Introducing Futures Concepts to Experts in Public Services in Developing Countries

This article describes my teaching of futures to experts in public services such as water supply, power supply, and waste treatment in developing countries. These experts come to Japan to participate in the training course of their field of service, which is offered by a state-run organization in Japan. At the end of the course, they prepare an action plan, which is to be implemented after they return to their countries. In the course, I give them three lectures on futures to help them make their action plans more future-oriented. Experts are quite different from university students in that they carry the burden and responsibility to make services better and more effective in the future. Most of them assume, in their planning, that data and information in the past and present form the foundation on which they project the future of their services. As a result, their plans are always based on a probable future and not on possible futures. I teach them futures to point out the risks of such planning approach, and to open their eyes to an alternative one, which I call “Futures planning.” By following the three lectures in chronological order, this article clarifies characteristics of my futures teaching and its impact on the experts from developing countries.