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Learning from the Future

• J. Peter Scoblic

In times of great uncertainty, it’s difficult to formulate strategies. Leaders can’t draw on experience to address developments no one has ever seen before. Yet the decisions they make now could have ramifications for decades.

The practice of strategic foresight offers a solution. Its aim is not to predict the future but to help organizations envision multiple futures in ways that enable them to sense and adapt to change. Its most recognizable tool is scenario planning. To use it well, organizations must imagine a variety of futures, identify strategies that are needed across them, and begin implementing those strategies now. But one-off exercises are not enough: Leaders must institutionalize that process, building a dynamic link between thinking about the future and taking action in the present.

“What Is the Next Normal Going to Look Like?”

In this roundtable discussion, HBR’s editor in chief, Adi Ignatius, leads a conversation among five top executives: the fashion mogul Tory Burch; Geoff Martha, of Medtronic; Nancy McKinstry, who heads the professional information services firm Wolters Kluwer; Chuck Robbins, of Cisco Systems; and Kevin Sneader, of McKinsey & Company. These executives discuss leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic, how the crisis has affected their companies, and how they are responding. They also speculate on what the future might hold for business: more reliance on digital technology, a new relationship with government, and fresh thinking about social inequality, environmental sustainability, and the delivery of health care.

Helping Your Team Heal

The author collaborated with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross on the book On Grief and Grieving, which adapted the five stages of grief from her landmark work in the late 1960s on the five stages of dying: denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, and acceptance. He has since come to believe that grief has a sixth stage— meaning —which can take many forms: remembering the joy that someone or something gave; rituals of remembrance; gratitude; or turning the loss into something positive for others.

In this article Kessler advises leaders, managers, and organizations to recognize that people may be experiencing different kinds of grief and to treat them accordingly.

The complete Spotlight package is available in a single reprint.

How to make robust strategy in times of deep uncertainty

Idea in Brief

The challenge.

Good strategy creates competitive advantage over time, but the uncertainty of the future makes it difficult to identify effective courses of action, particularly in the midst of a crisis. As a leader, how can you prepare for an unpredictable future while managing the urgent demands of the present?

The Promise

The practice of strategic foresight provides the capacity to sense, shape, and adapt to change as it happens. One important element of the practice is scenario planning, which helps leaders navigate uncertainty by teaching them how to anticipate possible futures while still operating in the present.

The Way Forward

To make effective strategy in the face of uncertainty, leaders need to institutionalize strategic foresight, harnessing the power of imagination to build a dynamic link between planning and operations.

How can we formulate strategy in the face of uncertainty?

A roundtable with five top executives

• JS J. Peter Scoblic is a cofounder and principal of Event Horizon Strategies , a foresight consultancy, and a senior fellow in the International Security Program at New America. He has just completed a doctorate at Harvard Business School, where his work on strategy and uncertainty won the Wyss Award for Excellence in Doctoral Research.

Partner Center

Foresight Examples & Case Studies

The Strategic Foresight (futures studies) can trace its routes in military planning and among energy companies like Royal Dutch Shell.

Today, the Singapore Government to BOSCH employ strategic foresight to navigate risks, explore opportunities, and develop long term strategies. Its application are diverse.

Strategic foresight have proven to deliver positive business impact. It is a tool to help us challenge deep seated assumptions and unlock innovative strategies through thinking more critically about change and the future.

Business Applications

• Stakeholder Alignment
• Strategic Planning
• Risk Management
• Portfolio Planning
• Design Innovation
• Augment Design Thinking Processes
• Disruptive Thinking

Business Impact of Foresight

A study of over 300 multinational companies found that companies who are the most future prepared are 44% more likely to be outperformers in their markets

See full report from Aarhus Universiy

Businesses that Use Foreisght

Examples of notable companies that use corporate foresight and have been studied by academics:

Example of organizations that have issued job postings for foresight positions:

• Arup : Senior Foresight Strategist
• Toyota : Foresight and Trends Senior Analyst
• Disney : Consumer Foresight Sr. Analyst
• Facebook : Foresight Strategist
• National University of Singapore: Strategist/Foresight Practitioner

Foresight for Gov't Diplomacy to New Products

Below is a small sample of the publically available futures-focused work. Visit OpenFutures , they have over 300 scenarios from future of energy to health issues.

Colombian Peace Process

Destino Colombia Tools: Foresight Workshop, Scenario Planning

Adam Kahane of Reos Partners organized a series of futures scenario workshops called “Destino Colombia.” It brought together politicians, guerillas, military officers, journalists, business people and more to explore what was happening to their country and where it could go.

Former Colombian president and Noble Peace Prize Winner Juan Manuel Santos said Adam Kahane’s workshops were “one of the most significant events in the country’s search for peace.”

See “Destino Colombia” Case Study PDF | Article

Basque Culinary Center & The Future of Food

Towards Personalized Gastronomy: Basque 2050 Tools: Futures Game, Systems Mapping

The Basque Culinary Center’s Project Gastronomía brought together scientists, business leaders, and experts from various field to discuss the future of food in the Basque Country in the year 2050.

Experts used Project Gastronomía’s futures game to help discuss the food system and explore potential futures in a systems-based way. The resulting report was co-written by Daniel Riveong of Plural Futures.

See Website Link | PDF (English)

Intel & the Future of Wearables

The Tomorrow Project Tools Used: Speculative Fiction

In 2011, Intel Corporation worked with the Center for Science and the Imagination to bring together leading innovative thinkers, futures-focused writers, science fiction writers, and others to think about how daily life could be transformed by technology. Notable contributes included Cory Doctorow, will.i.am,and and Douglas Ruskoff.

See Tomorrow Project Webpage

Social Changes & The Future of Marriage

The Future of Marriage Tools Used: Speculative Fiction, Scenario Planning, Three Horizons, CLA

This speculative fiction explores the future of marriage in San Francisco in 2036. It explores current trends in family structures, such as cohabiting multi-family homes, and communal child rearing. It was developed by students of the California College of the Arts and featured on the Journal of Futures Studies.

See review of the work the Journal of Futures Studies

Demos Helsinki & Urban Planning

Nordic Cities Beyond Digital Disruption: A Novel Way to Develop Cities Tools: Backcasting, Scenario Workshops

Over two years, the Centre for Sustainable Communications at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Demos Helsinki and 12 Nordic cities, companies and universities worked together to explore how urban life can be imporved using new services and technologies. The report summerizes the learnings, models, and potential scenarios developed through the collaboration.

See DEMOS Helsinki for the report

US Intelligence Community & Global Future Scenarios

Global Trends: Paradox of Progress Scenarios, Artifact from the Future

The National Intelligence Council is responsible for long-term strategic thinking among the U.S. intelligence services. The NIC publishes long-term geopolitical scenarios for each incoming US president. This report was developed in 2017 led by NIC’s Strategic Futures Group and Deputy National Intelligence Officers.

See the NIC website here

Do you have a futures-related case study you’d like to share? Please send it over!

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Building Strategic Foresight Capabilities

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Intermediate level

Professionals with an interest in the future

Skills you'll gain

• Strategic Thinking
• Organizational foresight
• Future Forecasting

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There are 6 modules in this course

Today, organizations find themselves dealing with an increasing amount of uncertainty.

They are often ill-equipped at responding to disruptive change and find themselves blindsided by ‘unexpected’ landslides in their ecosystems. In order to hold their ground, they need to upgrade their capabilities, become more agile in adapting to change and drive firm-level, society-level and industry-level change proactively. This course introduces you to strategic foresight, its main methods and tools and their application in public and private organisations. Foresight allows organisations to get ahead of the curve, pre-emptively catch trends, define more effective and robust policies and drive positive futures. You will also learn how foresight is an inclusive way of preparing for the future, how to involve a wide set of stakeholders, overcome silo thinking and leverage collective intelligence to advance the status quo. The course is built on over 15 years of benchmarking among leading organisations and leverages on the collective experience of three lecturers, who introduced foresight, strategy, innovation and design thinking to public organisation and in leading private sector companies. After completing this course, you will understand the need for strategic foresight, as well as how and where it is used, which benefits it yields and why leading organisations systematically invest in staying on top of the future.

