Compare methods

	Visioning Preferred Futures Workshop	Manoa Alternative Futures Method
Field	Futures Foresight Studies	Futures Foresight Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2009	2009
Originator	Hawai'i School / Millennium Project futures-visioning tradition	Jim Dator (Hawai'i Research Center for Futures Studies, University of Hawai'i at Manoa)
Type	Normative, participatory backcasting pipeline toward a preferred future	Generative pipeline for producing alternative images of the future
Seminal source	Glenn, J. C., & Gordon, T. J. (Eds.). (2009). Futures Research Methodology, Version 3.0. The Millennium Project. ISBN: 9780981894119	Dator, J. (2009). Alternative futures at the Manoa School. Journal of Futures Studies, 14(2), 1-18.
Aliases	Preferred Futures Visioning, Visioning Workshop, Normative Futures Visioning, Aspirational Futures Method	Manoa School Method, Four Generic Futures, Dator Alternative Futures, Hawai'i Alternative Futures
Related	3	4
Summary	A Visioning Preferred Futures Workshop is a normative, participatory futures method for articulating a shared image of the future a group wants to create, and then working backward from that image to identify the pathway and the present actions that would bring it about. Where exploratory methods ask what futures might happen, visioning asks what future ought to happen and how to get there. Documented as a core technique in the Millennium Project's Futures Research Methodology, it combines aspirational image-building with backcasting: participants first agree on a compelling preferred future grounded in their shared values, then trace the milestones backward from that future to the present, and finally commit to concrete first steps. The method's power lies in mobilizing a community around a positive, jointly owned vision rather than around forecasts or fears.	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.