A Singapore story: A visionario in 2035. Issue 1 (2nd January 2018) - Ronis, Sheila R.
ABSTRACT: "A Singapore Story" is a visionario that explores a terrorist plot against Singapore, a model of economic success within an Asian country that has worked diligently to foster the peaceful integration of multiple cultures, languages, and peoples. The story recounts how the country successfully thwarts a terrorist attack using governmental efforts within their intelligence community. In this article, a foresight methodology and systems tool is used to inform and improve policy makers' decisions, especially regarding complex system behavior. Called "visionario development, " it uses assumption testing to explore a complex system and its inherent interrelationships and interdependencies to better understand how events may occur before they unfold so that if the story unfolds in ways that are catastrophic, or positive, policy makers may think about ways to intervene to change the situation or improve a process. Because complex systems cannot be controlled—only influenced, and only influenced if understood very well, the idea is to create a story that examines the assumptions to be tested and then look at the human behavior in that story to see what can be learned. When a time frame is added, the story enables a system to become more anticipatory.