Introduction, Scanning for signals and Developing drivers of change

In this first module of the strategic foresight course we will introduce you to the language and basic principles of foresight . You will learn how to convert signals into drivers of change, and how to interpret drivers of change to succeed in the face of uncertainty in your business and in your personal career.

What's included

10 videos 8 readings 3 quizzes 3 discussion prompts

10 videos • Total 49 minutes

• Meet your hosts for this course • 4 minutes • Preview module
• Foresight versus Forecasting • 5 minutes
• Power of foresight: organization • 6 minutes
• Power of foresight: A personal story • 3 minutes
• Principles for thinking in the future • 2 minutes
• What is a signal? • 2 minutes
• Examples of signals • 6 minutes
• From signals to drivers • 5 minutes
• Air Travel Scenarios 2040 • 9 minutes
• Review of Week 1 • 3 minutes

8 readings • Total 46 minutes

• Course Overview • 5 minutes
• Syllabus • 5 minutes
• Welcome! Introduction to Week 1 • 3 minutes
• Get to know your Classmates • 5 minutes
• Events versus patterns • 4 minutes
• Inflection points • 10 minutes
• How to spot a signal • 4 minutes
• Conducting a Trend Audit • 10 minutes

3 quizzes • Total 30 minutes

• Review of Week 1 • 10 minutes
• Reflective activity - Signals for your shareholders/stakeholders • 10 minutes
• Reflective activity - PESTLE Analysis on Air Travel drivers • 10 minutes

3 discussion prompts • Total 30 minutes

• A foresight exercise • 10 minutes
• Waves or Tides? • 10 minutes
• Drivers of change for your personal career • 10 minutes

Why scenario thinking is key to prepare for uncertain futures

This week, in module 2, we will introduce you to scenarios, which are built from the drivers you learned about in the previous module. In Module 1, you identified signals of how the future might be different and learned how to separate signal from noise to identify drivers of change. Scenarios help you create multiple plausible futures and catch them in stories and images. These stories inform long term decision making. Let's unleash our creativity and explore how those drivers combine in non-linear and complex ways to create narratives and scenarios for very different futures.

6 videos 5 readings 4 quizzes 1 discussion prompt

6 videos • Total 21 minutes

• Creating the future: New thinking styles • 1 minute • Preview module
• Casual loop diagram • 3 minutes
• Futures cone • 3 minutes
• Scenario planning approaches • 3 minutes
• Uncertainty/Impact Matrix • 5 minutes
• Cross Impact Analysis • 2 minutes

5 readings • Total 43 minutes

• Welcome to Week 2 • 4 minutes
• Making Systems Thinking More Than a Slogan • 6 minutes
• Scenario BUILDING process • 8 minutes
• Prioritizing uncertainties • 15 minutes
• Review of Week 2 • 10 minutes

4 quizzes • Total 40 minutes

• Reflective activity - From drivers of change to scenarios • 10 minutes
• Reflective activity - Impact Matrix • 10 minutes
• Reflective activity - Cross Impact Analysis • 10 minutes

1 discussion prompt • Total 10 minutes

• Scenario planning versus traditional linear strategic planning • 10 minutes

Developing scenarios and working with stakeholders

In this module you will learn how to develop -and use- scenarios as a way to make futures tangible. As mentioned, we need to limit the amount of scenarios to make our foresight project manageable. By putting two drivers, selected through the approach from previous chapter in a scenario cross, we can create a spectrum of four plausible futures as a basis for strategic conversations. We will demonstrate and test with you how scenario narratives can become a catalyst for impactful strategies.

3 videos 6 readings 3 quizzes 1 discussion prompt

3 videos • Total 13 minutes

• Building Narratives • 7 minutes • Preview module
• Winning hearts and minds • 3 minutes
• Review of Week 3 • 2 minutes

6 readings • Total 47 minutes

• Welcome to Week 3 • 2 minutes
• Scenarios, a powerful medium to fuel strategic conversations and inform decision making • 5 minutes
• The three cognitive challenges • 10 minutes
• Scenario Cross • 10 minutes
• Scenario narratives • 10 minutes
• Engaging stakeholders • 10 minutes

3 quizzes • Total 25 minutes

• Review of Week 3 • 10 minutes
• Understanding cognitive challenges to future-orientation • 5 minutes
• Reflective activity - Scenarios: Team on a mission • 10 minutes
• Engaging Stakeholders: Your personal career • 10 minutes

Developing future-oriented and unique strategies

Having learned how to craft compelling narratives of the future, you will now turn to strategize based on these future scenarios. You will come up with strategies that are different from your current one and different to the status quo. These are known as distant strategies. They form part of a portfolio of actions to help us balance performance and robustness. We will look at how scenarios can help you determine your Massive Transformation Purpose, a “why” to commit to. This helps you look at “what” actions we can take and “how” you will achieve them. The strategy playbox will provide you with a mechanism to systematically explore what is possible within current constraints.

6 videos 3 readings 1 quiz 3 discussion prompts

6 videos • Total 27 minutes

• Introduction to Week 4 • 3 minutes • Preview module
• Winning practices for executing strategy • 3 minutes
• Massive Transformational Purpose (MTP) • 6 minutes
• Building a Strategy Playbox • 8 minutes
• Portfolio of Actions • 2 minutes
• Review of Week 4 • 3 minutes

3 readings • Total 25 minutes

• Welcome to Week 4 • 5 minutes
• Massive Transformational Purpose (MTP) • 10 minutes
• Developing distant strategies for a small restaurant (inspirational story) • 10 minutes

1 quiz • Total 5 minutes

• Review of Week 4 • 5 minutes
• Alignment on Purpose • 10 minutes
• Strategy Playbox • 10 minutes
• Portfolio of Actions: Your personal career • 10 minutes

Building organisational foresight capabilities

In the two previous modules we focused on the practice of foresight. We were introduced to the Scenario Sprint method and learnt how scenarios help us to co-create compelling narratives that support strategy and decision making. This week, you will learn how to make foresight part of your everyday life, as an individual or in an organization. Module five will present you with materials and arguments to support the case for investing in foresight, and will provide you with the necessary information to scale the competency to identify, interpret and act on signals of change.

10 videos 7 readings 1 quiz 2 discussion prompts

10 videos • Total 34 minutes

• Introduction to Week 5 • 2 minutes • Preview module
• Why and when to invest in strategic foresight? • 5 minutes
• Value impact of future fitness • 2 minutes
• The six capabilities of future fitness • 3 minutes
• Introduction Dr. Pun-Arj Chairatana • 4 minutes
• Kick-starting foresight in Thailand • 2 minutes
• Future Tales Lab by MQDC • 4 minutes
• Lessons learned • 1 minute
• Future fitness of your personal life - A personal story • 4 minutes
• Review of Week 5 • 3 minutes

7 readings • Total 41 minutes

• The challenge • 2 minutes
• Founding of the Innovation Foresight Institute • 5 minutes
• Deploying the foresight toolkit • 5 minutes
• Building a public-private foresight ecosystem • 2 minutes
• A growing foresight ecosystem to drive innovation • 7 minutes
• Leading a foresight unit • 10 minutes
• Building foresight capabilities at scale • 10 minutes

1 quiz • Total 10 minutes

• Review of Week 5 • 10 minutes

2 discussion prompts • Total 20 minutes

• Introducing Foresight to your organization • 10 minutes
• Foresight applied to your personal career • 10 minutes

Exam : Final quiz

Now you have reached the end of the course. The only thing left is the final quiz! Here you will test your knowledge with 30 questions. Good luck.

1 quiz • Total 45 minutes

• Final exam • 45 minutes

Founded in 1906, EDHEC is now one of Europe’s top 15 business schools . Based in Lille, Nice, Paris, London and Singapore, and counting over 90 nationalities on its campuses, EDHEC is a fully international school directly connected to the business world. With over 40,000 graduates in 120 countries, it trains committed managers capable of dealing with the challenges of a fast-evolving world. Harnessing its core values of excellence, innovation and entrepreneurial spirit, EDHEC has developed a strategic model founded on research of true practical use to society, businesses and students, and which is particularly evident in the work of EDHEC-Risk Institute and Scientific Beta. The School functions as a genuine laboratory of ideas and plays a pioneering role in the field of digital education via EDHEC Online, the first fully online degree-level training platform. These various components make EDHEC a centre of knowledge, experience and diversity, geared to preparing new generations of managers to excel in a world subject to transformational change. EDHEC in figures: 8,600 students in academic education, 19 degree programmes ranging from bachelor to PhD level, 184 professors and researchers, 11 specialist research centres.

