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1. Introduction
Futures workshop is one of the best-known and most used participatory methods in the field of futures studies. It is a convenient way of producing, collecting and communicating views and ideas on potential future developments. In an ideal case, a futures workshop process would consist of several successive workshops where the range of potential futures, key challenges and means to influence future developments would be elaborated during the course of the process (Slocum, 2003). Not always, however, there is time or other resources available for long workshop processes. In practice, most of the actors commissioning futures workshop facilitation from Finland Futures Research Centre (FFRC) express that the preferred type of futures workshop would produce practical results at the end of just one session. Practical results in this context mean that the implications and potential responses to recognised future challenges are brought on the level of the decision-making unit in question (Answering to the question: what might the future(s) be like and what does it mean to us?). Attitude towards futures knowledge in these cases, as in this article, is very much output-oriented (Dufva and Ahlqvist, 2014).
Particular value of futures workshop among the methods of futures studies lies in its heuristic nature and its ability to allow creative and novel ideas to surface. In futures workshops organised with a practical information need in mind, the task of producing practical information whilst encouraging the participants to think creatively can be quite a challenge (Heinonen and Ruotsalainen, 2013). If one were to focus on a specific topic or view the future from a narrowed perspective right from the beginning of the workshop to guarantee the required practical result, workshop participants’ capabilities to explore the problem outside currently relevant operational environment might be restricted, thus leaving a range of potential futures unexamined. Also, structure of the workshop plays a role: using a very sophisticated structure to guarantee the expected results might be ill-advised, as highly structured workshop design may hamper creativity (van Vliet et al., 2012), but also too vague a workshop structure can produce problems by not being able to produce the expected result. The challenge, therefore, is to find a balanced workshop structure that will assist in fulfilling the information needs set for...