Designing decisions using Futures and Foresight
Humanitarian organisations are being asked to do more with less, in a world of overlapping crises, shrinking budgets, and increasing pressure to respond quickly. At the same time, many teams are experiencing a deeper challenge: the sense that the assumptions, rules, and tools that once guided decision-making no longer fully fit the realities they are working in.
In this webinar, Paula Gil Baizan (from Something Meaningful) will introduce a grounded, practical futures-thinking approach designed for humanitarian innovation and research teams working under pressure. Drawing on her work developing The Edge of Now: A Playbook for Designing Humanitarian Innovation and Research Futures for Elrha, Paula will explore how futures thinking can support better decisions when certainty is no longer available and the system itself feels unstable or “unmoored”.
The playbook sits within Elrha’s wider Futures and Foresight Toolkit, offering a practical entry point for teams looking to apply futures thinking directly to real decisions, priorities, and portfolios — rather than treating foresight as a standalone or abstract exercise.
Rather than focusing on prediction, the session centres on orientation — helping teams notice what is changing, question what no longer holds, and make more grounded choices under conditions of systemic change.
What the session will cover:
- Why decision-making feels unusually hard right now and why “uncertainty” no longer fully captures the challenge
- The concept of systemic unmooring and what it means for innovation, research, and strategy
- Why many existing planning and innovation tools struggle in these conditions
- An introduction to The Edge of Now playbook as a decision compass, not a solution.
Who is this webinar for?
This webinar is designed for:
- Humanitarian innovation, research, and strategy teams
- Innovation managers, advisors, and funders
- Leaders and decision-makers navigating change, constraint, and complexity
No prior futures or technical evaluation expertise is required. The toolkit is deliberately designed to be accessible, participatory, and usable by mixed teams, at different stages of the innovation journey.