The UNESCO Chair for Organizational Anticipation, Resilient Leadership and Educational Innovation creates training material on Strategic Foresight, develops best-practice case studies on organizational foresight, and provides a self-assessment tool to test an organizational future preparedness. It is part of UNESCO’s Futures Literacy and Foresight program.

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Learner reviews

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128 reviews

Reviewed on Jan 29, 2024

Provides very useful tools for strategic foresight

Reviewed on Apr 30, 2024

amazing and very useful course in growing one's career graph professionally

Reviewed on Dec 2, 2023

I learned so much about organizational foresight in this course. This course really bumped up my knowledge in this space.

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Supporting decision making with strategic foresight: An emerging framework for proactive and prospective governments

Published on 27 September 2023

• Anticipatory Innovation & Foresight

Executive summary

This working paper discusses strategic foresight initiatives and methodologies that support decision making and process design. It highlights case studies, international benchmarks, and best practices as well as methodological recommendations and options to promote the adoption and use of strategic foresight in government. The paper is structured in four sections, each centred on a critical action to improve decision making through strategic foresight: (i) framing strategic foresight, (ii) building its fundamental components in governments, (iii) fine-tuning foresight interventions to specific contexts, and (iv) doing concrete activities to solve specific policy challenges. Given its exploratory nature, this working paper and its proposals must be seen as contributions to the ongoing debates about the use of strategic foresight for decision making in government. As such, rather than a definitive set of assertions, this working paper raises hypotheses to be tested, improved and, if need be, criticised.

To help governments become more proactive and prospective, strategic foresight needs to be framed through a systemic governance approach. Foresight analysis and insights of possible futures also need to be matched with concrete actions in the present. Bridging the strategic foresight impact gap – i.e. the distance separating foresight expertise and its actual implementation to target policy goals – involves mobilising and embedding strategic foresight into government functions and mechanisms. This working paper advocates for the use of systemic approaches to identify and access the elements that sustain the effective use of strategic foresight in government. At the practical level, the paper introduces prompt questions and tools for governments to use this systemic approach for purposeful interventions.

In order to build sustained and effective strategic foresight systems in governments, the Strategic Foresight Unit (SFU) of the OECD proposes a set of systemic elements, namely demand and mandate, capabilities and skills, institutional arrangements, embeddedness in policymaking, and feedback and learning loops. Sustained support and demand for strategic foresight, especially from high-level sponsors and “champions”, is needed to ensure its systematic application. Fostering the adoption of foresight requires a clear definition of mandates and the allocation of responsibilities to government organisations and actors. This working paper also highlights important capabilities and skills that need to be nurtured across the whole public sector, at the level of public sector organisations, and among individual public sector managers and staff. Using examples to illustrate the diversity of strategic foresight institutionalisation processes and formats, the paper highlights the relevance of institutional arrangements, such as a strong and direct connection with the policy arena, the creation of legislation and regulatory incentives, the support to specialised agencies benefiting from explicit (and transversal) mandates, and the professionalisation of practitioners and their careers and expertise. To best respond to the needs and expectations of its users, strategic foresight also needs to incorporate learning loops, which enable the constant improvement of its approaches. Regarding its embeddedness in policymaking, the paper highlights eight functions that foresight performs for decision makers:

• Strategic foresight can help decision makers’ self-reflection , enabling them to articulate unasked questions, debunk implicit biases and identify assumptions that sustain their daily routines.
• Foresight approaches provide useful insights for decision makers, creating high-quality, robust and reliable outputs to improve the impact of policymaking.
• Foresight practices, processes and products can steward the implementation of public policies, providing constant awareness about ongoing, unpredictable changes or long-term impacts of public policies.
• Strategic foresight helps to mobilise and mediate stakeholders’ participation and co-creation around the exploration and debate about plausible and desirable futures.
• Engagement with futures can nurture empathy among stakeholders, enabling the mutual understanding of diverse points of view about the future and contributing to the establishment of common ground.
• Strategic foresight offers decision makers scope to experiment, including stress-test options regarding the future and probes into potential future paths and outcomes based on present-day decisions.
• Decision makers can acquire or improve their skills , such as their ability to account for sustainability or their agility to cope with unexpected events.
• Through its incentives to adopt longer-term, forward-looking perspectives, strategic foresight can drive decision makers’ imagination to express and inspire possible futures and alternative narratives of uncertain and complex scenarios.

Foresight approaches work best when fine-tuned to their specific context of application. The acknowledgement of barriers as well as enablers is an important step in the design of adaptable, achievable, robust and context-adjusted strategic foresight processes and interventions. This working paper provides an extensive review of strategic foresight barriers and enablers identified in cases around the globe. The most apparent obstacles to strategic foresight adoption and use in government include short-termism and risk aversion, scarcity of specialised skills in public administration, or the existence of organisational and sectoral silos. The limited accessibility or lack of timeliness of strategic foresight products for decision makers and the underuse of evaluation instruments are also seen as hindrances. Among the enabling factors, this paper highlights the involvement and buy-in of policymakers, the credibility and reputation of strategic foresight units and practitioners, and their ability to grasp and participate in public debates. Sufficient resources, clear ownership and strong mandates for strategic foresight are necessary across institutional arrangements. High-quality expertise and pertinent skillsets, as well as pockets of talent or teams equipped to operate transversally in government, all support strategic foresight implementation. Providing policymakers with relevant, usable and accessible outputs is critical to embed strategic foresight in the policy cycle. Regular interaction with users to gather their feedback and impact assessment exercises are necessary for the continuous improvement of strategic foresight processes and practices. This working paper introduces a blueprint of critical factors for the acceptance and use of strategic foresight in government to help governments tailor strategic foresight interventions to their specificcontext.

The value of strategic foresight lies primarily in its application to decision making. Robust methodologies need to be applied through a structured process of concrete actions that ensures strategic foresight is fit-for-purpose and impactful. This working paper reviews distinct models that explore strategic foresight as an iterative and actionable approach articulated through a portfolio of methods and tools. It explores in detail the application of strategic foresight to selected priority topics: green and energy transition, and equity and social cohesion. For each of these topics, the working paper identifies and shares experiences and lessons from relevant use cases.

Finally, this working paper highlights five areas of opportunity for PlanAPP to explore in Portugal:

• Given its position in the Centre of Government, PlanAPP can promote the collaborative design of a transversal strategy for foresight in the Portuguese public administration with an associated roadmap for action, providing the direction and defining the resources required to generate stronger and effective capacities and initiatives.
• Develop a scan of the whole strategic foresight ecosystem in Portugal in order to map, in detail, its actors and their interconnections, as well as identify its specific barriers and enablers.
• Use its mission and mandate to promote concrete interventions that focus on specific projects, either domain-specific or challenge-based, applying strategic foresight approaches on the ground and oriented toward tangible outcomes.
• Upgrade ongoing initiatives to connect existing practitioners in the Government of Portugal. The creation of a foresight community of practice would increase interaction and collaboration across sectors and organisations.
• Promote exchanges with international partners, benefiting from contacts already established, to share lessons and build cross-border initiatives to match global challenges.

This working paper provides guidance for governments to further promote and disseminate strategic foresight for decision making. The paper reviews substantive knowledge and research about strategic foresight and gathers a series of international case study examples. It also offers methodological guidance and suggests actions for designing and updating strategies and interventions that integrate strategic foresight approaches. Through all these contributions, the paper sets an emerging framework for proactive and prospective governments.

Published: 11 September 2023

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Strategic foresight: A case study

Strategic foresight is a process of creating useful conversations about possible futures. In this case study, we look at how having a clear view of what’s changing in the outside world empowers an organization with the confidence and agility to reorient its strategy for long-term resilience and sustainable growth.

