Compare methods

	Manoa Alternative Futures Method	Emerging Issues Analysis
Field	Futures Foresight Studies	Futures Foresight Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2009	2009
Originator	Jim Dator (Hawai'i Research Center for Futures Studies, University of Hawai'i at Manoa)	Graham T. T. Molitor; Hawai'i School / Millennium Project
Type	Generative pipeline for producing alternative images of the future	Early-detection pipeline for issues on the S-curve of public attention
Seminal source	Dator, J. (2009). Alternative futures at the Manoa School. Journal of Futures Studies, 14(2), 1-18.	Glenn, J. C., & Gordon, T. J. (Eds.). (2009). Futures Research Methodology, Version 3.0. The Millennium Project. ISBN: 9780981894119
Aliases	Manoa School Method, Four Generic Futures, Dator Alternative Futures, Hawai'i Alternative Futures	Emerging Issue Analysis, EIA, Issues Emergence Analysis, Weak Signal Scanning
Related	4	3
Summary	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.	Emerging Issues Analysis (EIA) is a horizon-scanning method, associated with Graham Molitor and the Hawai'i School and codified in the Millennium Project's Futures Research Methodology, for detecting issues at the earliest, weakest-signal stage — long before they register as trends or reach public consciousness. Its organizing idea is that issues, like technologies, follow an S-curve of public attention: they begin in obscure, marginal sources, accelerate as advocates and specialists pick them up, and only later become widely recognized trends and finally mainstream concerns. The strategic value of catching an issue on the flat, early part of that curve is enormous, because that is when there is the most time and the most room to respond. EIA therefore deliberately scans the fringe — specialist literature, activist publications, patents, subcultures, marginal voices — to spot the small clouds on the horizon and position them on the issue lifecycle.