{"id":63579,"date":"2022-06-14T20:09:30","date_gmt":"2022-06-14T18:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/faq\/a-quoi-sert-la-prospective\/"},"modified":"2023-12-12T14:29:27","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T13:29:27","slug":"a-quoi-sert-la-prospective","status":"publish","type":"faq","link":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/faq\/a-quoi-sert-la-prospective\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Foresight for?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A foresight exercise may be prompted by any one of six major needs:<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n

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1. To have Interpretative Guides for Dealing with Major Change<\/h2>\n <\/div>\n
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This is the need that underlies most <\/strong>freely available foresight studies<\/strong>. The best-known are probably the reports entitled Global Trends<\/em> produced by the National Intelligence Council<\/strong> (the latest being Global Trends 2040<\/em><\/a> of March 2021).<\/p>\n

EU bodies (Commission<\/a> and Parliament<\/a>), branches of government (France Strat\u00e9gie<\/a>, l\u2019IRES au Maroc<\/a>, etc.) and many private organizations and think-tanks also produce such studies; the Vigie<\/a> reports or the articles in Futuribles<\/em><\/a> journal fall into this category.<\/p>\n

The aim is to provide interpretative guides<\/strong> for understanding and anticipating the major transformations of the contemporary world, and to prepare for them. But much work of this kind is also intended to exert influence.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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2. To Anticipate Risk through Monitoring and Early-Warning Systems<\/h2>\n <\/div>\n
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Most organizations need to anticipate the risks<\/strong> that are important for their activities. In this case, the role of foresight is to identify the critical events<\/strong> that may occur, to estimate the probability and time-scale of such events and, of course, to study the organization\u2019s vulnerability to them.<\/p>\n

The foresight method may then be developed to structure systems for anticipating and managing risks<\/strong>. Permanent foresight monitoring systems are developed in organizations whose core mission is risk management (internal and external security, health agencies, insurers), but also in entities that wish to limit their exposure to risks (companies, local or regional authorities etc.) or to prepare to confront them.<\/p>\n

Foresight then makes it possible:<\/p>\n