Over the course of my career, I’ve been privileged to think seriously about the future of food and beverages—what we’ll eat and how we’ll produce it. I’ve worked with organizations such as the Future Food Studio, the National Science Foundation and New Harvest, along with some of the biggest players in the consumer packaged food and beverage industry, such as PepsiCo, Campbell Soup Company and Constellation Brands.

Strategic foresight determines pathways to new growth

In 2015, I worked with Tyson Foods, one of world’s most prominent meat producers. Looking to see beyond the “insights” it was getting from consumer trends reports, Tyson engaged our team at Idea Couture (the innovation firm I was with at that time) to deploy a strategic foresight process that would systematically construct a long-term view of the future of food.

Tyson’s view of the future has changed significantly since then. Just take a look at the headlines:

• Tyson Foods, a Meat Leader, Invests in Protein Alternatives — The New York Times, October 2016
• Tyson Foods Injects More Money Into Plant-Based Meat — Forbes, December 2017
• Tyson Foods Has Invested in a Startup That Aims to Eradicate Meat from Live Animals — Fortune, January 2018
• Tyson Isn’t Chicken — Bloomberg Businessweek, August 2018

What’s changed about Tyson’s strategy? By virtue of its investments in plant-based alternatives and cellular agriculture, Tyson has repositioned itself, shifting from being a meat company to being a protein company. It’s certainly not a 180-degree turn, but the move does represent a significant pivot for such a large organization.

Strategic foresight can upend established ways

Transformation is hard. Firms, and the people who run them, tend to be deeply entrenched in their ways. Tyson’s own CEO acknowledged that investing in alternative proteins felt counterintuitive for many within the company. So how does a business with roots going back more than 80 years to an Arkansas chicken farm all of a sudden decide to invest in veggie patties and emerging biotechnology?

Strategic foresight facilitates new kinds of conversations. The long view permits you to talk about possibilities that might feel uncomfortable or even impossible through a short-term lens. But when you take a step back, look at the facts and consider how the world is changing over a longer time horizon, suddenly the idea that sounded ridiculous becomes the clear and obvious strategy.

Strategic foresight requires looking at drivers and signals of change

I always say strategic foresight is, among other things, the practice of developing good taste in information. Understanding why Tyson would make the transition from a meat company to a protein company is easy once you bring together the relevant data at every level.

Consider the following indicators of change and their implications for how a meat company thinks about the challenges and opportunities on the horizon.

Population growth

The world population is projected to increase from 7.3 billion (in 2015) to 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100. That’s a lot more mouths to feed.

Environmental concerns

Meat production is a significant contributor to environmental degradation . Its effects include deforestation through land usage, water consumption, fossil fuel usage, methane emissions from livestock, and effluent waste pollution.

Growing demand for protein

As populations and incomes grow in developing countries, demand for animal products is expected to more than double by 2030.

Flexitarian behaviour

Meanwhile, the neologism “flexitarian” is becoming common parlance. It describes the growing group of people who swap out meat for a plant-based option once or more a week, without eliminating meat altogether. Though vegetarians and vegans represent about 4% of the US population, 47% of Americans eat at least one vegetarian meal a week.

Emerging technology and startups

Venture capital–funded startups like Aleph Farms and Memphis Meats are prototyping lab-grown steaks, chicken strips and other non-animal “animal” products.

Strategic foresight reveals what’s hidden in plain sight

When done right, strategic foresight can completely upend your assumptions. Suddenly, the once credible assumption that a meat company should focus on what it does best is replaced with a new credible assumption: the company should explore diverse sources of protein. What initially seemed unintuitive now looks like the only viable approach to maintaining resilience and long-term growth.

  Here are a few things to notice about the drivers and signals of change above:

• This isn’t highly speculative sci-fi stuff. It’s all publicly available information—firmly grounded in what’s happening today—that anyone can find and understand.
• It stitches together a perspective based on views from many angles and altitudes. There is big-picture, macro stuff to consider, such as population growth, emerging economies and climate change, that helps to frame an unignorable long-term challenge. Then with further research, you can add in changing demographics, shifting consumer behaviours and values, potential new sources of competition, and emerging technology to construct a coherent view of the future.
• The strategy (almost) writes itself. The big challenges and opportunities are self-evident. The research provides the relevant material for a conversation about the future. The decision-makers can then look at the signals and consider their implications, intersections and cross-impacts.

by Robert Bolton

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A Study of Tesla—Twenty-First Century Organizational Strategy as Nexus Between Foresight and Futures Thinking

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Cite this chapter

• Alfred Akakpo   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3014-1173 3 ,
• Evans Akwasi Gyasi 4 ,
• Bentil Oduro 5 &
• Sunny Akpabot 5  

This chapter explores the Tesla company and the relationship between its organizational strategy and the use of foresight and future thinking. Examination of these processes is pursued to offer perspectives on the sustainability and viability of Tesla to advance its expansion program in electric vehicle technology. This case study concludes that a company’s ability to anticipate and respond to future trends and continuing disruptions is critical to its success, and that a strategic approach that incorporates foresight and futures thinking can help organizations navigate an uncertain future. Finally, this case study describes Tesla's strategic approach and how the company leverages foresight and future thinking to inform its decision-making and drive innovation. Overall, the case study highlights the importance of strategic foresight and future thinking in organizational strategy development and provides insights for other companies seeking to adopt similar approaches.

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Akakpo, A., Gyasi, E.A., Oduro, B., Akpabot, S. (2024). A Study of Tesla—Twenty-First Century Organizational Strategy as Nexus Between Foresight and Futures Thinking. In: Schreiber, D.A., L. Berge, Z. (eds) Futures Thinking and Organizational Policy, Volume 2. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55956-3_2

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A privately held US manufacturing company, operating in a market perceived as declining by popular culture and industry analysts, faced a critical challenge. Concerns mounted over the diminishing value and narrowing window of opportunity for a potential merger and acquisition (M&A) transaction. These concerns stemmed from a prevailing industry outlook predicting a downturn in their specific market segment.

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2) Foresight Maturity Model System Teardown :  Concurrently with the brainstorming workshop, we conducted a thorough teardown of the company’s existing strategic foresight and competitive intelligence capabilities. This critical assessment identified areas for improvement and enabled the company to elevate its readiness for future challenges. By enhancing their foresight maturity, we ensured the company was not only prepared for imminent regulatory changes but also equipped to anticipate and respond to long-term industry shifts.

3) Future-Proof Scenario Planner:  Employing this service enabled the company to anticipate and prepare for potential regulatory changes years before they came into effect. By incorporating scenario planning and systemic strategic early warning processes, the company prioritized product testing and analytical reporting, aligning their operations with future regulatory landscapes.

Thanks to their foresighted approach and strategic agility, the company not only sustained its operations but also solidified its market dominance during a period marked by turbulence and regulatory upheaval. While 80% of their competitors failed to navigate the new compliance requirements, our client emerged stronger, well-prepared, and compliant. Their early adoption of strategic planning and commitment to proactive compliance distinguished them, providing a formidable competitive edge in a tightly regulated industry.

In an era where change is the only constant, the ability to anticipate and adapt to external factors beyond our direct control is paramount. The convergence of industries and the blurring lines among competitors, suppliers, and regulatory bodies underscore the necessity for strategic foresight. Our methodologies, especially when embraced by leadership, offer a clear pathway to differentiation and market leadership. The undeniable ROI from scenario planning and strategic foresight positions our clients to not just survive but thrive amid the complexities of modern market dynamics.

Digital Platform Counters Major Supplier's Market Entry: Securing Edge and Adding Millions of Subscribers

In the rapidly evolving digital platform sector, a company found itself at a crossroads, needing to identify new sources of competitive advantage amid a landscape of stagnation. With clear immediate market demands but uncertain future expectations, the company required deep foresight into both existing and emerging competitors' product roadmaps. This insight was crucial to understand how competitive dynamics would shift in the medium term, particularly with the potential entry of a significant supplier into the market as a direct competitor.

