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What's New - 10 December 2019

                                 
Main page
We have added a new cloud of top keywords and made that the default:

The existing drop-down options are still available.

Forecasts
In a new first for the service we have added the ability for you to instantly view:
Cycles: Discoveries | Fringe | Emerging | Maturity             
Signals: Warnings | Bubbles | Inflections | Shocks
Limits: Constraints | Dilemmas | Outcries | Extremes
These provide you knowledge about possible change and turning points that are out of sight and mind to others.

 
The previous text-based functions that were presented here have now moved under the ‘Intelligence’ option (See below).

Pie Charts

We have upgraded the existing Pie Charts to the same representation as our Spline Charts including an auto explanation of what is happening above the graphic.

We will be converting more of our metrics to this format in the next few months thus reducing human analysis time.

SWOT
The SWOT page now provides a drop-down to view Complexity, CLA, Scenarios and 3 Horizons in the same format as SWOT:

Intelligence
Some years ago, we began demoting Insights (Evidence and Data) in favour of presenting Forecasts (Information).  We have now completed this process by removing Insights from the main search box. Insights will still be directly available from every Forecast link.

We are similarly working to demote solely textual Forecasts in favour of Visual representations (Knowledge). This has now been achieved in Forecasts and Metrics.

The next step in this process moves the ‘Story’ and ‘Controls’ under the ‘Intelligence’ option without any loss of functionality.

 
Trend Alert
The same policy has gradually been introduced to our Trend Alerts which have moved from MS Word to PowerPoint-style presentations dramatically reducing the text in favour of visual images and short contextual explanations.

Personas
We are grateful to Dr Mike McAllum of Global Foresight for suggesting and writing personas that allow our workshop participants to choose their own or different personas e.g. consumer, regulator or activist in any exercise.

This is the first step in turning every one of our workshop tools into online games that can be played virtually or face-to-face.

Intent
We have discovered that we can rank author ‘Intent’ by counting the number of times their forecast appears in each listed foresight method.  The following benefits accrue:

  • Automatic rejection of forecasts with a zero count
  • Wider finding of likely accepted forecasts
  • Potential use as another signifier of relevance
  • Decisions under uncertainty can be better modelled and gamed

New keywords

A new capability now allows you to view new organizations, keywords or people added over a chosen time period. Each is clickable to the respective added forecasts.

This is another way to spot weak signals.

Refine

Seemingly biased organizations can now be excluded from searches:

Percentages change can now be searched for in ‘Refine’.

Global Influencers
We are now auto tracking the positioning of global influencers as follows:

Athena
The robot’s capabilities have now been extended. There are now >4,000 keywords and >150,000 metadata references from >40,000 sources.  Editing capabilities have been improved towards a stretch target of zero-editing, and the future Questions facility is now controlled better.
In 2020, we are now working to give her Natural Language processing (NLP) and more voice capability, video wall, AR  and VR solutions to become a robot-companion to decision-making teams everywhere.

Happy futuring,
The Shaping Tomorrow team

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