Excerpted from Roy Amara, How to Tell Good Work from Bad. Futurist. April, p 63-71. Several criteria could be applied to test good works:

• Are the futurist's basic premises about the field made explicit?
• Are the specific purposes of the activity made explicit?
• Are the principal values espoused by the producers of the output made explicit?
• Are the processes and methods used to achieve results made explicit?
• Does the product include a description of the change process?
• Is there enough time to act?
• Is the product clear and specific?
• Is the product credible?
• Is the product effective in changing perceptions or guiding action?
• Conclusions:
• Generally conform with basic physical and behavioral practices
• Be internally consistent
• Be reasonable

Some comments by Don Michael, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Michigan (1985). Published in Futures, April 1985. pg 94-103. With Both Feet Planted Firmly in Mid-Air.

• There are no overarching or interconnecting theories on futures research.
• Pronouncements of experts are useful, because the influence the definition of social reality.
• Futures studies increase discomfort, because they expose the problematical ramifications of the future.
• What is told in any futures study is a story, and it could be a richer STORY if it were accepted as such.
• Shared thoughts about the future should include acknowledgment of the problematic nature of the past and present.
• The process of social change should be identified by explicit theory (if we are to build on the present to understand future).
• All thoughts about the future unavoidable engage both constructive and destructive unconscious needs.

Perspectives of Roy Amara on the 10 year history of Institution for the Future. Published in Futures, August 1988, p 385-401. He identifies 10 do's and don'ts of forecasting and planning.

• Don't be a vacuum cleaner (avoid collecting every speck of information).
• Don't substitute error for uncertainty (some variables are more certain than others -where there are key variables with great uncertainty, simple state the uncertainty to better describe the overall picture).
• At times, lean against the wind (question conventional wisdom); this can be useful in simply questioning inconsistencies (mutually exclusive components of a forecast).
• Hedge forecasts with possible surprises (add some low probability events - e.g., reversal or trends, events that sneak up on you, trends that don't change when they should).
• Look for breakpoints and discontinuities (these are hard to forecast, examples are timing of a stock market crash, breakthrough in superconductivity).
• Focus on underlying driving forces (discover and understand the underlying elements affecting the variables of concern).
• Look for clusters of drivers (driving forces normally act as clusters and not alone - for example, relationship of growth in baby boomers, growth in small businesses, privatization of government).
• Translate environmental forecasts into business issues (take the pieces and rearrange them into terms that have meaning to the audience intended).
• Don't be fooled by the diffusion curve (adoption of a new technology takes longer than the proponents think - and it may go up or down unexpectedly).
• Keep asking "so what" (does the acquired information serve the purposes intended?).

The process should be iterative, so as questions are asked along the way, like so what? or why?, or what for?, they will all begin to coalesce.

What I Have Learned: Thinking About the Future Then and Now, Michael Marien (editor), Greenwood Press, 1987, 204 pages.

A collection of essays by 17 leading futurists on the 1960s and 1970s, assessing how their thinking has changed in the 1980s and identifying important lessons.

Futurists include: Warren Agar, Kenneth Boulding, Willis Harman, Victor Ferkiss, Irene Thomson, Robert Francoeur, Don Michael, Jim Dator, Amitai Etzioni, Walter Hahn, Joseph Coates, Vary Coates, Joseph Martino, Harold Linstone, Betram Gross, Kusum Singh, and Hazel Henderson. Lessons learn include: futures studies depend on present-day structures of belief, watch out for traps (war, population, entropy, one-world, political incompetence, and fundamentalist), predicting the future is harder than many believed and prescribing desirable futures is even harder, technological change underestimated and social change overestimated, there are many possible reconstructions of the past and models of the future, how you label an activity is important, exploring assumptions is a key to studying the future, the ability to allow uncertainties is important, we are still learning how to ask questions, seemingly trite sayings should not be discarded, multidisciplinary perspectives are essential, learning by learning together is rewarding. Three major themes emerge:

• Futures studies is not a field in any stage of development
• Thinking about the future is useful (including learning more about self)
• Mid-career reassessment would be particularly good for futurists.

What Futurists Believe. 1989. Lamond Publications. Joseph Coates and Jennifer Jarratt. 340p.

A book of interviews with 17 futurists plus the author's own viewpoints. The futures are identified in a number of categories, covering specific vs broad, corporate vs non-corporate, socio-political vs technological, global vs U.S., optimism vs pessimism, and now vs 100+ years. Each futurist explains which others had influenced them, and describes their perspective on the future. Areas of general agreement are: technology is a primary driver of change; all activities are becoming more complex and interdependent; interdependence of the global community is increasing; decline of the world-wide economic role of the U.S.; problems of population growth rate and differential age distributions among countries. Areas of general disagreement are: specific societal values and attitudes and how they change, various images of the future and which are most desirable or likely; economic futures and emerging events to alter the economy; world structural changes including eastern Europe. The 17 futurists are: Roy Amara, Robert Ayres, Daniel Bell, Kenneth Boulding, Arthur Clarke, Peter Drucker, Victor Ferkiss, Barry Hughes, Alexander King, Richard Lamm, Michael Marien, Dennis Meadows, James Ogilvy, Gerard O'Neill, John Pierce, Peter Schwartz, and Robert Theobald.