Maree Conway Books
Maree Conway is an Australian futurist, researcher, and founder of Thinking Futures, a consultancy specializing in strategic foresight and futures thinking. She has worked extensively with public sector organizations and educational institutions to build foresight capacity and help leaders think more critically about the future.
Known for: Thinking Futures: Strategic Foresight for Better Futures
Books by Maree Conway
Thinking Futures: Strategic Foresight for Better Futures
Thinking Futures: Strategic Foresight for Better Futures is a practical and thought-provoking guide to one of the most important leadership capabilities of our time: learning to think beyond the immediate horizon. In this book, Australian futurist Maree Conway shows that foresight is not about predicting a single correct future. It is about building the discipline to notice change early, understand uncertainty more intelligently, and make wiser choices in the present. Rather than treating the future as something that simply happens, Conway invites readers to see it as something that can be explored, debated, and influenced. What makes the book especially valuable is its balance of mindset and method. Conway explains how organizations can move from reactive planning to long-term strategic thinking through environmental scanning, systems thinking, scenario development, and reflective practice. Drawing on her work in futures education, consulting, and public-sector strategy, she offers a grounded approach that is both accessible to newcomers and useful for experienced leaders. For anyone trying to lead through complexity, disruption, or social change, this book offers a clear framework for thinking more expansively and acting more deliberately.
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Foresight Begins With a Different Mindset
The future usually surprises organizations not because change was invisible, but because leaders were not looking with the right mindset. Maree Conway argues that strategic foresight starts long before any formal tool or workshop. It begins with a deliberate shift in how we think about time, change,...
From Thinking Futures: Strategic Foresight for Better Futures
Forecasting Is Not the Same as Foresight
One of the most important distinctions in the book is that forecasting and foresight are not interchangeable. Forecasting extends known patterns forward. Foresight explores uncertainty, disruption, and alternative possibilities. Conway does not dismiss forecasting; data trends, projections, and mode...
From Thinking Futures: Strategic Foresight for Better Futures
Systems Thinking Reveals How Change Spreads
Big shifts rarely come from one cause alone. They emerge from interconnected forces that reinforce, constrain, or destabilize one another. Conway highlights systems thinking as essential to strategic foresight because organizations often misread change when they isolate issues instead of seeing rela...
From Thinking Futures: Strategic Foresight for Better Futures
Scanning the Horizon for Weak Signals
The future often arrives quietly before it becomes impossible to ignore. Conway treats environmental scanning as one of the foundational practices of foresight because change usually appears first as scattered signals, anomalies, and emerging patterns. These early indicators may look insignificant o...
From Thinking Futures: Strategic Foresight for Better Futures
Scenarios Expand Strategic Imagination
Organizations become fragile when they plan for only one future. Conway presents scenario planning as a powerful way to stretch strategic imagination and prepare for uncertainty. Scenarios are not predictions or preferred outcomes. They are structured stories about different plausible futures that h...
From Thinking Futures: Strategic Foresight for Better Futures
Foresight Must Shape Real Decisions
Foresight has little value if it remains an interesting conversation disconnected from budgets, priorities, and action. Conway insists that strategic foresight should be integrated into decision-making, not parked on the sidelines as a separate innovation activity. The real test of foresight is whet...
From Thinking Futures: Strategic Foresight for Better Futures
About Maree Conway
Maree Conway is an Australian futurist, researcher, and founder of Thinking Futures, a consultancy specializing in strategic foresight and futures thinking. She has worked extensively with public sector organizations and educational institutions to build foresight capacity and help leaders think mor...
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Maree Conway is an Australian futurist, researcher, and founder of Thinking Futures, a consultancy specializing in strategic foresight and futures thinking. She has worked extensively with public sector organizations and educational institutions to build foresight capacity and help leaders think mor...
Maree Conway is an Australian futurist, researcher, and founder of Thinking Futures, a consultancy specializing in strategic foresight and futures thinking. She has worked extensively with public sector organizations and educational institutions to build foresight capacity and help leaders think more critically about the future.
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Maree Conway is an Australian futurist, researcher, and founder of Thinking Futures, a consultancy specializing in strategic foresight and futures thinking. She has worked extensively with public sector organizations and educational institutions to build foresight capacity and help leaders think more critically about the future.
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