Compare methods

	Futures Wheel	Causal Layered Analysis	Manoa Alternative Futures Method	Three Horizons Framework
Field	Futures Foresight Studies	Futures Foresight Studies	Futures Foresight Studies	Futures Foresight Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1972	1998	2009	2016
Originator	Jerome C. Glenn	Sohail Inayatullah	Jim Dator (Hawai'i Research Center for Futures Studies, University of Hawai'i at Manoa)	Bill Sharpe, Anthony Hodgson, Graham Leicester (International Futures Forum)
Type	Structured brainstorming pipeline for mapping consequences of change	Layered deconstruction-and-reconstruction pipeline for futures and problem analysis	Generative pipeline for producing alternative images of the future	Pattern-mapping pipeline for transformative change over time
Seminal source	Glenn, J. C., & Gordon, T. J. (Eds.). (2009). Futures Research Methodology, Version 3.0. The Millennium Project. ISBN: 9780981894119	Inayatullah, S. (1998). Causal layered analysis: Poststructuralism as method. Futures, 30(8), 815-829.	Dator, J. (2009). Alternative futures at the Manoa School. Journal of Futures Studies, 14(2), 1-18.	Sharpe, B., Hodgson, A., Leicester, G., Lyon, A., & Fazey, I. (2016). Three horizons: a pathways practice for transformation. Ecology and Society, 21(2), 47.
Aliases	Futures Wheel Method, Implications Wheel, Consequence Wheel, Mind-Mapping the Future	CLA, Causal Layered Analysis Method, Inayatullah CLA, Layered Futures Analysis	Manoa School Method, Four Generic Futures, Dator Alternative Futures, Hawai'i Alternative Futures	Three Horizons Model, 3H Framework, Three Horizons Mapping, H1-H2-H3 Pathways
Related	3	3	4	3
Summary	The futures wheel is a structured brainstorming method for thinking through the consequences of a change. Created by Jerome Glenn in 1972 and now a staple of the foresight toolkit, it writes a trend, event, or decision in the center of a page and radiates outward: spokes lead to the direct, first-order consequences; from each of those, further spokes lead to second-order consequences; and the ripple continues to third and higher orders. The visual web that results makes the cascading implications of a change tangible, surfaces indirect effects that linear thinking misses, and reveals where consequences reinforce or contradict one another. Simple enough to run on a whiteboard yet powerful enough to anchor serious foresight work, it organizes intuition about how change propagates.	Causal layered analysis (CLA) is a critical futures method developed by Sohail Inayatullah and set out in his 1998 paper 'Causal layered analysis: Poststructuralism as method.' Rather than forecasting, its aim is to open up the space of possible futures by reading an issue at four levels of depth. The surface 'litany' of headlines and accepted trends sits atop systemic causes, which rest in turn on the worldviews and discourses that legitimate them, all anchored in deep myths and metaphors. By moving down through these layers to expose the assumptions and narratives beneath a problem — and then reconstructing upward from a transformed deep story — CLA produces futures that differ not merely in detail but in their underlying logic.	The Manoa Alternative Futures Method is the signature technique of the Hawai'i Research Center for Futures Studies, developed by Jim Dator at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Its founding axiom is that 'the future' cannot be predicted, only alternative futures can be imagined, so the purpose of foresight is not a single forecast but a set of qualitatively different images broad enough to bound the space of what might plausibly happen. Dator's central empirical claim, distilled from decades of futures work, is that the enormous variety of credible long-range scenarios collapses into four generic images: continued growth, collapse, discipline, and transformation. The method seeds these four archetypes with emerging issues — weak signals not yet visible as trends — to stretch participants' images of the future and produce a usable, divergent scenario set.	The Three Horizons framework is a structured way of thinking about transformative change by mapping three overlapping curves of activity across time. Developed within the International Futures Forum and given its definitive articulation by Bill Sharpe, Anthony Hodgson, Graham Leicester and colleagues in their 2016 Ecology and Society paper, it distinguishes the first horizon (H1), the dominant present system that is declining in its fit with a changing world; the third horizon (H3), an emerging and viable future pattern that is currently marginal but growing; and the second horizon (H2), the turbulent zone of transition in which entrepreneurial innovations and experiments compete, some carrying the system toward H3 and others merely propping up H1. Rather than predicting a single future, the framework is a pathways practice that helps groups see the present as a contested landscape of patterns and locate their own intentions and actions within it.