The intent of this article is to shed light on some preference patterns of individuals who are involved in futuring efforts. In particular, the preference patterns of clients to collect helpful information for enhancing their knowledge of success factors in such efforts are addressed. These factors include:

Nature of future problems and opportunities

Probability of encountering future problems and opportunities

Inherent uncertainties about when and where future problems and opportunities may unfold

Thus, achievement in futuring efforts depends upon two important areas. One is to acquire helpful information that enhances knowledge of surrounding environment which in turn helps to resolve different uncertainties of future conditions. The other is to gain the right abilities to fully use such knowledge at the right time. Although we focus on the area of acquiring information, it is noteworthy that helpful knowledge without appropriate abilities cannot contribute to achievement. For instance, an individual who through regularly studying technology trends figures out that biotechnology is a promising field, yet has not the right abilities for this field cannot possibly benefit from such knowledge in the future. To the contrary, a software engineer who is virtually unaware of the potential changes in computing industry will probably have poor performance relative to a colleague who vigilantly monitor and follow the industry trends. Hence, helpful information and appropriate abilities together increase preparedness. Any individual who is more prepared to face future conditions can benefit from such conditions more than others. Therefore, more preparedness implies less regret.

It is a difficult and expensive task to collect information about existing realities, let alone about emerging realities. Moreover, to collect perfect information and thereby to provide perfect knowledge about the future conditions is, by definition, impossible. Nonetheless, the most important challenge of individuals who are involved in futuring efforts is to collect helpful information about the emerging realities and thus produce future-related knowledge as much as possible. Naturally an important question arises: Can we reliably understand and handle such realities in order to grasp their outline in advance even though their details are unknown today? The first step to answer it might be to categorize these emerging realities into problems and opportunities.

Between problems and opportunities there are no considerable differences in terms of the necessity to carefully think about them and to take the required measures to deal with them. They are distinguishable, however, in respect to whether they induce positive or negative effects on the mind. Problems discomfort while opportunities delight people. One reflects fears and threats and the other reflects wishes and hopes. People's attitude toward problems and opportunities may be utterly different. For example, some individuals prefer to avoid any kind of problems while others may prefer to face them in order to enjoy conquering them. Also, people based on their life experiences may always expect the next problem or the next opportunity. Often it is emphasized that opportunities, unlike problems, are not imposed on individual and they are always put on the agenda at will. Attitudes and mental processes influence the very recognition of problems and opportunities. It is quite possible that a specific subject could be a problem in the eye of individual A and an opportunity in the eye of individual B. For instance, sweeping changes in the top management of an organization is a potential problem for a conservative, practiced employee who is willing to preserve the status quo, while it is a potential opportunity for a newcomer who welcomes any radical change in the organization. In addition, optimism or pessimism in various forms, say, to assume that fortune favors only others or a strong belief in fatalism can keep even big opportunities unrecognized. All in all these biases point to the relativity in the nature of problems and opportunities. Thus, to examine preference patterns of individuals who do not produce future-related works it is better to use some metaphors which could induce concern and fear effects (hence problems) or hopes and happiness effects (hence opportunities) in their mind. Falling into a big hole and finding a treasure are examples of these metaphors. Although they do not represent real world problems and opportunities, they cause a response that is similar to what occurs in real world situations. Metaphors help to neutralize attitude biasing among different people such that we can assure that the categorization is not relative and enjoys sufficient stability.

People have to challenge several kinds of uncertainties when they try to grasp emerging problems and opportunities. These uncertainties include, though are not limited to, the following.

X) What are the nature and characteristics of future problems and opportunities?

Y) What are the likelihoods of appearing future problems and opportunities?

Z) When and where future problems and opportunities may unfold?

