“Next generation futures systems will therefore have to address the synthesis and interpretation of results in a way that is more substantial and useful than most crowdsourcing solutions today. At the same time, they will also need to engage the social dynamics of participation more directly; why people contribute, what they get out of it, and how it factors into the final product (which will most likely be for a very different, paying, audience).”
“Parts of the product will be less ‘original’ or ‘insightful’ by today’s handmade standards, but this should free resources for richer analysis of depth and complexity. It is therefore possible that the ‘future of futures’ may resemble something akin to modern day psychotherapy; anyone will be able to get free (and possibly even accurate) advice from their horoscopes at the back of the newspaper. But professional, personalized service will still come from a cadre of expensive, highly trained, personally trusted advisors; even if the empirical validity of both may still be open to question.”
“Crowdsourced Futures” by Noah Raford in Future of Futures (Curry ed.)
Shaping Tomorrow is a UK company which enables “systematic, co-created, fast innovation & solution finding, competitive intelligence gathering, agile & resilient strategic foresight, forecasting, scenario planning, risk & change management to make better decisions today” » http://www.shapingtomorrow.com/
“Foresight Engine is about engaged foresight, not just crowd-sourced forecasts. It's about expanding our collective wisdom about the future more than it is about tapping the wisdom of the crowd for unexpected ideas. Sure, we do get unexpected ideas, but it's really about the shift from top-down analysis of the future by a few to bottom-up engagement with future issues by many. There's a valid place for crowd-sourced analysis of signals and data streams about the future. But Foresight Engine is intended as a tool for engaging people with issues of the future.”
http://www.iftf.org/what-we-do/foresight-tools/collaborative-forecasting-games/foresight-engine/
can potentially be applied to horizon scanning, scenario methods, scenario_building, etc+