Policymakers have wrestled for decades with understanding the changing world around them and anticipating future developments. In this time of accelerated geopolitical change, those who have early warning of future events can gain important decision advantages. This paper outlines a new exploratory approach to futures and anticipatory planning, called integrated strategic forecasting (ISF).
ISF builds on two familiar methodologies used in government, academia, and the private sector by those who support policy creation and decisionmaking to imagine and plan for possible futures. These are scenario planning—a structured process of developing plausible alternative futures—and crowdsourced forecasting—which harnesses the “wisdom of the crowd” to generate probabilities of future trends and events. The authors explore a central question: How can the integration of scenario planning and crowdsourced forecasting enhance decision advantage?
The authors provide an overview of the two foundational methodologies and then describe the new combined methodology, ISF, which capitalizes on their complementary strengths. They outline a five-step approach to ISF and apply it to an emerging technologies use case. Finally, they suggest future avenues for deploying and strengthening this approach, and identify ways in which ISF can better help policymakers map and prioritize uncertain future developments.
This research was independently initiated using gifts for research at RAND’s discretion from philanthropic supporter Coefficient Giving, as well as funding from RAND’s independent R&D and income from operations. The research was conducted by RAND Global and Emerging Risks.
This publication is part of the RAND expert insights series. The expert insights series presents perspectives on timely policy issues.
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