Three Horizons

Three Horizons is a simple, intuitive framework for thinking about the future. But it is about much more than simply stretching our thinking to embrace the short, medium and long term. Three Horizons is a prompt for developing a ‘future consciousness’ – a rich, multi-faceted awareness of the future potential of the present moment. This book explores how to put that awareness to work, so we can create the futures we aspire to. It first outlines the Three Horizons framework and practices, including case studies of its application in community development, education and healthcare. The final section explores Bill Sharpe’s intuition “that we have... a far deeper capacity for shared life than we are using, and that we are suffering from an attempt to know our way into the future instead of live our way”. Here he outlines the potential of future consciousness as a shared cultural practice to guide society towards a third horizon that is the patterning of our mutual hopes.

Three Horizons is a simple and intuitive framework for thinking about the future. The framework explains how people often manage to disagree so violently about their visions of the future and how to achieve them - and it offers a practical way to begin constructive conversations about the future at home, in organisations and in society at large. The three horizons are about much, much more than simply stretching our thinking to embrace the short, medium and long term. They offer a co-ordinated way of managing innovation, a way of creating transformational change that has a chance of succeeding, a way of dealing with uncertainty and a way of seeing the future in the present. In this beautifully illustrated book, Bill Sharpe introduces the Three Horizons framework as a prompt for developing a 'future consciousness' - a rich and multi-faceted awareness of the future potential of the present moment - and explores how to put that awareness to work to create the futures we aspire to.