Introducing the Oxford Futures Forum
In October 2002, in celebration of 30 years of scenario practice within the Royal Dutch Shell, a meeting was convened in London to enable reflection on evolving practices in scenario thinking and planning and to look forward at scenarios and scenario practices for the next 30 years. Participants included some 110 practitioners from around the world and included a mix of ‘old hands’ and ‘new blood’ – the latter through representatives of the next generation of practice.
Picking up on the demand for an international home for scenario thinking and planning expressed by many participants during the Shell Anniversary event, and in light of the persistent practice of and renewed interest in scenarios an Oxford-led group of “futures” practitioners and researchers decided to establish a bi-annual event aimed at clarifying theory of what works, when and why, in order to extending the effectiveness of scenario thinking and practice.
The 1st Oxford Futures Forum (OFF2005)
The first Oxford Forum, which was held in October 2005, was anchored on the 40th anniversary of the publication of Emery and Trist’s seminal paper, ‘The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments,’ in Human Relations. In that paper Emery and Trist laid out the concept of the turbulent field as a distinctive texture of the environment that depicted its most complex causality. They were also the first to offer field-referenced collaborative endeavours as a likely adaptive response to it. Their paper has been one of the most widely cited in the organizational sciences, and has been used in many different ways by a wide variety of scholars.
The first Oxford Futures Forum was successful in producing a lively two-day ‘strategic conversation’ among 70 participants from the communities of social ecologists and scenario thinkers. The outputs of OFF 2005 have been two books: (1) Scenarios for Success, published by Wiley in 2007, and (2) Business Planning for Turbulent Environments (tentative title), to be published by Earthscan in 2008.
The 2nd Oxford Futures Forum (OFF2008)
We were aiming for similar effective and quality outcomes from the second Forum (OFF2008) which took place in April 2008, in Oxford, and iwas themed on ‘scenarios and sensemaking’. Potential outcomes were anticipated to be in the form of research questions, joint publications and further networking and community building.
The participants visited the question of the relationship between scenarios and sensemaking: agreeing that there are clear connections between the two practices (for example, the combination of ongoing processes of sensemaking with the more episodic building of scenarios) and that these need to be made explicit and then built on. There was some discussion of the usefulness of setting up schemes for mentoring young practitioners. It was agreed that both communities of practice need to take greater advantage of the work done in other disciplines, where a number of the questions raised at this meeting have already been, or are being, extensively researched.
The 3rd Oxford Futures Forum (OFF2011)
As was the case with the prior two OFF events, OFF 2011 is by invitation only. It again will be held at Egrove Park, University of Oxford, on 18 - 19 April 2011, and will involve a maximum of 70 scholars and practitioners.
We are excited to explore the connections between complexity and scenarios; both approach in different ways the issue of how systems evolve dynamically in the future. OFF 2011 aims to join two established communities of thought and practice – the complexity community and the scenario community. Our intention is to make this 3rd event highly interactive, in the nature of a “strategic conversation”.
The Organising Committee for the OFF2011
Prof Rafael Ramirez
Fellow in Strategy & Director of the Oxford Scenarios Programme, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
Prof John Selsky
Associate Professor Management, University of South Florida Polytechnic and Associate Fellow, Executive Education, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
Dr Angela Wilkinson
Programme Director of the Futures Directorate, Smith School of Enterprise and Environment, University of Oxford
Dr Felix Reed-Tsochas
James Martin Lecturer in Complex Systems, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
Prof Diana Mangalagiu
Professor of Strategy at Reims Management School, France and Associate Professor at Smith School of Enterprise and Environment, University of Oxford
Roland Kupers
Associate Fellow, Smith School of Enterprise and Environment, University of Oxford
Rehan Khursheed
Research Assistant, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford