Creative Foresight Space and the Futures Window: Using visual weak signals to enhance anticipation and innovation

This paper presents a new method, the Futures Window (FW), where visual weak signals are used to trigger futures thinking and innovation in organisations [1]. Weak signals are signs anticipating or pointing to possibly emerging new issues. Weak signals can be perceived through all five human senses: they can be seen, heard, smelled, felt or even tasted. Visual weak signals are weak signals shown in a visual form. They can be represented as images: photos, paintings, drawings, video clips, etc. [2]. The method used by the Futures Window is to display weak signals in a visual form as a slide show on a large screen with the aim of encouraging people to anticipate and innovate futures. The Futures Window could be a central tool to be used in Creative Foresight Spaces (CFS).1 The concept of CFS is offered as one way of responding to the growing demand for innovation in corporations and work organisations. The FW method was tested at VTT Technical Research Centre (http://www.vtt.fi/) in Finland in two pilots in 2006–2007. A survey was conducted to gather employee's opinions of the FW experiments. The results show that employees considered the FW positively and they confirmed that it stimulated futures thinking. The results of this study are encouraging for further developing the Futures Window as a key element of CFS. This article will present the concept of Creative Foresight Spaces in detail together with its possible applications.