Compare methods

	Ethnographic Futures Research	Seven Questions Scenario Method
Field	Futures Foresight Studies	Futures Foresight Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1980	1996
Originator	Robert B. Textor	Global Business Network (GBN) and the Shell scenario tradition (Pierre Wack lineage)
Type	Interview-based ethnographic pipeline for eliciting anticipatory scenarios	Structured-interview pipeline that seeds scenario building
Seminal source	Glenn, J. C., & Gordon, T. J. (Eds.). (2009). Futures Research Methodology, Version 3.0. The Millennium Project. ISBN: 9780981894119	Schoemaker, P. J. H. (1995). Scenario planning: A tool for strategic thinking. Sloan Management Review, 36(2), 25-40.
Aliases	EFR, Textor Ethnographic Futures Research, Ethnographic Futures Interviewing, Cultural Futures Elicitation	Seven Questions Interview, GBN Seven Questions, Shell Seven Questions, Oracle/Epitaph Interview Protocol
Related	3	3
Summary	Ethnographic futures research (EFR), developed by the anthropologist Robert Textor, is a qualitative method that elicits people's images of the future through in-depth ethnographic interviews structured around three scenarios: a realistically optimistic future, a realistically pessimistic future, and the future the respondent considers most probable. Rather than imposing the researcher's drivers or categories, the interviewer draws out each informant's own anticipatory thinking in their own terms, asking them to imagine and describe each of the three futures over a defined horizon. Aggregating and analyzing these accounts across many culturally knowledgeable respondents reveals a society's or group's shared hopes, fears, and expectations — its collective anticipatory culture. Catalogued in Glenn and Gordon's Futures Research Methodology, EFR brings the rigor and respondent-centeredness of ethnography to foresight, complementing the more macro, cultural reading of future-images with grounded, individual-level elicitation.	The seven questions scenario method is a structured interview protocol, associated with the Global Business Network and the Shell scenario tradition, used at the front end of scenario building to surface the concerns, predetermined elements, and critical uncertainties that will seed a set of scenarios. Rather than starting from abstract drivers, facilitators interview key informants and decision-makers using a fixed sequence of seven open questions — including the famous 'oracle' question (if you could ask a clairvoyant one thing about the future, what would it be?) and the 'epitaph' question about the legacy the organization hopes to leave. The interviews draw out what people most hope for, fear, and want to know, and the analysis of those responses identifies which forces are effectively predetermined and which are genuinely uncertain. As Schoemaker's account of scenario planning and Bishop, Hines, and Collins's survey of scenario techniques both stress, separating the predetermined from the uncertain is the pivot on which good scenarios turn.