the people and the work at hand that it goes unnoticed in its proper role of supporting (and not blocking) best work.
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Work Spaces
Communities of Practice (COPs) – “Communities of practice” is an old idea with a new name and application for a world that increasingly requires people to work collaboratively outside conventional boundaries (organizations, sectors, disciplines or geography). The glue that binds COP members is a shared concern or passion for something they do, or want to learn how to do, and shared principles on how to work together. Communities of practice are more than social networks or ad hoc working groups of colleagues. Membership means a real commitment to the shared domain. Over time this often creates a shared competence that distinguishes COP members, as well as a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice.
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Action Research – Action research is a reflective process of progressive problem solving. It is led by individuals working in a team or a "community of practice" to improve the way they address issues and solve problems. Action research can also be undertaken by larger organizations or institutions, assisted or guided by professional researchers, with the aim of improving their strategies, practices, and knowledge of the broader work environment. Action research moves beyond the social science norm of outside experts sampling variables, and integrates moment-to-moment theorizing, data collecting, and inquiring as knowledge, patterns, and solutions emerge.
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Wikis – A wiki is a simple online database software that allows a group of people to collaboratively develop a Web site with no knowledge of HTML or other web languages. Anyone can add to or edit pages in a wiki – it is completely egalitarian, and pages are not connected hierarchically, but by hyperlinks between pages. Wikis are not static websites but rather seek to involve visitors in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration that constantly changes the website landscape.
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Innovation and Creativity
Creative Destruction – Creative destruction is the idea that in a healthy capitalist system, new ideas and technologies are constantly overtaking the old, tearing down previous economic and technological systems to make way for progress. The idea was popularized by Joseph Schumpeter’s 1942 book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, and has been used in reference to disruptive innovations such as the car, Xerox, and the PC. We also use the term in a broader sense to include social and ecological upheaval (Thomas Homer-Dixon writes on this) and the notion in resilience thinking that any process of destruction frees resources for new organization and innovations.
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"Serious Games" – Serious games refers to the use of cutting-edge entertainment technologies from the gaming industry to solve problems in areas as diverse as education, healthcare, national defense, homeland security, analytics, corporate management and more. Serious games are used to create educational experiences and tools for policy-makers that can help create positive change in our world.
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Project / Idea Prototyping – Prototyping is a method and mindset first developed by designers and now being usefully applied to all kinds of innovation. Prototyping is experiential problem solving; focused prototyping helps resolve small but critical problems one by one, and helps make complex tasks manageable. Prototyping is also a culture and a language, with a focus on making things happen, taking action and achieving some part of your goal. Prototyping as a design practice is commonly accepted in business as a way to facilitate innovation.
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Communications Tools
Web 2.0 / Social Media – The term "Web 2.0" describes the changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aim to enhance creativity, communications, secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-culture communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, video sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies.
Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information amongst human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction and the way information is presented depends on the varied perspectives and "building" of shared meaning among communities as people share their stories and experiences.
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Social Network Analysis – Social network analysis [SNA] is the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers, web sites, and other information/knowledge processing entities. The nodes in the network are the people and groups while the links show relationships or flows between the nodes. SNA provides both a visual and a mathematical analysis of human relationships.
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GLOSSARY
