Compare methods

	Futures Wheel	Three Horizons Framework
Field	Futures Foresight Studies	Futures Foresight Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1972	2016
Originator	Jerome C. Glenn	Bill Sharpe, Anthony Hodgson, Graham Leicester (International Futures Forum)
Type	Structured brainstorming pipeline for mapping consequences of change	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	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	Three Horizons Model, 3H Framework, Three Horizons Mapping, H1-H2-H3 Pathways
Related	3	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.	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.