......announcement

E-Strategies International Partners with Foresight Canada

What is Strategic Foresight?
The integrated, reflexive and conscious capacity to see, think through and do what needs to be done NOW in light of the trajectory-altering implications of the signals of contextual change, while there is still time to act creatively and pro-actively – before hidden opportunities are lost and unseen threats have become crises.

Company Profile
Foresight Canada is Canada’s largest full-service strategic foresight organization; a new constellation of Canada’s most able futures researchers and strategic foresight practitioners. We are the premier Canadian think tank for strategic research into the many dimensions, drivers, dynamics, depths and implications of long-term societal change, evolution and transformation. We
have a growing global reputation and world-wide network of colleagues.

Our Services
Operate a Canadian strategic foresight network that creates easy access to resources, conferences, training events, a research data-base, organizations that practice or use foresight and foresight professionals in Canada and the world.

WE.....

• Offer free advice by phone or e-mail to deal with questions and uncertainties that can be dealt with relatively quickly.
• Advise, coach and guide those who are less experienced with foresight and futures research processes, e.g. critiquing draft RFPs, project proposals and organizational designs for internal foresight groups.
• Make presentations and undertake briefings on strategic foresight and on the future of a wide variety of topics.
• Conceive, design and manage both small and substantial strategic foresight and futures research projects and events, using a wide variety of methods and processes.
• Conceive, design and facilitate a wide variety of strategic dialogues and learning experiences for groups, organizations and whole communities, e.g. learning journeys, think tanks and scenario creation.
• Teach strategic foresight and train foresight professionals. For example, we offer public and in-house training workshops across Canada: Strategic Foresight, Creating Strategic Scenarios,
  Complexity and Systems Thinking, The Power of Connected Community, and Clear, Logical and Critical Thinking.
• Encourage and nurture the capacity of organizations to practice strategic foresight.
  

Typical Projects

• Canmore Visioning Project: We contributed substantially to the conception, design and
  facilitation of a ten month project sponsored by the Mayor and Council of Canmore. The Mining
  The Future project involved a critical mass of adult citizens in the work of exploring the forces
  driving change, engaging in sustained dialogue with one another and developing a vision
  statement of a preferred future for Canmore to 2025.
• FaithLife Financial: We designed and facilitated a one-day workshop that introduced the
  Board and management of this organization to the work of shaping their own future through the
  practice of strategic foresight.
• Alberta Education: We designed and facilitated a ½ day workshop which engaged the
  critical stakeholders and the senior management of the Ministry in a strategic dialogue on the
  forces shaping the long-term future of Education in Alberta and their implications for that future.
• Mountain Equipment Co-op: We coached and advised the Futures Committee of the Board
  and their consultants regarding appropriate methods to use in a two year strategic foresight
  initiative.
• The National Research Council of Canada: We won an open competition to identify and
  research: (1) the complex, swampy and strategic issues that Canada and the world will face by
  2020, (2) the type of technologies that will be required to deal with such issues and (3) the
  national culture and support systems that Canada must develop in order to attend to such issues
  and utilize such technologies.
• Alberta Environment: We won an open competition to develop the methodologies and
  design for an 18 month, citizen engagement project that will develop an integrated fifty-year
  strategy for the landscapes of southern Alberta.
• Alberta Environment: We are training departmental staff, over several months, to see, think
  and use a variety of systems methods.
• Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs: We briefed senior managers
  on strategic foresight, advised them on the establishment of an internal foresight unit and
  conducted a ½ foresight think tank on the emerging bio-economy.
• Dublin Institute of Technology: We designed and facilitated a ½ day strategic dialogue on
  the nature of strategic foresight and the value and characteristics of a strategic foresight network
  for Ireland.
• Justice Canada: We contributed to the design and keynoted the 2007 Retreat of the Justice
  Canada Policy Retreat.
• Libraries and Archives Canada: We collaborated on the conception, design and
  facilitation of a 2 ½ day workshop on “Knowledge Institutions in the 21st Century.”

Mode of Client Engagement

Our commitment and practice is to work in ways that model and are consistent with the emerging future. In this way, the mode of our work, as well as its content, prepares us for the future. This means that it is not enough that objectives are met or exceeded. Rather, success, for us, includes your learning. If your capacity to understand and
utilize high-quality foresight information is not increased, we have failed. For this reason, Foresight Canada works collaboratively with client organizations. We want the best individuals in both organizations to undertake the required work in a spirit of true partnership and mutual learning.

Our Global Network

The best foresight practitioners and futures-researchers in Canada and the world are our friends and colleagues. Some are in such institutions as the:

• Association of Professional Futurists
• Australian Futures Institute
• Canadian Defence Academy
• Cognitive Edge
• COST Action 22
• Finnish Futures Academy
• Foresight Office, National Science
  Advisor, Canada
• Global Business Network
• Institute for Prospective Technological
  Studies
• International Futures Forum
• Meridian Institute for Leadership,
  Governance and the Future
• New Zealand Futures Trust
• Proteus and Proteus Canada
• UN University’s Millennium Project –
  FC is the Canadian node of the MP
• World Academy of Art and Science
• World Business Academy
• World Future Society
• World Futures Studies Federation
  

The Vision We Serve
By 2025, Canada is acknowledged as the world's leading pioneer of conceiving and co-creating
new ways of living that are deeply aligned with the emerging charter of the 21st Century. We are
admired around the world for our courageous and explicit commitment to this history-altering
project...
We are a source of hope and encouragement...
We are partners of choice...
We are the most future-savvy and influential small jurisdiction in the world. The best of the
world's best willingly come to live here in order to invest their lives and resources in pioneering a
great 21st Century culture -- a culture so exciting that our children and grandchildren have reasons
to stay!

Contact us for more information, examples, testiomonials and a discussion of what is possible.
Bob Gardiner
President, E-Strategies International
403-807-1213
Email: bob.gardiner@eleadership.ca