Where next?

The Spotlight describes a very varied range of signals. Some may seem distant where you are. But everything connects; what’s happening faraway can alert you to opportunities and risks you might otherwise not notice, or which might only gradually be emerging.

The Spotlight aims to spark conversations that engage multiple perspectives, throwing a new or altered light on things. These might prompt you to think how similar signals of change could play out in your context, or to draw different conclusions.

This can help you incorporate a variety of futures into your work, becoming more anticipatory and more effective in the face of uncertainty.

Creating your own scenarios

One way to do this is by creating your own scenarios, or stories about possible futures. This doesn’t have to be complex, time-consuming, or involve many people. You can tell interesting stories about the future in various ways. They don’t have to be dry descriptions of the world, unless that’s the brief.
Scenarios help us imagine the texture of a future, particularly at a human or community scale. Creating them can be as simple as bringing together signals, trends and higher-level forces and describing how they might manifest in different places.

For the scenarios in this Spotlight, we did just that. For each scenario, we selected three themes. Then we imagined what might happen if they converged, and what a slice of that future might look like through a lens of intergenerational equity. (We used AI to frame out the basic story, then refined it.)

We ended up with three scenarios: a new organization to ensure the just use of resources in space; a new centre that leverages AI to bring generations together around common values; and innovations in legal and financial tools that support society. These represent just one way of looking at the convergence of selected themes.

We then zoomed in a little and explored each scenario in the form of a simple artefact—something mundane that might exist tomorrow as well as today: a three-year programme review, an opening speech, and a slice of a financial prospectus. Each is something familiar, yet helps bring the future story to life.

We encourage you to do the same—with a group or as a personal exercise. Select three themes from the Spotlight, consider them, and describe a piece of a future where they converge and interact. Imagine the impacts this future might have on development. Work backward from this future and imagine what it would take to get there. Illustrate it with something that might exist in that future, or a short story about someone in your scenario. Share with colleagues or partners and have a conversation. What did you learn? How might the world change? How might development change? How might you change the world?