Our comprehensive approach leveraged a trio of our most impactful services to navigate this complex challenge. We assessed the competitive landscape's evolution with the potential market entry of a significant supplier. This enabled the company to proactively develop strategies to mitigate risks and leverage existing differentiation points.

1) Competitive Value Chain Analysis :  We conducted a deep dive into the operational and strategic practices of potential and existing competitors. This analysis provided a granular view of where the company could optimize its operations and strategic initiatives to fortify its market position and preempt competitive threats.

2) Full Spectrum Trends Impact Barometer :  Utilizing this service, we identified and quantified emerging trends that could influence market dynamics and consumer preferences. This foresight enabled the company to anticipate shifts and align its strategic planning with future market demands.

3) Solution Development Atlas :  By employing this service, we facilitated the strategic development of new content and features that resonated with projected market trends and consumer preferences. This included identifying white spaces in the market where the company could innovate to create compelling value propositions for current and potential subscribers.

Our predictive model foresaw the market entry of a major supplier three years in advance, providing the client with a crucial lead time to strategically innovate and expand their content offerings. By aligning their strategy with the insights generated through the Solution Development Atlas and the Full Spectrum Trends Impact Barometer, the company effectively preempted the competitive threat. The result was a significant subscriber growth, adding millions of new users who were attracted to the newly developed, trend-aligned content.

This case underscores the pivotal role of strategic foresight in maintaining and extending market leadership. By leveraging our services, the client not only navigated the immediate competitive landscape but also positioned themselves to capitalize on future opportunities well before they became apparent to others in the market. This preemptive approach is a testament to the value of strategic foresight, enabling both established leaders and emerging challengers to stay ahead of the curve, ensuring they are not just participants in their industries but dominant forces shaping the future of their markets.

Building A $150 Million Pipeline: Medical Device Manufacturer Expands Expands Into Aerospace & Defense

A leading supplier of highly engineered components for medical devices faced the challenge of over-reliance on a single industry vertical. Eager to diversify revenue streams and mitigate the risks associated with depending on the medical device sector alone, the company sought to explore opportunities in adjacent markets. With several potential industries in mind, the necessity for an evidence-based strategy to guide their expansion became evident. The company required external expertise to objectively evaluate and navigate these uncharted waters.

Our strategic intervention comprised a suite of tailored services designed to map out a clear path to diversification and growth.

1) Market Wants Navigator :  We initiated the exploration by employing this service to analyze and understand the needs and opportunities within eight distinct industry verticals. This deep dive helped to pinpoint markets where the company's expertise in engineered components could offer competitive advantages.

2) Serviceable Market Reach Estimator :  Leveraging this tool, we quantified the potential revenue and growth prospects within each considered industry. This analysis illuminated the tangible opportunities and the company's capacity to meet emerging market needs effectively.

3) Resource Allocation Optimizer :  With insights into where the most significant opportunities lay, this service guided the strategic allocation of the company's resources. Focusing on the aerospace & defense sector, we identified the most promising areas for investment and development based on the company's capabilities and market demands.

4) Targeted Leads X Sales Pipeline Accelerator :  The final step involved optimizing the company's approach to reaching potential prospects within the aerospace & defense market. This service ensured that the company's marketing and sales strategies were finely tuned to engage with the right stakeholders, effectively building a robust sales pipeline.

The strategic exploration and targeted efforts culminated in the company identifying specific opportunities within the aerospace & defense sector, including land, sea, and air platforms. By pinpointing where in the supply chain they could deliver the most value, the company crafted a focused approach to market entry. This strategy led to the development of a five-year pipeline valued at $150 million, marking a significant expansion into a new and lucrative industry vertical.

This case study exemplifies the transformative power of strategic foresight when leveraged to transcend traditional industry boundaries. By focusing on core capabilities rather than confining themselves to a single vertical, the company unlocked new avenues for growth and innovation. Our approach to combining insights from various fields in unexpected ways not only disrupted industry norms but also created unparalleled value for both the company and its newfound customers in the aerospace & defense sector. This strategy underscores the potential for companies to revolutionize their growth trajectories by applying their strengths in novel contexts, guided by strategic foresight and evidence-based planning.

Consumer Goods Manufacturer Redefines Global Strategy: Shifting Over 50% of Revenue to International Sales

A consumer goods manufacturer with a broad reach across several countries faced the challenge of identifying the most strategic markets for aggressive growth. The need for insight into which countries—and specifically which areas within those countries—would be most effective for marketing and sales resource allocation was paramount. The goal was to identify new growth targets that aligned with the company’s capabilities and market demand.

Our approach was both expansive and detailed, leveraging a blend of our proprietary services to deliver comprehensive market insights and strategic direction. 

1) Full Spectrum Trends Impact Barometer :  We began by analyzing global trends, focusing on the emergence of middle-class cities versus megacities, to identify first-mover advantages in markets ripe for the company’s offerings. This analysis was crucial for pinpointing untapped opportunities that aligned with future consumer demands.

2) Serviceable Market Reach Estimator :  Expanding the company's initial focus from 4 to a comprehensive analysis of countries worldwide, we honed in on 8 high-value target markets. This step involved assessing not just market size but the nuanced factors that signaled a strong fit for the company’s products, ensuring a targeted approach that went beyond surface-level market assessments.

3) Resource Allocation Optimizer :  Utilizing this service allowed us to strategically direct the company’s GTM resources towards these identified markets, ensuring an optimized allocation that maximized both reach and impact. This strategic allocation was instrumental in focusing efforts where they would generate the highest return, adjusting the company’s global strategy to prioritize efficiency and effectiveness in market penetration.

This strategic pivot to focus on emerging middle-class cities and capitalize on first-mover advantages led to a significant boost in international revenue and market share. The company successfully resonated with consumers in key areas, outpacing competitors and establishing a strong presence in markets uniquely suited to their offerings.

Our work underscores the importance of nuanced strategic foresight over simplistic market size evaluations. The conventional wisdom might gravitate towards the largest total addressable market without considering crucial factors like market fit, entry obstacles, and future market evolutions. Our methodology proves that a more detailed analysis can reveal that what appears to be a smaller or less obvious market could offer a better strategic fit, leading to more substantial success. This case exemplifies how sophisticated analysis and strategic foresight can transform a company's global trajectory, ensuring not just market entry but lasting dominance and optimized performance.

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Infographic

Building government resiliency with strategic foresight.

RESEARCH REPORT

• Strategic foresight provides a framework for challenging assumptions and imagining new future scenarios in today’s fast-moving world.
• Strategic foresight’s traditional benefit is greater enterprise resiliency , by helping organizations anticipate and prepare for obstacles ahead.
• Agencies can also use it as a tool for fostering greater innovation , to visualize and steer toward new opportunities.
• Learn why strategic foresight will be increasingly necessary for federal agencies, and four steps they can take to adopt and scale it.

As government leaders took the helm in steering the nation through the most disruptive global challenge in recent history — the COVID-19 pandemic — it reinforced the necessity of taking a long-term look at the future to improve resiliency and prepare for both likely and unlikely events.

This has been the traditional and important focus of  strategic foresight , a holistic and rigorous approach for envisioning future scenarios to better anticipate new obstacles and steer toward safety. Strategic foresight is a critical ingredient of building enterprise  resiliency ; it enables organizations to visualize, explore and prepare for the unimaginable.

The challenge, even removing rare yet epoch-making events like global pandemics, is that the pace of change continues to accelerate. So, while it’s increasingly important for federal agencies to stay ahead of the curve, it’s also more and more difficult to even know what that curve may look like. This trend is being felt across both the public and private sectors; an Accenture survey found that only  6% of companies report feeling completely confident  in their current abilities to foresee and respond to future disruption.

Given the unprecedented unpredictability created by even one issue – climate change – and the stakes for mankind, federal agencies need to expand their commitment to strategic foresight. Indicators of the future are all around us, and by embracing a strategic foresight mindset across federal government, we can more fully embrace, explore, and act on these findings.

However, there is another aspect of strategic foresight that we must consider as well. Traditionally, government has used strategic foresight to answer big questions and prepare for obstacles, such as with the annual  Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community . However, they have made less frequent use of it as a creativity tool to spur more open-ended  innovation  – specifically, to consider and evaluate new approaches and work iteratively to improve and refine them. This type of thinking is critical to ensuring that we thrive as well as survive.

