Three Horizons: The Patterning of Hope

Bill Sharpe

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Three Horizons is a simple, intuitive framework for thinking about the future. But it is about much more than simply stretching our thinking to embrace the short, medium and long term. Three Horizons is a prompt for developing a 'future consciousness' - a rich, multi-faceted awareness of the future potential of the present moment.
This book explores how to put that awareness to work, so we can create the futures we aspire to. It first outlines the Three Horizons framework and practices, including case studies of its application in community development, education and healthcare. The final section explores Bill Sharpe's intuition "that we have... a far deeper capacity for shared life than we are using, and that we are suffering from an attempt to know our way into the future instead of live our way". Here he outlines the potential of future consciousness as a shared cultural practice to guide society towards a third horizon that is the patterning of our mutual hopes.

Book Details

Publisher: Triarchy Press Ltd
Publish Date: Jun 16th, 2020
Pages: 150
Language: English
Edition: undefined - 0002
Dimensions: 8.50in - 5.50in - 0.41in - 0.53lb
EAN: 9781911193869
Categories: • Future Studies• Organizational Development• Organizational Behavior

About the Author

Sharpe, Bill: - "Bill was previously a Research Director at Hewlett-Packard's corporate labs in Bristol, UK. He joined HP Laboratories in 1985, becoming one of the first HP Laboratory Directors outside the US. Early work in Bristol provided the impetus for him to set up the Personal Systems Lab that led HP's early work in the emerging world of smart consumer products, mobile computing and digital imaging. Bill then took an assignment in the USA for two years to lead the Internet Solutions Operation of HP's Laserjet Business through the transition to Web. Back in Bristol Bill set up new mechanisms for coupling HP Labs to the creation of HP's new information appliance businesses. This work led him to co-found the Appliance Studio in 1999 as an independent company, delivering innovation to a wider commercial audience. Having created a range of new product ideas for clients, in particular new business in digital signage for Steelcase Inc (www.wizardwebsigns.com), the Studio launched its own start-up Lucid Signs. With the sale of Lucid Signs Bill moved on to focus entirely on personal research and consulting. Early in his career, Bill took an active role in UK government research through his work with the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) and Advanced IT (Alvey) programs. As a member of the Programme Directorate at Alvey - a programme designed to foster R&D between industry and academia - Bill co- coordinated research into intelligent knowledge-based systems. Bill received a MA in Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, England, specialising in Maths, Physics and Experimental Psychology. He earned an MTech in Computer Science from Brunel University."

Williams, Jennifer: - Jennifer Williams is an American artist based in London, UK where, in 1977, she founded the Centre for Creative Communities (CCC). As well as the CCC work, Jennifer works as a freelance artist and as a specialist in social change processes. Jennifer's interest in IFF is in collaborative projects that link learning with creative practice, social inclusion and community development. Besides maintaining an active schedule of public speaking and writing for journals, in recent years she has developed a specialist role as artist-in-residence at conferences, courses and extended processes such as Glasgow's Civic Conversation. Jennifer has written books on topics including cultural exchange, the arts and urban regeneration and cross sector collaboration. Jennifer's artwork, mainly visual, ranges from hand made books, cutouts, photography, illustration and printmaking to the making of masks. Prior to moving to the UK, Jennifer ran a touring puppet theatre known as Williams Toy Theatre, which was awarded a number of distinctions from the international puppet community.

Praise for this book

How can an eclectic group of experts, with very different worldviews, come to a shared vision for the future? Using the Three Horizons framework, skilled facilitators achieved the seemingly impossible and enabled the Carnegie Commission for Rural Community Development to agree a compelling, inspiring and hopeful blueprint for the future of rural communities. Now Bill Sharpe reveals the full potential for this way of thinking to generate practical hope in all kinds of complex policy areas. Kate Braithwaite, Operations Director, UnLtd

Every so often a new futures method comes along that opens up new ways of seeing the future. Three Horizons is such a method. It links the present to possible futures and embodies ways of identifying strategic and innovation challenges. Bill Sharpe, one of the Three Horizons pioneers, has written a valuable primer on its theory and emerging practice. Andrew Curry, The Futures Company

Three Horizons provides a valuable tool for understanding the complexity hidden in past trends and the choices always implicit in the apparent determinism of future possibilities. An intelligent approach to seeing into the future demands both insight into the underlying forces driving surface events and the imagination to know that what appears self-evident may be only the result of a pattern of logic that fails to take fully into account the future play of those forces. Bill Sharpe's book helps us break out of the Newtonian deterministic thinking that so often blinds us to the choices we have made and reveals our power to alter them. Garry Jacobs, Chairman and CEO of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences

We need to pass from worrying about the future to constructively engaging upon its creation. For all those interested in this task, this book delivers a powerful way of thinking about that future in qualitatively different horizons. If we want transformation to be more than just an aspiration, then we need to position it and to understand the dilemmas that define progress towards a better society. This book helps with that positioning and puts discipline into the process of foresight. Professor Peter Kawalek, Manchester Business School

Three Horizons is more than a tool to describe the Litany of change. It's also a way to surface different perspectives on an issue in a very overt way, and to move beyond those seemingly intractable perspectives to collaborative ways of thinking about possible futures, or 'holding transformational dialogue which informs our action in the complexity of the present while respecting the unknowability of the future... Maree Conway, Founding Partner: The Centre for Australian Foresight, writing in The Association of Professional Futurists' Compass Newsletter.

'Three Horizons: The Patterning of Hope' by Bill Sharpe is a tremendous book for anyone who works on profound change. ...My key takeaway: rather than aiming for distant, definitive visions, we would be better to act from a shared awareness of the future potential in this present moment. David Bent, Social entrepreneur and consultant to the UK Cabinet Office