Strategic Foresight
Products | Services | Tools
Strategic Foresight
Products | Services | Tools
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Strategic Foresight
Products | Services | Tools
Horizon Scanner
Horizon Scanner
Product Label: AI powered Big Data Software
Features built-in automated horizon scanning, detection of signals of change, and quantification of their impact.
Utilizes 70% open data (localized versions) and up to 100% (HS Global), including unconventional data sources.
3 Horizon Scanners Products, one global and two localized versions.
Brief
The Horizon Scanner (HS) is an AI-powered big data analytics suite with plug-and-play capabilities, tailored to its deployment context. HS Global, powered by open LLMs/MMLs, aggregates data from the four UNDP regions: Africa, Arab States, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean, providing a bird’s-eye view and focusing on key regional indicators. When deployed locally, it offers deeper, more in-depth analytics for the country, integrating with other platforms within the organization's digital ecosystem and with partners for comprehensive analysis.
HS excels in automating change detection, quantifying impacts, generating evaluation insights, and identifying threats and opportunities. Currently, there are plans being considered for deploying the HS in additional countries.
IFTF Foresight Talk: Automated Horizon Scanning to Monitor Changing Systems with Watch Here (📍 IFTF Palo Alto, Silicon Valley, California)
📍 Sudan 📍 Egypt
Feature2_ProgrammaticSimulation_Interventionsmapping_SHS.movSudan Horizon Scanner (SHS)
My Role: Creator and Product Designer
As the creator and lead product designer, I drove the strategic vision and led the full lifecycle of this innovative software solution, from R&D and strategic collaborations to deployment. I ensured its user-friendly interface and adaptability aligned with Human Rights and SDGs, serving UNDP and stakeholder goals. Concurrently, I managed fund mobilization, team recruitment, and budget oversight, driving the project's strategic and operational success through key partnerships.
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Identified problems and how the Horizon Scanner suit addresses them:
The following are the identified problems that the Horizon Scanner has been designed and built to solve, along with the corresponding solutions.
1. Fragmented Data Landscape:
- Solution: The platform consolidates all available data into a comprehensive, categorized, and prioritized repository. It establishes a one-stop-shop, future-proofing data accessibility for the organization.
2. Costly and Time-Consuming Data Collection:
- Solution: The built-in feature for data requests, automated questioning protocols, and innovative tools like API integration, wizard features, and drop boxes streamline communication between organizations. The platform provides proxy indicators developed from available data, recommends data collection when necessary, resulting in a significant 65% reduction in time and costs based on previous trials.
3. Conflicting Data Sources:
- Solution: The platform centralizes all data sources, offering an additional reliability matrix and triangulation according to organizational guidelines, ensuring data consistency and coherence.
4. Enhancing Data Literacy:
- Solution: The user-friendly design (UX) of the platform ensures seamless usage, supplemented by training initiatives, fostering enhanced data literacy among staff.
5. Financial Constraints in Data Positioning:
- Solution: The platform overcomes financial constraints by deploying analytics power through algorithm development and AI-backed mechanisms. It harnesses the potential of existing data, providing new insights and optimizing data collection requests for strategic positioning.
Key Product Features:
- Customization:
Tailor the system to your specific needs by seamlessly incorporating on-demand features.
- Interrogatable Nature:
Dive deep into analysis and customization with the software's user-friendly and easily interrogatable with existing ERP systems.
- Real-world Applicability:
Tested through two integration experiments and five extensive pilots in Sudan (3 to 9 months each), the software has evolved based on user feedback. Insights from these trials have guided the completion and successful launch of the pilot phase for expansion in Egypt.
Strategic Collaborations:
In partnership with UNDP's Regional Bureau for Arab States (RBAS), the software is to go through its second integrability test with eMonitor+, an AI-powered elections monitoring and fake news detection system. This collaboration enhances the software's capabilities, solidifying its position as a comprehensive solution for horizon scanning and risk management.
Current Phase (scale-up):
Localization of the software and the development of on-demand features are currently underway in Egypt in collaboration with UNDP partners, including the government. Our software employs a data-driven approach to ensure relevance and up-to-date functionality, actively supporting horizon scanning efforts in the country. This phase reflects our dedication to practical implementation and the software's real-world impact.
Communications and Outreach:
- Delivered over 30 public addresses to UNDP global networks and partners through Data Thursdays, Yammer, and multiple seminars.
