Among the central discoveries of the Integral approach is that is it 'depth within the practitioner that determines how well or badly any particular method is used'. This is one of those rare 'new ideas' that changes everything. Among many other things it directs attention back and away from methods per se to the personal (and to some extent, social) interiors from which they emerged in the first place and upon which they entirely depend. Being a 'good futurist' or an 'effective foresight practitioner' is no longer a question that hinges on a one-dimensional concern for cognitive capacity! Many other lines of capability are involved along with requisite stages of development. A corollary is that the kinds of answers, solutions, that are now required cannot, in principle, be found in the domain of conventional thinking, conventional work (what I call 'problem oriented' futures). The latter has run its course and is now exhausted for non-trivial uses.

http://www.foresightinternational.com.au/previous-works/integral-futures-methodologies

Both forecasting and scenarios focus largely on the external world. (…) If we direct our attention mainly to the external aspects of the human predicament then ways forward will forever elude us. The global context becomes a trap for humanity. In practice such conventional ‘exterior’ approaches to world issues cover only part of the territory. Critical Futures Studies, on the other hand, examined what might be called the ‘social interiors.’ That is, it saw the familiar exterior forms of society (populations, technologies, infrastructure and so on) as grounded in, and dependent upon, powerful social factors such as worldviews, paradigms and values. (…) Critical futures work, however, itself lacked something essential – deeper insight into the nature and dynamics of individual agency. By addressing this missing element Integral Futures has, in a sense, completed a long process of disciplinary development, perhaps resulting in a new phase of innovation and change. According to Wilber, “the upper half of the diagram represents individual realities; the lower half, social or communal realities. The right half represents exterior forms – what things look like from the outside; and the left hand represents interior forms – what things look like from within.” Post-conventional work recognizes that the entire external world is constantly ‘held together’ by interior structures of meaning and value. (…) human activities everywhere are supported by subtle but powerful networks of value, meaning and purpose that are socially created and often maintained over long periods of time. Post-conventional work draws on these more intangible domains and certainly demands more of practitioners. It means, for example, that a focus on various ‘ways of knowing’ (e.g. empirical, psychological, critical) becomes unavoidable. The next step was to begin to correlate different approaches and methods in futures/ foresight work with a new appreciation of the ‘individual interiors,’ the unique inner world of each person. One widely known approach was through ‘spiral dynamics,’ based on the work of Clare Graves. Such developments imply that successful practice involves more than mastering some of the better-known futures techniques. One of the most striking discoveries is that it is levels of development within the practitioner that, more than anything else, determine how well (or badly) any particular methodology will be used or any practical task will be performed. Integral Futures frameworks acknowledge the complexity of systems, contexts and interconnected webs of awareness and activity. Integral Futures practitioners will therefore not be content with merely tracking external ‘signals of change.’ They will also become proficient in exploring different perspectives to find approaches that are appropriate to different situations.

From Integral Futures by Richard Slaughter

Reading list: http://integralfutures.com/wordpress/?page_id=11

Embodied Foresight and Trialogues: http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/13-2/E01.pdf

Integral Scenario Development: http://www.integralworld.net/pdf/stewart2.pdf