From the 50,000-foot perspective, strategic foresight consulting involves formulating and navigating a map like the diagram above: the Cone of Plausibility, a three-dimensional diagram of the idea space of potential futures as this evolves through time.
The Cone highlights the domain of Possible Futures ("hmm, those futures could happen, but some of them are a long shot") and a subset of that domain, the Plausible Futures ("yes, I can see those futures actually happening").
Any hypothetical future outside the Cone ("the space aliens come and solve all our problems!") is considered implausible, or simply Preposterous.
The Probable Future is the future that is most likely, given where we are and the forces that move society in one direction or another, if no decisive human action is taken. (This is where simple "forecasting" or trend analysis ends.)
Yes, the Probable Future is firmly within the domain of Plausible Futures. However, the Probable Future may well involve catastrophic failure of the systems that we depend on, a collapse of civilizational proportions. We at Acute Foresight Consulting believe that the current drivers of societal change (in terms of culture, technology, environment, economics, domestic politics, and geopolitics) are propelling Western civilization into collapse in the foreseeable future, unless decisive action is taken. This is unacceptable to us. As one of our firm's maxims puts it: "Liking reality is optional. Facing reality is mandatory."
There are alternatives, of course. The real prize is to define a Preferable Future--and then discover and follow pathways of action to bring that Preferable Future into reality. (That is the strategic part of strategic foresight.)
This is just the 50,000-foot perspective, of course. For a description of the nuts and bolts of strategic foresight, see "How We Work with Clients" under the "Services" tab above.
The video below presents a more detailed explanation of the Cone of Plausibility.