- Collaboration requests were received from various country offices, government agencies, private sector entities, and other stakeholders in Egypt and Sudan.
- Presentations and outreach were made to UNDP knowledge partners such as Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) and European Space Agency (ESA).
- Over 50 presentations, discussion sessions, testing sessions, and participatory design workshops were conducted with different partners, internally and externally, both nationally and internationally.
In Conclusion:
The Horizon Scanner (HS) is an off-the-shelf software suite that revolutionizes horizon scanning with built-in automation, empowering users to identify and assess emerging risks and opportunities. This innovative tool offers a data-driven solution, leveraging segmented data to generate insightful analyses, significantly reducing costs and time in data collection by up to 65%. The software's automated detection of opportunities and threats streamlines processes, facilitating new projects and interventions. With its adaptability, interrogatable nature, and successful integrations, HS serves as a valuable asset for enhancing organizational decision-making.
Multiple Futures Platform
Multiple Futures Platform
Product Label: Data Analytics Platform for Futures Scenario Building
A platform leveraging citizen science, crowdsourced information, and open data to generate future scenarios, monitor changes in public narratives, and facilitate communication between experts, communities of practice, public intellectuals, and the community.
Multiple Futures Platform Intro Webinar (Arabic) Watch Here
📍 Sudan
SKSWarSituationRoom_SudanFutures_Jan2023PPT2.0.pdfUnlocking the power of innovation in conflict resolution, the Sudan's Multiple Futures Platform software tool is the latest initiative from the Sudanese Knowledge Society's War Situation Room. This cutting-edge product revolutionizes scenario building with a fresh methodology, capturing the public pulse, quantifying signals of change impact, and assisting policymakers in effective peacebuilding.
My Role: Creator and Product Designer
As creator and product design lead, I manage product development and foster a community of innovators for open-source contributions.
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Identified Challenges and Solutions Mechanisms:
1. Polarization and Fragmented Opinion Outlets:
- Solution: The platform addresses this issue by identifying polarized opinion outlets and collecting data from diverse sources. It recognizes that public platforms with clashing opinions make up only 25% of the competing thoughts and opinions, emphasizing a comprehensive approach.
2. Constraints in Scenario Building Due to War-Induced Limitations:
- Solution: In the face of war-related constraints, the platform optimizes scenario building by leveraging online data. It automates the majority of the process, incorporating data and strategically leaving only the human element, redefining the data collection process. This is achieved by producing scenarios and reaching out to people to confirm, deny, and edit, thereby lowering the engagement barrier in scenario building.
Key Features:
- Comprehensive Scenario Building:
Our tool addresses challenges arising from common scenario-building practices, particularly in the context of the complexities introduced by the Sudanese war.
- Real-Time Narrative Analysis:
Experience semi-real-time detection and identification of crucial features within dynamic public narratives, emphasizing a keen understanding of fake news—from its creation and dissemination to potential effects, whether intuitive or non-intuitive.
Distinguishing Foresight:
Ever wondered how foresight and our future scenarios differ from traditional strategy scenarios? The answer lies in purpose, scope, and methodology. Traditional scenario building is often confined to short timelines, focusing on situational analysis. In contrast, our strategic foresight-driven future scenario building is a dynamic process, pushing imaginations beyond present atrocities to capture hopes, dreams, and worst fears. Realistic constraints emerge during the analysis stage, steering towards strategic foresight directions for building desired futures and preparing for less desirable ones.
Explore Further:
SKS War Situation Room: Learn More
Future X
Future X
Product Label: Video Game
An edutainment role-playing game (RPG) designed to address governance challenges. The core of the game focuses on elections, using foresight and future thinking in its gameplay.
📍 Sudan
Future X: Innovative Solutions for Governance Challenges
Future X, an avant-garde initiative, stands as a comprehensive solution addressing governance challenges, including voter education, electoral complexities, and broader governance concerns particularly youth and women representation. At its core is a serious game on elections using foresight and future thinking in its gameplay.
My role: Creator and Product Designer
Driven by the critical voter education need identified in UNITAMS' NAM assessment, I conceptualized and led the end-to-end development of this initiative. As the creator and project lead, I managed stakeholder relationships, partnership strategies, and all lifecycle phases, ensuring alignment with Human Rights and SDGs to meet UNDP and stakeholder goals. I also oversaw fund mobilization, team recruitment, and budget management, achieving strategic success in enhancing voter education.
Link to Design Workshop Report
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