How Reimagine GNB used strategic foresight to categorize innovation ideas, frame the foundational levers workshops, and identify where transformative potential lies.
The Three Horizons model is a strategic foresight tool developed by Curry & Hudson (2008) that helps organizations think about change across three timeframes simultaneously. Rather than treating the future as a single destination, it maps three patterns of activity that always coexist — and shows how they interact over time.
The dominant way things work today. High strategic fit now, but declining over time as the external environment changes. Incremental improvements keep H1 running, but cannot address emerging challenges. In GNB: existing departmental structures, siloed budgeting, compliance-driven processes.
Bridging experiments that challenge H1 while not yet reaching H3. These are "safe-to-fail" tests — they draw from both the old and new systems. Some will be absorbed back into H1; others will pave the way to H3. In RiGNB: the Promising Practices Accelerator, pilot prototypes, cross-departmental experiments.
"Pockets of future embedded in the present." These are transformative ideas that represent fundamentally different ways of working, even if they have low strategic fit today. Over time, as H1 declines, H3 ideas become the new normal. In RiGNB: the Foundational Levers workshops envisioning the future of Policy, Finance, HR, and Digital.
The Three Horizons are not sequential phases — they coexist. The art of transformation is managing all three simultaneously: sustaining what works (H1), experimenting with bridges (H2), and nurturing radical visions (H3). — Curry & Hudson, Seeing in Multiple Horizons: Connecting Futures to Strategy, Journal of Futures Studies 13(1), 2008
RiGNB used the Three Horizons to frame the entire transformation initiative. The Foundational Levers — Policy, Finance, Human Resources, Service & Digital, Data & Technology, Governance, Grants & Contributions, and Communications & Engagement — were examined through all three horizon lenses simultaneously:
This framing meant the workshop series and the accelerator were not separate activities — they were complementary parts of the same transformation logic. The workshops (H3) generated the long-range visions; the accelerator (H2) ran real-world experiments; and the intake analysis (H1) mapped where the current system stood.
An intake process invited ideas from across GNB. When analysed through the Three Horizons lens, a clear picture emerged of where the organization's innovation energy is concentrated — and where the gaps are.
The ideas skewed heavily toward general government operations rather than the two priority life-phase portfolios: only 9% related to Seniors & Long-Term Care, 17% to Children & Youth, and 74% addressed other areas. This suggested broad appetite for improvement, but the deepest transformation energy wasn't yet focused on the priority populations.
When mapped against the Foundational Levers, ideas clustered heavily around Data & Technology and Service & Digital — the two levers perceived as most amenable to innovation. Other levers received fewer submissions, suggesting either less visible innovation potential or higher perceived barriers to change.
The concentration of ideas in Data & Technology and Service & Digital is consistent with the broader finding from the workshop series: these levers are where practitioners see the most immediate opportunity for transformation. Notably, Policy and Finance — despite being equally critical foundational levers — received fewer submissions, suggesting these areas may require more active cultivation of innovation thinking (which is exactly what the Foundational Levers workshops aimed to do).
The ~15% of ideas classified as H3 — truly transformative — were concentrated in Data & Technology and Service & Digital. These are the "pockets of future embedded in the present" that the Three Horizons framework looks for: ideas with low strategic fit in the current system but high potential to define the future.
The Three Horizons framework reveals how the different pieces of Reimagine GNB fit together as a coherent transformation strategy — not isolated activities, but complementary work across all three time horizons.
The intake analysis revealed that GNB's innovation energy overwhelmingly defaults to H1 — incremental improvements to the current system. Only ~15% of ideas submitted were truly transformative. This is exactly the pattern the Three Horizons framework predicts: organizations naturally gravitate toward H1 because it feels safe and actionable.
The value of the Reimagine GNB initiative is that it deliberately created space for all three horizons. The Foundational Levers workshops pulled practitioners into H3 thinking — imagining the future of policy, finance, HR, and digital from scratch. The accelerator gave teams permission and structure to operate in H2 — running real experiments that bridge toward that future. And the intake process gave honest visibility into how much of the organization's energy remains anchored in H1.
The transformation challenge going forward is to keep all three horizons active simultaneously: sustaining H1 operations while growing the portfolio of H2 experiments and protecting the H3 visions from being pulled back into incrementalism — the "Scope Bind" that the accelerator report identified as a persistent risk.
The most transformative ideas — Digital ID, outcome-based budgeting, life-event service integration, the Social Policy Office — are H3 visions that emerged from the workshops. Their path to reality runs through H2 experiments: prototypes, pilots, and accelerator sprints that test pieces of the vision in the real world. The Three Horizons framework shows why both are necessary, and why neither alone is sufficient.