What is Backcasting?

Most of us have been taught to plan for the future by looking at where we are now and projecting forward. We analyze current trends, extrapolate data, and make educated guesses about what's coming. We call this forecasting, and it's everywhere — from professional applications, like business strategy, policy planning, and organizational development, to our personal lives, like our choices about where to live, who to date, and whether we should plan the wedding on a Tuesday in January.

The problem is that forecasting assumes the future will basically resemble the past, just with some modifications. Forecasting is our way of asking: "if things continue as they are, where will we end up?" For example, if weather patterns continue as they’ve been, with some slight variation, then we can know that January is not an ideal time for a wedding — unless you live in the Southern Hemisphere, where it’s the middle of the summer.

But what if the ground itself is shifting? In a time when technology, economics, and social structures are all simultaneously in flux, forecasting by projecting current trends forward can often show us futures that are naive and out-of-date — or it can show us the futures that we don’t want.

Backcasting offers something fundamentally different. Instead of asking "where are current trends taking us?" it asks "where do we actually want to be?" And then it works backward from that vision to understand what needs to happen to get there.

Here's a concrete example: Imagine a city planning for transportation in 2045. Forecasting would look at current car ownership rates, traffic patterns, and infrastructure budgets, then project those forward. You'd likely end up with plans for more highways and parking structures.

Backcasting starts differently. It asks: What do we want transportation to look like in 2045? Maybe the vision is a city where most people walk or bike to work, where public transit is abundant and free, where streets are filled with children playing instead of cars parking. Once you have that vision clearly in mind, you work backward: what policy changes, what infrastructure investments, what cultural shifts need to occur? What’s interfering with them? Which would be the most difficult problem to solve?

Backcasting reframes the narrative around change, focusing attention not just on what could be possible — but also uncovering the hidden barriers that are potentially blocking visionary outcomes. In the process, Backcasting provides a depth, nuance and creative potential that’s not commonly associated with forecasting — which is conventionally seen as a predictive analysis.

The difference matters more than you might think — especially for leaders of transformation initiatives, and strategists who are peering into a future of creative possibility. When we forecast, we're essentially prisoners of the past and present. We can only imagine futures that are variations of what already exists.

In forecasting, our reference points are the past. We say things like, “this is just like…” and then name a certain year or historical context. Whether consciously or unconsciously, we take the emergent and new and reconfigure it so it looks like something recognizable.

But when we backcast, we start from a different foundation: we begin with the presumption that tomorrow hasn’t happened yet. Rather than imbuing this foundation with naive hope or magical thinking, we instead allow for transformative, yet-to-be-imagined possibilities.

Backcasting gives ourselves and our organizations permission to dream. We can stretch beyond current constraints. We can envision futures that break with today’s logic entirely. Backcasting says: the future isn't something that happens to us. It's something we can shape consciously, as individuals and organizations.

This is especially powerful in times of deep uncertainty and upheaval. When the old maps no longer work, we need new ways of orienting ourselves. Backcasting provides a clear, effective process for re-orienting ourselves beyond current trends — and stretching our creativity into a world of innovative possibility.