La prospective

French term for 'the prospective approach', or, futures studies as practiced in France. Draws on organizations such as Futuribles and the work of Michel Godet and others. This tradition is conceptually and methodologically sophisticated; it has many contemporary uses in organizational development, strategic management, and scenario planning. It is used for strategic activities in the public as well as the private sector, and underscores the need to link any future-oriented activity or project to action today in order to make an impact (“shaping the future”). Scenario methods, for example, have become a more widely used process in policy making in some European countries. Godet and Roubelat (2003) say: “In the late fifties, French philosopher, manager and civil servant Gaston Berger proposed the use of the word prospective to emphasize the importance of a future oriented attitude. For Gaston Berger, the prospective attitude meant to look far away, because la prospective is a long term preoccupation, to look breadthwise, to take care of interactions, to look in depth, to find the factors and trends that are really important, to take risks, because far horizons can make us to change our long term plans, to take care of the mankind, because la prospective is only interested in human consequences. In this definition, we find the principles which are underlying current works on complexity. “Although the world is changing, the direction of this change is uncertain. La prospective does not claim to eliminate this uncertainty through illusory prediction, but aims to reduce it as far as possible, and to make decisions based as little as possible on hypothetical futures. Thus, the first aim of La prospective is to illuminate the choices of the present in the light of possible futures. Good forecasts are not necessarily those which are realised, but those which lead to action so as to avoid the dangers and arrive at the desired objective.”