Society in need of future: Complementary foresight as a method to co-create transition

The most effective way to manage change successfully is to create it! (Drucker PF, Managing in the next society 1994. New York: Publisher St. Martin´s Griffin, 2003) Facing upcoming grand challenges policy coordination turns out to be a daunting task and yet can be promising even when facing difficult circumstances. New patterns of thinking and acting emerge beyond governmental steering efforts. The complementary foresight approach offers a multi-method coordination framework for detecting accessible as well as tacit knowledge of diverse stakeholders. As a matter of principle future cannot be forecasted. The most effective way to foresee future is to jointly shape it! Complementary foresight offers a neutral room for transformation and co-creation room beyond distinct determination of future. In co-creation, stakeholders gain new insights into complex interdependencies of the system as a whole. Self-organized as if initiated by an invisible hand anticipated, desirable futures allow mutual learning and behavior in rehearsal for transition. This allows changing mind and actions before official regulations and instructions tell to do so. Society is in need for desirable futures! Citizens and organizations coordinate themselves by means of internal images and stories. Past and futures are no realities but only grammatical principles of how to construct reality. Thus "future images" allow positive sense making by combining novel images with traditional stories. Today´s crisis and disruptive changes require knowledge and joint, powerful, collective pictures serving self-confidence and self-responsibility of citizens engaged: They are the change in the present for the present allowing policy governance from future perspective.