In crisis contexts, where uncertainty is high and decision-making is under pressure, strategic foresight can provide a structured way to navigate complexity and anticipate change. The experience of the Venezuela UNDP Country Office (CO) illustrates how foresight can move beyond abstract analysis to become a practical tool for strengthening planning, coordination and resilience. At the outset, the CO’s primary objective was not crisis response per se, but to make its fragmented foresight efforts more coherent and actionable in a challenging political context.

The Venezuela CO had already recognized the value of foresight in its planning processes and expressed early interest in strengthening this capacity through the UNDP Futures Fellows programme offered by the UNDP Strategy and Futures Team. The CO wanted to connect existing initiatives and build a more coordinated approach. Rather than introducing foresight from scratch, the focus was on organizing and aligning ongoing efforts across teams, moving from isolated activities to more integrated work that could better inform decision-making. This highlighted an important lesson: many teams are already engaging with foresight in some form, but without coordination, its impact can remain limited. 

Juan Felipe Yepes Gonzalez was accordingly selected and deployed to the CO as a Futures Fellow. At the time, the CO was in the process of redesigning several portfolios of its work, including Resilience, Gender, and Trust. Juan Felipe’s background in public sector innovation, and his experience of using foresight and futures methodologies in government innovation labs in Latin America, helped him to stress-test assumptions as the CO embarked on this redesign. Through a series of “signal studios,” run by Juan Felipe, colleagues identified and analyzed signals of change relevant to their portfolios, clustered these signals, and explored their implications using tools such as futures wheels.

Insights from these exercises were captured and shared in formats that could feed directly into planning. Venezuela CO colleagues requested that these outputs be reshaped to be more engagement-oriented, ensuring they were not just analytical products but practical inputs into decision-making. This reinforces a broader point: foresight is most valuable when it is embedded in real processes and tailored to user’s needs, rather than existing as standalone analysis.

Experience from Venezuela also underscores the importance of leadership support and coordination. Foresight efforts are often carried out alongside demanding core responsibilities and can easily be deprioritized. Having dedicated capacity and senior champions helps create the space needed for foresight to take root. At the same time, conducting an initial mapping of who is already working on foresight can help build on existing efforts, capitalize on internal expertise, and identify potential champions.

Another important dimension of Juan Felipe’s work was engagement beyond the CO, particularly with young people in the Táchira border region. Táchira, which borders Colombia, has experienced significant outward migration in recent years due to Venezuela’s political, social, and economic challenges. It is also home to a major university and a large population of young people. The Venezuela CO in conjunction with Juan Felipe facilitated foresight workshops with students, adapting the signal studio methodology to explore issues relevant to young people on the frontier. Participants identified and analyzed signals shaping their futures, bringing strong local insight and energy to the process. Over time, students and local teams began to run the sessions independently. The findings are expected to be consolidated into a youth manifesto to be shared with public officials. This experience highlights the value of engaging young people in foresight, particularly in crisis-affected contexts where they are directly experiencing uncertainty and can bring fresh perspectives on possible futures. (See here for the Venezuela CO’s perspective on this work https://www.undp.org/es/venezuela/blog/pensar-el-futuro-con-las-juventudes)
 

While foresight is often seen as a structured and analytical discipline, the Venezuela experience also points to the importance of its human dimension—especially in crisis contexts where individuals are navigating both professional and personal uncertainty. Foresight workshops created space for dialogue, reflection, and shared understanding, alongside more technical outputs such as scenario development. In this sense, foresight not only supports planning but can also help teams process uncertainty and strengthen a sense of agency. Recognizing and integrating this human aspect can enhance the relevance and impact of foresight work.
 

The CO also explored how foresight can be strengthened through the use of data and technology. An internal real-time dashboard was developed to monitor contextual developments, using AI tools to capture and analyse signals of change. These quantitative insights are continuously updated and used to inform CO planning, complementing more qualitative foresight methods such as scenario building. This combination of approaches offers a promising model for other contexts facing rapid change.
 

Lessons from the Venezuela CO

Juan Felipe highlighted the following lessons from his time with the Venezuela CO:

1. Build on what already exists: Mapping existing foresight activities helps connect fragmented efforts, leverage internal expertise, and create a more coherent approach.
2. Embed foresight in planning processes: Integrating foresight into portfolio design and decision-making ensures that insights are practical and actionable.
3. Secure leadership support and coordination: Senior champions and dedicated capacity are critical to sustaining foresight efforts amid competing priorities.
4. Engage diverse actors, including young people: Broadening participation enriches foresight processes and strengthens relevance and potential impact, particularly in crisis-affected contexts.
5. Combine human and analytical dimensions: Alongside structured tools, creating space for reflection and dialogue enhances the value of foresight.
6. Leverage data and AI where you can: Real-time dashboards and AI-supported signal detection can complement qualitative methods and strengthen the insights of foresight offers.
    

Overall, the Venezuela case demonstrates that foresight can remain practical, adaptive, and human-centered, even in crisis settings. Its value lies not only in anticipating possible futures, but also in helping organizations and individuals navigate uncertainty with greater coherence, responsiveness, and resilience.