Bouncecasting: a seminar gaming approach to foresight
ISSN: 1463-6689
Article publication date: 6 August 2021
Issue publication date: 6 October 2021
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present “Bouncecasting,” a seminar gaming foresight approach useful for examining “wicked problems” where the path to the future is uncertain and malleable and where major stakeholders may have different preferences for different futures. The approach gets its name because it goes back and forth between forecasting and backcasting, provides for give and take among different groups of stakeholders and creates and compares multiple scenarios depicting plausible futures.
Design/methodology/approach
After defining Bouncecasting, presenting its main features and providing a recommended way of conducting Bouncecasting studies, the approach is illustrated by four Bouncecasting projects conducted between 1998 and 2004.
Findings
The four projects taken together show that Bouncecasting can be used to address a range of wicked problems in a practical way. The projects considered in sequence show the evolution of the method.
Originality/value
Bouncecasting is a way of doing foresight that examines in an integrated way multiple characteristics of a policy problem, thereby providing promising solutions for complex issues. Although there have been over a dozen Bouncecasting studies conducted by the author and different sets of colleagues, this is the first general description of the approach.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Bouncecasting evolved through a sequence of seminar games I conducted, first at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, CA, then at RAND Europe in the Netherlands, and most recently at Reed College, Portland, OR. Colleagues who provided feedback and insights that helped me in the development of the approach include Sylvia Anton, Maarten Botterman, Erik Frinking, Edwin Horlings, Lise Klautzer, Andreas Ligtvoet, Mirjam van het Loo, Vladislav Mankov, Odette van de Riet, William Schwabe, John Setear, Robert Thomson, Silke Tönshoff, and Janneke Vader. The author has benefitted in this paper from critical readings by some of those colleagues, as well as Kathia Emery, Marta Ferraz, David Kanouse, William Pryor, and D. Robert Worley.
Citation
Kahan, J.P. (2021), "Bouncecasting: a seminar gaming approach to foresight", Foresight, Vol. 23 No. 6, pp. 613-627. https://doi.org/10.1108/FS-02-2021-0060
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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