Anticipatoy Governance: Introductory Reflections, Discussion

How can one improve the capacity of communities, organizations, and people to face future challenges? A possibility is to measure their awareness of possible, incoming changes. This paper describes the series of Future Indices (FI), an innovative tool that aims to measure the openness to the future of people, organizations and communities. The indices are meant to be easy and immediate to read (a number) and must allow comparisons between different realities. Following the logic of the HDI-Human Development Index, we will build a battery of indices, each one aimed at making different aspects of the theme visible. The indices follow the Anticipation Theory approach (Poli, 2017a, 2019a, 2019c) and are currently tested by Skopìa Srl.

In some respects, the FIs will be synthetic indices constructed from other indices. Some of the concepts underlining the FIs are widely discussed in the literature but are usually used without an actual prospect of the future. In other words, the component of anticipation is missing, the aspect that distinguishes the Ifs from other indices.
The FI battery includes three different indices, further subdivided into the community, organization and individual version. The three indices are: the Openness to the Future Index (OF), the Readiness for the Future Index (RF), and the Anticipation Index (AN). The presentation will sketch the main features of each index.