Strategic foresight can be a fundamental skill for fostering both resiliency and innovation . It can help agencies view the future without blinders but also help them imagine new possibilities and act on opportunities.

History of strategic foresight in federal government

• EXAMPLE: PROJECT EVERGREEN
• LOOKING AHEAD

For decades, federal agencies have found value in adopting strategic foresight to assess and plan for uncertain futures. The origin of strategic foresight as a field is well-debated, but likely has strong ties to the U.S. federal government.

Many point to  Project RAND , a private research project launched in 1946 for the Army Air Force by Commanding General of the U.S. Army Air Forces, Hap Arnold, as the beginnings of  futurism . From then to today, the U.S. Department of Defense and Intelligence Community have adopted strategic foresight to a greater degree than other areas of government. A  2018 study  found that “[d]edicated foresight staffing for defense and intelligence agencies is consistently greater than for the civilian agencies.” Today, the National Intelligence Council’s   report","analytics-link-type":"cta","xdm:linkURL":"https://www.dni.gov/index.php/gt2040-home","analytics-engagement":"true"}}">  report  is widely praised among the foresight community as a model of excellence.

“In the government, leaders are trained to project themselves and their organizations into the future, to deliberately think through the conditions that could develop, to war game and plan against best-case and worst-case scenarios, and to ensure they are prepared to act and respond as conditions begin to change. This is a discipline that is well practiced within the Intelligence Community and Department of Defense, and one all leaders and organizations can benefit from.” – LTG(R) Mary Legere, Accenture Federal Services – Intelligence Practice Lead

The U.S Coast Guard’s Project Evergreen (and an earlier, similar effort, Project Long View) are examples of not just using strategic foresight to explore possible futures, but actually integrating that insight into how the agency operates. More than 1,000 Coast Guard members have participated in Evergreen or Long View, and evidence shows that it has  enabled the organization to integrate foresight into policy making and other day-to-day operations . As one example, prior to 2001, Project Long View had predicted a future where “terrorism strikes frequently and increasingly close to home.” Since Coast Guard leadership was already socialized to this shift through Project Long View, the organization was able to react to new needs more quickly and effectively post-9/11.

New developments indicate strategic foresight’s greater influence across all of government. In 2013, the  Federal Foresight Community of Interest  was established, the beginning of a cross-federal approach to sharing foresight methods and best practices. Then in 2018, the U.S. Government Accountability Office launched the  Center for Strategic Foresight , continuing to accelerate progress.

Why strategic foresight is important

Strategic foresight provides a framework for challenging assumptions and imagining new scenarios in today’s fast-moving world. Doing so helps leaders move forward with more confidence and less emotion, and take a proactive, rather than reactive, stance to new obstacles and trends.

Essential to strategic foresight is the concept of signals. According to the Institute for the Future (IFTF), a signal is a “a small or local innovation or disruption that has the potential to grow in scale and geographic distribution.” These include new products, new policies, new technologies, events, issues, and more.

Often, the signals of change are all around us, but leaders fail to recognize them or act. For example, in 2008, the CEO of Blockbuster dismissed the then-emerging prominence of Netflix and Redbox: “Neither…are even on the radar screen in terms of competition.” Blockbuster overlooked several key signals, such as the meteoric rise of new, more convenient distribution models for customers (i.e., first mailing DVDs and then online streaming), as well as the value of AI-driven personalization based on in-depth user data. Their resistance to change meant the company lost its dominance on at-home entertainment and eventually shuttered down.

Being attuned to signals can reap great rewards, though. In the 1970s, for example, Royal Dutch Shell’s Pierre Wack famously used scenario planning to anticipate oil prices surging and ultimately helped the company better weather the energy crisis. By challenging inward-looking biases, such as the belief that Western-dominated stability would always prevail, Wack’s team concluded that an energy crisis stemming from tensions in the Middle East was inevitable; this prediction helped the company proactively prepare for the challenges ahead, instead of being caught by surprise.

Our prior research on signals of business change

Nowadays, the urgency of uncovering and acting on signals is increasing, particularly for federal government:

• In our always-on, constantly connected society, agencies must react to events and obstacles quickly. Thus, there is a greater need to anticipate and prepare for change. Recent Accenture survey data found that  91% of federal executives  report that their organization is innovating with an urgency and call to action this year.
• Our world is growing more complex due to the greater interdependence of systems. For example, organizations are currently reckoning with the fragility of global supply chains, which have been increasingly tested by  pandemic-induced workforce shortages , weather disasters, and  rapidly shifting consumption patterns  over the past two years.
• Crises like climate change are increasing the frequency of seemingly random, disruptive “black swan” events. Alongside the known impact of climate change-induced disasters, the crisis will have other, secondary impacts that are signals for change – including an  increase in human aggression and decrease in productivity .
• Long-anticipated trends are happening sooner and faster. Even when organizations may be paying attention to signals, unforeseen change can alter the timing. Consider how the pandemic accelerated discussions around remote and hybrid workplaces, making them widely common faster than many organizations anticipated.

Strategic foresight enables agencies to proactively prepare for these shifts and learn from the future. For example, the US Forest Service has adopted futures thinking to improve forest management and anticipate change, running its own  Strategic Foresight and Rapid Response Group . The unit’s  Forest Futures Horizon Scanning system , as described in a 2019 introductory report, seeks to “find, collect, and analyze the signals of change, and to identify emerging issues suggested by these signals that could affect forests, the field of forestry, and the Forest Service in the future.” By doing so, Forest Service decisionmakers can better prepare for varied futures and take timely action when and where necessary.

Strategic foresight can help explore specific problems and answer “What if?” questions. But applying an organization-wide futures thinking mindset has broader implications as well: It fosters greater creativity and innovation, and can help teams break out of narrow, siloed paths of thinking to explore new opportunities.

The  Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)  posits that strategic foresight can support government policy making in three main ways:

• Better anticipation: to better anticipate changes that could emerge in the future
• Policy innovation: to reveal options for experimentation with innovative approaches
• Future-proofing: to stress-test existing or proposed strategies and policies

In other words, strategic foresight can be applied in a multitude of ways, including to discover new ideas, to explore potential scenarios, to map out possible outcomes, and to create new response plans.

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@accenturetechnology

Strategic foresight in action

At the Accenture Federal Studio , we recently challenged our own teams to apply strategic foresight to explore signals of change within a rapidly shifting and increasingly important topic – the future of work. Over 16 weeks, we analyzed a range of signals and identified 20 trends warranting further study.

To start, we made some basic assumptions: (1) We can never know what lies ahead, and (2) We must make sense of the future in the same way we make sense of the past — by telling stories about it. Then, as we work to understand these stories, we can better orient ourselves in the present and plan for what’s next. In order to structure our thinking from today to tomorrow, we applied the “ Four Futures ” framework to the 20 trends, ultimately brainstorming 80 scenarios along a quadrant of:

• Growth : A future that manifests the results of current trends and conditions, extrapolated forward.
• Collapse : A future in which major social systems are strained beyond the breaking point, causing system collapse and social disarray.
• Constraint : A future in which a core guiding value or purpose is used to organize society and control behavior.
• Transformation : A fundamental reorganization of a society or system that signals a break from previous systems.

What did we discover? Let’s look at one trend: how the future of the office will impact collaboration and employee engagement. The pandemic has shown that employees do not need to be in the same room to engage, collaborate, and produce great work. Fully remote collaboration has been tested at speed and scale over the past two years. Given this, future work environments will likely look very different than the past, with various factors creating a multitude of possible outcomes.

To test these outcomes, we asked: Will a physical office still be relevant in 5-10 years? How will office workers “go” to work in the future? Will we be face-to-face, or will a new interface emerge – and how will that impact employers’ strategies and employees’ work habits?

Growth scenario results

In the growth scenario, enterprises have invested heavily in digital tools to emulate in-person environments, remotely. As such, collaboration across distributed teams has flourished. Teams are more productive and feel they can effectively contribute remotely. Large corporate headquarters are replaced by office-on-demand concepts that can flex when needs arise and are often seen as a tool to reflect culture and productivity, rather than to drive it.

