which is best considered as a preliminary stage to more in-depth
work, rather than as a stand-alone technique. Common tools here include trend
analysis and, cross-impact matrices. The goal is to seek a ‘first cut’ at creating
some order out of the bewildering variety of ideas and data which the inputs step
usually generates. For this project, this stage will take place prior to the first
expert workshop, to provide context, then again after it, but this time to put flesh
on the ideas developed at the workshop. The results of the analysis are then fed
into a second step