Comparer des méthodes

	Image of the Future Analysis	Cone of Plausibility
Domaine	Futures Foresight Studies	Futures Foresight Studies
Famille	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Année d'origine	1973	2003
Auteur d'origine	Fred Polak (Frederik Lodewijk Polak)	Charles Taylor (cone imagery); popularized and formalized by Joseph Voros
Type	Interpretive cultural-analysis pipeline of a society's prevailing future-images	Scenario-framing pipeline bounding alternative futures around a baseline
Source fondatrice	Polak, F. (1973). The Image of the Future (E. Boulding, Trans. & Abr.). Elsevier Scientific Publishing.	Voros, J. (2003). A generic foresight process framework. Foresight, 5(3), 10-21.
Alias	Polak Image of the Future, Image-of-the-Future Method, Prevailing Future-Image Analysis, Polak's Influence-and-Essence Analysis	Futures Cone, Voros Futures Cone, Cone of Plausible Futures, Plausibility Cone Analysis
Apparentées	3	3
Résumé	Image of the future analysis, developed by the Dutch sociologist Fred Polak, studies the collective images a society holds of its own future and argues that these images exert a powerful pull on present action and so help shape the future they imagine. In his monumental work The Image of the Future, abridged and translated by Elise Boulding, Polak surveyed the rise and fall of civilizations and contended that cultures flourish when they hold compelling, positive images of a future worth striving for, and decline when those images fade or turn dark. The method analyzes future-images along two dimensions: their essence — whether the imagined future is good or bad, optimistic or pessimistic — and the degree of human influence they assume — whether people can shape that future or are merely subject to it. By reading a society's art, literature, ideology, and discourse for its prevailing future-images, the analyst diagnoses the cultural energy available to propel the society forward.	The cone of plausibility, often called the futures cone, is a framing device for scenario work that projects a baseline 'expected' future and then bounds a widening cone of alternative futures around it by varying the key drivers and assumptions on which that baseline rests. Drawn from the present at the cone's apex, the trajectory fans out as it extends into the future, because uncertainty compounds over time and the range of futures that remain plausible grows wider the further out one looks. Joseph Voros, building on Charles Taylor's earlier cone imagery, formalized the device by nesting categories of futures — possible, plausible, probable, and preferable — within the cone, giving foresight practitioners a shared vocabulary for distinguishing what could conceivably happen from what could reasonably happen and from what is most likely. As Bishop, Hines, and Collins note in their survey of scenario techniques, the cone provides a disciplined way to generate and bound a manageable set of alternative scenarios.