Collapse scenario results

In the collapse scenario, large employers do not allow locational flexibility to their employees in any capacity. You are either completely in-person or completely remote. In turn, the rates of burnout are higher than ever due to lack of work-life balance in both scenarios. Employees pick one track or another and find it hard to switch. Internal siloes slow progress for large companies and increasing pools of talent choose to work for themselves or pursue other types of employment.

Constraint scenario results

In the constraint scenario, employers are legally required to provide full reimbursement for travel expenses if employees are required to come into the office. What could this mean? Employers divest from office space and encourage employees to work from home to keep costs low. Companies go all-in on investing in remote-enabling technology and are no longer geographically restricted in recruit and hire practices. This also accelerates the push for automation and reduced headcount, making traditional office jobs harder to find.

Transformation scenario results

Finally, in the transformation scenario, technology has evolved so that typical office jobs can be done fully remote, enabled by the use of holographic and robotic technology to simulate in-person interaction. That means these careers all focus on use of technology, and new industries will pop up to outfit, equip and protect our virtual worker selves. Some technology may be provided by the employer, like a VR headset, some may be considered an employee benefit, like a whole home cyber protection package, while others, such as personal avatars or virtual office decor, may be on the workers to choose for themselves.

These are just highlights from our full exploration, but the scenarios underscore how the future can unfold in many different directions, based on an uncountable number of influences and interdependencies. Remember that it’s not just about what you personally think is plausible but expanding your perspective on what could be possible. After creating scenarios, the next step is to consider which potential futures might be preferrable, and which might be disastrous. Think through what strategies or actions you could take to steer toward or away from any of these scenarios.

We can never truly understand all the possible futures – but by stretching our thinking to explore both the futures we want and don’t want, and the ones that seem likely as well as unlikely, organizations can better prepare for whatever may come.

Where to start

As agencies look to adopt and scale strategic foresight, we recommend they begin by looking at how their culture and operations can best support this approach.

1. Embrace uncertainty

Effectively adopting strategic foresight is not just a new skill to be trained on. It’s also a mindset and cultural shift.

You have to accept that you are operating in an uncertain world, and understand that’s it statistically impossible to predict the future — even  credentialed experts fail at it much of the time . This is particularly hard in government, with its bias against “fail fast” thinking. But that’s not a reason to throw your hands up and let anything happen; instead, let this uncertainty motivate your organization to be proactive and engaged with diverse signals and trends.

Surprising to some, the U.S. military has come to terms with this uncertainty. As MG George Franz (USA Ret.), now a managing director with Accenture Federal Services, notes, “good leaders are trained to balance the knowns and unknowns of any mission and create plans to mitigate these risks and exploit opportunities. Strategic foresight plays a huge role in illuminating the decision space.”

You must embrace uncertainty as a fact of life, instead of something that should be avoided at all costs; even the best-laid strategic plans cannot account for all of life’s unpredictable twists and turns. By adopting this thinking, and evangelizing it across your organization, leaders can create a culture that values exploring and preparing for diverse future scenarios. This ultimately leads to more resilient, adaptable operations.

2. Start small to test, but scale for success

You must decide how you want to integrate strategic foresight into your organization—as a way to explore specific problems, or as a way to foster greater creativity and innovation?

Small-scale strategic foresight can help an organization strengthen this skill and make a business case as to why it’s valuable. However, if you choose to only use strategic foresight for small-scale, one-off situations, you must understand that there will be limitations to your success. Sustained efforts in futures thinking cannot remain siloed to be most effective. In this case, they may miss signals, or not be able to exert influence as needed.

Ultimately, the goal should be to embed strategic foresight into how an organization operates in a continuous and organic way. For example, you can bring together a cross-section of stakeholders from across the agency for a regular cadence of exploratory sessions to keep your organization alert and focused on all the possible signals that may impact it.

Human-centered design at societal scale

As you embed across the organization, set broad objectives that can serve as a North Star. This helps diverse stakeholders work toward a common goal while maintaining the flexibility needed for creative thinking.

3. Translate your preferred futures into action

Exploring diverse futures can create rich insight – but without subsequent action, it remains just a thought exercise, not an integral part of your business strategy.

Consider our above example on future work environments – now that we’ve generated these four possible outcomes, organizations can decide which is their  preferred  future and then begin asking the questions needed to work toward that. For example, remote enabling technology is key to the growth scenario – how can your organization make key investments to incentivize use of these tools? Burnout is a possible consequence of the constraint scenario; to combat this, how can you encourage a hybrid work model that meets all employees’ needs, either in-person or remote?

Then, prototype your ideas and begin testing them. This is important because the further off or more different the future is from now, the less tangible it may seem and thus harder to socialize with stakeholders. By bringing possible far-off futures to life, even in small ways – such as through an interactive experience or physical prototype – individuals across the agency can better understand the implications, their role in these possible futures, and what actions they can take now to either work toward or prevent that outcome.

For example, the US Forest Service developed  IMPACT: Forestry Edition , a “serious board game designed to help forestry professionals and stakeholders think more broadly, critically, and creatively about the future of forestry.” Through the game, players can better understand individuals’ roles in achieving preferred futures.

4. Document, assess, and track value

As your organization becomes increasingly adept at strategic foresight, you can identify the best cadence and timing for conducting these efforts and assess the value you are receiving from them.

You can establish regular signal scanning, and a set schedule for forecasting and strategizing. For example, your organization might find it most helpful to conduct exercises once a year ahead of annual planning.

Strategic foresight is often a relatively small investment that can pay back in spades. To assess the value of strategic foresight, agency leaders can look back at their efforts and ask questions like:

• Which of these signals have the potential to turn into “flags” – or drivers of change with a strong likely impact on our customers or industry?
• What new actions did we take based on those signals?
• What signals did we miss, and why?
• Has strategic foresight helped balance our  innovation portfolio ? On a scale from low-risk, incremental innovation, to higher-risk, transformational innovation, how has strategic foresight helped our agency evaluate what change is necessary to optimize mission success?

By asking these questions, and consistently tracking how strategic foresight is adding value to the agency, federal leaders can build a stronger business case to further embed it across the organization.

Face the future

To be most effective, strategic foresight requires investment from across the agency. The required mindset shift begins with individual steps, though.

Federal leaders can start adopting everyday futurist habits now. Proactively look for signals of change – for example, regularly ask yourself how today’s news headlines could lead to new, unexpected futures for your organization. Intentionally think through what the future may look like from your customers’ or stakeholders’ perspectives, to challenge your own ingrained assumptions. Identify potential collaborators within your organization and have informal conversations about what futures they foresee.

The future holds increasingly complex challenges for federal agencies, as well as opportunities to create value in new, unexpected ways. Like the question of  if the flap of a butterfly’s wings can set off a tornado , countless elements will go into the creation of these challenges and opportunities, most of which may remain unknown. Yet, by using strategic foresight, federal leaders can expand their view of the drivers of change and challenge their assumptions on the scope of possible futures. In doing so, they can create an organization that is ultimately more resilient and more innovative – to better meet mission needs, no matter what the future holds.

Growth and Strategy Lead, Customer Experience

SENIOR MANAGER – ACCENTURE FEDERAL STUDIO, DESIGN DIRECTOR

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• Research Article
• Open access
• Published: 24 April 2023

Using corporate foresight to enhance strategic management practices

• Mohsen Taheri Demneh   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9871-2994 1 ,
• Ali Zackery 1 &
• Amir Nouraei 1  

European Journal of Futures Research volume  11 , Article number:  5 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

4976 Accesses

4 Citations

Metrics details

The ever-increasing environmental complexity makes strategizing a difficult multidimensional task. In this paper, we conducted a corporate foresight case study in an SME in packaging industry in Iran. The case study offers a detailed procedure of implementing corporate foresight (CF) and how it can reshape traditional strategic planning. A multimethodological approach was taken in this case study. Once an intraorganizational team in studied company was formed, archival document analysis, PESTEL and weak signal analysis, importance/uncertainty matrix, cross-impact balanced (CIB) analysis, scenario construction, wind tunneling, robust decision-making, and premortem session were used to create foresight intelligence. This paper presents a detailed description of how CF can be linked to conventional strategizing and reshape it. Key variables, driving forces, critical uncertainties, and 4 plausible scenarios are presented. The case study illustrates that as alternative realities challenged the foresight teams ingrained presuppositions, they found the dialectic between “weight of history” and “pull of future” both revelatory and indigestible. The CF intervention illuminated the fragility of preexisting strategic objectives, the implicit optimism bias underlying them, and an overflowing-plate syndrome of formulating too many strategic objectives. Consequently, studied company decided to revisit their strategic objectives, prepare a contingency plan for worst-case scenarios, and begin developing a crisis-ready culture. The comprehensive case study demonstrates how CF can enhance and contradict traditional strategizing, presents a rich know-how of added value of scenarios, and provides some subtleties and complexities of CF interventions.

