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In a time of surprises, old visions of the future are no longer enough. We need different stories about the future – a challenge to current narratives. That’s where weak signals can help.
Weak signals 2025
The future is often surprisingly surprising. We are constantly faced with things and phenomena that we could not foresee or expect. That is why we need the ability to broaden our thoughts about what may lie ahead in the future. Weak signals provide one way to do this. They help to identify emerging changes, prepare for surprises and challenge assumptions about the future.
Weak signals can also help us evaluate our current choices and actions. In addition, they also encourage us to innovate when we identify phenomena that we have not encountered before.
What is it about?
If you only gaze at ongoing trends, you can remain a prisoner to existing patterns of change and become blind to the unexpected. Weak signals accompany trends not only by introducing more surprising developments into the picture, but also by guiding us to thinking differently. Where trends lead us to think about continuities and to ask “What next?”, weak signals emphasise discontinuity and encourage one to ask “What if?”.
Weak signals help us:
- identify and challenge assumptions about the future while broadening our view of what is possible
- gain insight into unexpected developments and rethink matters from the varied perspectives of our own lives, work or society; and
- identify new opportunities, ways of making a difference and promising new developments that we need to amplify – and thus build better futures together.
What’s the background?
Sitra’s Weak Signals work was originally motivated by the need to bring a complementary perspective to the popular megatrend work. The aim is to broaden thinking about the future, i.e. to highlight assumptions about the future, challenge perceptions of the future and expand the range of possible futures.
What did we do this time?
In January 2025, we published a guide on detecting and exploiting weak signals. The idea is to provide anyone with low-threshold help and tools to consider weak signals as part of foresight. The Weak Signals 2025 Review will be published in May.
Weak Signals 2022 and 2019 studies
Sitra’s previous Weak Signals publications offer a set of weak signals and the interpretations and stories of other futures based on them. The aim is not to provide a comprehensive list of all possible futures – that would be impossible – or even to give an overview of more unexpected changes. Instead, the publications highlight a few possible future developments and encourage the reader to identify and interpret the signals themselves, and to perceive more broadly the more surprising, different futures.
Why is this important?
Our foresight work aims to increase understanding of the different possible futures and improve the preparedness of people and societies for future changes. In order to be better prepared to think about and influence the future, we must not only enrich our thinking about the future but also make future knowledge more tangible and to make the implications more palpable at the level of people’s everyday lives.
The future usually catches us off guard not because there is not enough information available, but because it can be difficult to relate it to today’s choices and actions.
Sitra’s weak signals work aims to provide tools to expand future-oriented thinking, challenge assumptions and envisage different futures. Challenging assumptions and imagining different futures is crucial because we cannot solve today’s challenges using old narratives.
Weak Signals complements Sitra’s megatrend and vision work.
Weak signals 2022 and 2019
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