Leaping the Abyss

This book was born of the fascination felt by two scientists after they discovered the methodology of the DesignShop seminars.
This fascination is very well rendered in the book, which is both instructive and stimulating from cover to cover. The guiding thread is the description of a seminar organized at Wharton University with several different organizations in order to prepare for the challenges of the decades to come.
The great merit of this book is that it manages to combine a wide variety of methodological contributions—the principles and methods that make DesignShop so successful are studied closely—with a narrative style that breathes life into the telling and plunges the reader into the atmosphere of the actual event.
The book is organized according to the chronology of the seminar. Those who would like to get their bearings quickly should note that chapters 4, 5 and 8 describe the Scan phase, while the Focus phase is described in chapter 9 and the Act phase in chapter 11. The first three chapters provide a very useful introduction to understand the overall spirit of the approach, while each of the subsequent chapters explores a specific aspect in greater detail, e.g. with regard to the work environment, the role of facilitators and the sponsor, etc.
Note: This book can be accessed in its entirety at www.foresight.org.