At Kolba lab here in Armenia we have been testing foresight, trying to gauge its potential in shaping the UN’s strategy in Armenia (the UNDAF) and in supporting the design of future development programs. In this post we share with you our experiences.
Our ambition was to create a sample map of the future of Armenia as imagined by Armenians. With futurescaper we created a questionnaire asking what participants thought were the most important trends in Armenia today, how those trends might evolve in 5 years, and then again in 20 years. We then asked how those trends might interact with the trends that other participants had identified. We also asked users what should be done to manage these trends and who should be responsible for this.
We decided to send out the survey in three phases, each one building upon the last. Phase one gave respondents open space to define the trends that they thought to be important. Phase two gave a set list to choose from, compiled on the basis of the answers from the first phase.
What did we discover? Here’s a few of our key findings to date:
- High levels of outmigration is seen as the most likely future scenario.
- Environmental issues are not perceived as the no. 1 challenge of the future, by anyone.
- The government is far and away seen as the only body capable of doing anything about Armenia’s issues.
- Corruption is an issue in all spheres.
These results are not paradigm-shaking. They’re not meant to be. Foresight is intended only to complement existing development initiatives, providing a more grounded way of thinking about the future, and using crowdsourcing platforms like futurescaper we can make development projects more inclusive to all areas of society, occasionally uncovering areas that need more work, or potential blind-spots lying around the corner.