The document discusses the 'three horizons' framework for transformative innovation, addressing the urgent need for individuals and organizations to adapt to a complex and uncertain world. It presents three perspectives: the managerial focus on sustaining innovation, the visionary aim for transformative change, and the entrepreneurial drive for disruptive innovation, emphasizing the importance of shifting mindsets towards positive perspectives. Additional information on the framework and its practice is provided through IFF resources.

1. Three Horizons as a framework
for Transformative Innovation

2. “How to take effective and
responsible action in powerful
times?”
International Futures Forum (IFF): 2001

3. We face a real emergency – a
world of pressing challenges
And a conceptual emergency
– a struggle to make sense of a
world of boundless complexity
And an existential emergency
– we are in over our heads.
We need to develop our 21st
century competencies and the
culture and organisations to
support them.

4. Shifting systems to a
new pattern of
viability fit for the
future rather than just
fixing what’s failing in
the present. Growing
the new in the
presence of the old.
Transformative Innovation

5. Patterns: reading
the landscape of
change
Pathways: plotting a
way through towards
a desired future
Practice: making the
journey
Transformative Innovation

6. Agency
Uncertainty
Complexity
ScenariosPlans
Forecasts
Roadmaps Adaptive Pathways
(Three Horizons
sits here)
Thinking About The Future

7. Pattern
Making sense of the landscape of change through three
perspectives on the future potential of the present moment
Time
Three Horizons

8. The managerial perspective, keeping things going
First Horizon: Sustaining Innovation
Today’s Dominant Pattern: a
system losing strategic fit and
therefore dominance over time
Pattern
Time
H1

9. The visionary perspective, aspiring to a better way
Third Horizon: Transformative Innovation
Pattern
The Future Pattern: a system in
tune with deeper trends that
eventually emerges as the new
dominant system—perhaps a
generation from now
Time
H3

10. The entrepreneurial perspective, eager to try new things
Second Horizon: Disruptive Innovation
Pattern
Zone of Transition: a
system seeking to exploit
the opportunities emerging
in a changing world
Time
H2
+–
sustaining transformative
disruptive innovation
?

11. A transformative innovation system that contains three
ways of acting in and seeing the world.
Three Horizons: Bringing it Together
Pattern
Time
H2
H3
H1
Entrepreneur
Manager
Visionary

12. Three Horizons Voices and Relationships
Shifting from negative mindsets to positive perspectives enables people
to work across horizons and facilitate the conditions for transformative change.
Negative Mindsets Positive Perspectives
H1
H3
H2
IrrelevantDinosaur
H1
H3
H2
HopeScale

13. More information on Three
Horizons and the practice
of Transformative
Innovation which it
supports is available at:
IFF Practice Centre
www.iffpraxis.com
or contact:
enquiry@iffpraxis.com