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A Framework for Reading an Uncertain Future — on Your Own Terms
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Do any of these sound familiar?
"I read the news every day. But I can't connect it to our organization's strategy."
"We run analyses. But we keep arriving at the same conclusions."
"I follow technology trends. But I can't explain why they actually matter."
Five Lenses for Reading the Future
RESET Analysis covers five perspectives — Rules, Environment, Society, Economic Value, and Technology — to develop the capacity to read an uncertain future and take initiative. TIC has developed this as an original framework for organizations and individuals.
R｜Cross-Border Rules
What emerging laws, treaties, or social norms could affect us?
Laws · treaties · international norms · social standards. Rules are made by someone, intentionally.
E｜Changes in the Natural Environment
What will natural change set in motion?Climate · resources · ecosystems. The immovable foundation beneath all social change.
S｜Shifts in Social Values
Where are people's values and ways of living headed?Communities · culture · how we work, learn, and live. Moves in tandem with the natural environment.
E｜Economic Value Transformation
What gains value — and what loses it?The rise and fall of economic value. Watch both sides simultaneously.
T｜Technologies Under Revaluation
Are the technologies worth watching always the newest ones?Explore both emerging technologies and the revival of mature ones.
There are things that cannot be seen through a PEST/PESTEL analysis alone.
How to Use RESET Analysis (100-Minute Model)
At each step, we deepen thinking by asking questions and exchanging ideas.
Step En: Exploring Natural Environment Change as the "Immovable Foundation" (10 min)
Most analytical frameworks start from the current market. RESET begins with natural environment changes on a 5–10 year horizon.
Climate, resources, ecosystems — these are constraints that cannot be moved by human will. RESET treats them as the scale on which everything else sits.
From here, you start to see why "why is this happening now?" has answers that go deeper than market trends alone.
Step S・E: Tracing Social Values and Lifestyles as "Connected Change" (20 min)
What does natural environment change demand of society?
How do values and behaviors shift in response?
When you see this connection, answers to "why is this needed now?" emerge from a far deeper place.
From here, you can begin to explore "economic value" — what will gain worth, and what will be lost.
Step T: Identifying Relevant Technologies — New and Old (30 min)
Here, working with AI, we search for technologies that respond to social needs.
Among them, the revival of mature technologies — nature-based solutions, community collaboration, repair and restoration — often holds unexpected answers.
"Which technology has value" is a decision made by society, not by the technology itself.
Step R: Mapping the "Arguments" Around Rules (40 min)
For a chosen technology, we examine the arguments of those seeking to promote it — who wants it adopted, and why — as well as those seeking to resist it. Rules and regulations typically emerge from exactly this kind of debate.
From "following rules" to "reading how rules form" — this shift in perspective is where strategy fundamentally changes.
*Taking the analysis further raises one more question: "What changes will promoted technologies bring to our values and ways of living?" The perspective of reading the world evolves into the capacity to actively shape it.
Voices
RESET Analysis changes how you see the world. It transforms how you read the daily news. It changes what you notice when information passes by.
"You can't predict the future by looking only at technology and markets. Without also considering climate, resources, and social challenges, you get the very foundations of your strategy wrong."
"Business opportunity doesn't start when a rule is established — it starts when the rule is being formed."
"Technologies we wrote off during the trough of the hype cycle can suddenly revive when the social context shifts. I realized that whether a technology has value is decided by society."
Discovery: Horizon Scanning
RESET analysis can also be utilised for horizon scanning.
Horizon scanning is a method that developed in the fields of futurism and policy-making between the latter half of the 20th century and the early 21st century; it gained widespread recognition following its adoption by organisations such as the UK Government’s UK Foresight Programme, the EU and the United Nations.
The key to horizon scanning lies in identifying subtle signs that are not yet recognised as clear trends. In order to anticipate developments that could bring about significant change in the future, it is important to identify early indications—in areas such as technology, society, the environment, business and the economy—that are currently only being discussed by a select few experts or within cutting-edge fields.
By utilising RESET analysis (based on five perspectives: rules, the natural environment, society, economic value and technology), it becomes possible to organise and identify these signs more systematically, thereby contributing to the objectives of horizon scanning: ‘early risk detection’, ‘exploration of new opportunities’ and ‘strategic decision-making’.
RuleWatcher is a web-based tool used by the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP) for horizon scanning.
For more information about RuleWatcher, please click here.