The above questions indicate three main fields for information collection in futuring efforts. Without doubt, as mentioned before, an objective of futuring efforts is to reduce unknowns and uncertainties associated with these fields through applying different methods and thereby to provide a piece of knowledge, even if imperfect, about the future conditions. Sometimes providing future-related knowledge is not much difficult due to the kind of system that is being addressed. For example, a scientist can easily forecast that the solar system will undergo profound changes nearly five billion years later due to the exhaustion of hydrogen fuel in the Sun such that it will definitely be impossible then to sustain life on the planet Earth. We can make this prediction because the solar system is a natural reality that obeys deterministic physical laws. However, any future-related statement about social systems that concerns, for example, the prospect of regional and international peace and war, especially in terms of when and where future problems and opportunities may unfold is prone to considerable errors. Social realities always follow stochastic laws and therefore any prediction about them is usually discouraged. In other words, resolving those uncertainties associated with when-where issues which we call them "inherent uncertainties" is extremely unrealistic in social systems.

Individuals who are involved in forecasting efforts usually try to predict future events with the help of information and often zero in on estimating probabilities and resolving inherent uncertainties. Examples include weather forecasts which aim to estimate the odds that tomorrow or next week there will be, say, snow showers in Los Angeles. In energy sector, too, people may try to forecast oil price fluctuations within next quarter, say, in the Middle East. Less inherent uncertainties and better specified probabilities in a future-related statement essentially imply a forecast. Often in forecast statements the nature, characteristics, and consequences of future problems and opportunities are taken for granted and there is little, if any, discussion about such details. Conversely, when future-related discussion is limited to the nature, characteristics and consequences of emerging realities and there is little, if any, attempt to estimate probabilities and to resolve when-where uncertainties, then a future-related statement essentially implies a foresight.

It is needless to say that a critical component of any careful long-term planning is the identification of future needs, requirements, weaknesses, strengths, and superiorities. To do this, individuals who are involved in long-term planning tend to reasonably surmise about the number, nature, characteristics and consequences of emerging problems and opportunities, thus they encourage and advocate foresight. A common feature of forecast and foresight statements is that they both articulate predictions. The former predicts mainly when-where issues while the latter predicts mainly nature-related issues.

Eliciting individuals' preference patterns for information collection provides important insights about whether they favor forecast, foresight, or both. Let us first clarify what we mean by preference patterns.

If two alternatives, say, A and B, are compared we have three different preference patterns as described below:

Questions:

3-   If you were offered to choose between the following two cases which one would you prefer (To answer write A, B, or C that means you are indifferent)

We can add several other questions to the above list. Obviously any further information associated with such questions which uncover implicit assumptions will enhance knowledge of the individual about the nature of likely problems and opportunities in this foggy woods, however, this kind of information is not necessarily helpful for estimating the likelihood of encountering, say, the wolf, or to know exactly when and where it may appear. Nevertheless, it seems that better preparedness to win the contest depends more on recognizing and understanding the nature of future problems and opportunities rather than on knowing the probability estimates and the when-where issues. On the other hand, in real world situations removing the inherent uncertainties, that is to remove the fog, if not impossible, is very difficult. Indeed, in real world futuring efforts to wait for a "clear climate" and to expect to know the exact time and place of future problems and opportunities is illogical.

Preference patterns of futurist experts for information collection can be elicited either by the foggy woods metaphor or by referring to their published works. Since there are difficulties in reaching a representative sample of this group and considering that there are already many references in futures studies, which are provided in various forms from reports to lectures, in the next step we examine the content of such published futuring efforts.

Here we can use content analysis to measure the frequency of forecast and foresight statements in future-related materials. We, in particular, examine those materials that are most suitable for use by the clients such as "Outlook" which is an annual report published by "World Future Society". It is presumed that any unit of text or information item in the Outlook is already a foresight statement to some extent because it must cover at least issues germane to the nature and specifications of future problems and opportunities. Although it is desirable to have an objective scale, like preference patterns in the foggy woods metaphor, to determine if a future-related unit of text favors forecast or foresight or both, we use a number of guidelines to separate forecast and foresight statements. The following questions reflect some of these guidelines.