Introduction

The classic features of the twenty-first century, namely, volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity [ 4 ], have made organizational strategizing a conundrum, and corporations are obliged to be increasingly more proactive through future-oriented approaches [ 48 ]. As a result, application of corporate foresight (CF) is considered by many companies and industries [ 29 , 53 , 54 , 57 ], and numerous companies have reported about the added value of CF to strategic management [ 49 ], p. 157). CF has been defined as a “practice that permits an organization to lay the foundation for a future competitive advantage” [ 50 ], p. 1). Despite its rich tradition, this emerging field suffers from a number of deficiencies [ 50 ]: lack of clearly defined terminologies; being in early stages of theoretical consolidation, i.e., being “pre-paradigmatic” [ 57 ]; and poor connection to the general management research; therefore, it is incumbent on practitioners and academicians of the field to improve the theoretical soundness and empirical know-how of the field. Furthermore, the integration between CF and organizational structures is still poorly formed [ 10 ]. Iden et al. (2017) argue that the organization of the emerging field of strategic foresight is weak and in need of theoretical progress. More recently, in a systematic literature review which looks back at 50 years of contributions to corporate and organizational foresight in the Technological Forecasting and Social Change , three recommendations for future research are made: (1) further development of application of foresight is organizations, (2) linking CF to strategy practice and theory, and (3) making a connection between CF and innovation, engineering, and R&D management practices and theory [ 22 ], p. 1). One step in tackling abovementioned gaps can be conducting case studies and demonstrating how CF can be integrated into conventional practices of strategic management to broaden, deepen, and sharpen them. Following this research agenda, this paper provides a comprehensive description of a CF project in an Iranian small- and medium-sized enterprise Footnote 1 (SME) in the packing industry during which we tried to combine conventional strategic practices and CF. This paper contributes to both pragmatic know-how of implementation CF in organizations and how CF can enhance organizational strategic intelligence.

Literature review

CF is essentially multimethodological. It is a meta-analysis of past, present, and future and tries to triangulate among various sources of analysis and knowledge acquisition to help corporate strategic intelligence in “all time horizons of strategic planning” [ 49 ], p. 157). It “creates value through providing access to critical resources ahead of competition” [ 50 ], p. 2). CF is an action-oriented, systematic, and participatory process of future-intelligence gathering [ 41 ], p. xi). For a proper conceptualization of CF, one should think “in terms of gerunds or verbs” (Weick, 1979 as cited in [ 2 ], p. 2) and go for continuous planning instead of plans. CF is not a technical or rational process but a social sense-making practice “permeated by the Maslowian dialectic between the need to know and the fear of knowing” [ 11 ], p. 944).

CF enables organizations to catalyze innovation [ 20 , 27 , 52 ], “respond to the latent vulnerabilities of the environment” [ 13 ], p. 2), attain superior market position [ 51 ], p. 3), pinpoint exceptional course of action [ 19 ], synthesize exploration matrices for environmental scanning [ 5 ], anticipate trends and weak signals [ 3 ], be ready for multiple scenarios [ 16 ], and build dynamical capabilities in VUCA world [ 59 ]. Conducted properly, the resultant forward view can be translated into “information asymmetries” which benefit both managers and corporations [ 1 ], p. 793). It can even “be harnessed to rewrite industry rules and create new competitive space” [ 24 ], p. 76). In other words, CF is not merely a scanning—sharpened exploratory—tool but a tool of “future making” [ 71 ].

As for the major steps of CF, it usually includes three phases of perceiving (gathering weak and strong signals of change), prospecting (translating signals into insight), and probing (designing appropriate responses to emerging changes) [ 30 ], pp. 2–3). In the perceiving phase, the breadth of foresight resources matters. Inclusion of external sources and widening the knowledge sources in foresight practices can overcome “one-dimensionality and narrow-sightedness” [ 26 ], p. 1).

By studying application of CF in business development, Højland and Rohrbeck [ 30 ] surmise that while CF literature is rich in techniques and procedures of cognitive search (perceiving and prospecting), but experimental search (probing) is under-utilized and under-researched [ 30 ], p. 31). Similarly, in an exploratory study, foresight experts state that foresight can be more helpful in post-sensing activities, thereby improving organizational performance [ 60 ]. Nestik [ 44 ], based on an expert panel, enumerates some cognitive and psychological biases which can negatively affect all phases of CF: overconfidence, future anxiety, stereotyping, and hindsight bias (p. 78), to name but a few.

As for methodological integration, a wide array of methods and techniques have been incorporated into CF: scenario construction [ 27 ], system dynamic modelling [ 9 ], Delphi studies [ 32 ], business war gaming [ 58 ], road mapping [ 42 ], benchmarking, and business analytics [ 7 ], causal layered analysis [ 34 ], and morphological analysis [ 43 ].

Among all of them, scenario building has been recognized as “a, if not the,” primary vehicle of CF [ 28 ], p. 363) which was famously utilized by Shell during the 1970s to anticipate the possibility of an oil crisis [ 68 ]. Best scenario practices are time- and resource intensive, include multi-stakeholder perspectives, and deal with plausible instead of probable futures [ 47 ]. Hirsch et al. [ 28 ] propounds that qualitative scenarios cannot add full value to CF and thus propose a quantitative participatory procedure to link scenario construction to CF. This approach assists CF by providing an analysis of possible impact of factors and ruptures, thereby making uncertainty management possible [ 28 ].

Case studies also have been commonplace among practitioners and theoreticians of CF. Table 1 presents a review of some CF-related case studies and their methodology, industry, and major contribution. In the selection of these papers, different parameters were taken into consideration, the number of citations, prolific authors of corporate foresight, revenant reputable journals, recent publications, and inclusion of case studies from variety of industries. All of these case studies use numerous techniques and methods in the research design. They can be classified into two main categories: the first group applies CF into strategic management process of a chosen firm and describes the subtleties of implementation and how CF enhanced conventional strategizing procedures. The second group assesses the effect of CF on manger’s perception, innovativeness, and flexibility of the company, i.e., future readiness of the firm. Our case study has contributions to both of these areas.

Methodology

Integration of CF into conventional organizational strategizing has been repeatedly highlighted [ 22 , 50 , 57 ]. As single cases focus on the particular rather than the general, it provides CF researcher with an opportunity to “drill down,” “penetrate into every nook and cranny,” “look at it from various angles,” and develop a “polyhedron of intelligibility,” thereby getting a three-dimensional view rather than a one-dimensional one [ 64 ], p. 5). In this single case, we tried to create this analytic three-dimensional picture through data and methodological triangulation [ 73 ]. Case studies can be more useful “in the early stages of research on a topic or to provide freshness in perspective to an already researched topic” [ 14 ], p. 548). This paper is a report of a CF project conducted in an Iranian SME in the packaging industry. The project lasted for around 1 year. The time horizon of the CF project was 2032. In the meantime, the firm tried to train his staff in order to establish a permanent foresight unit within its organizational structure. The whole project was only facilitated by researchers; the intraorganizational team were not passive bystanders or consumers of foresight but proactive conversant and conductors of the whole process. As the CF literature suggests, improvement of empirical know-how of CF processes and the integration of CF into conventional strategic management is of paramount significance [ 22 , 57 ]. Højland and Rohrbeck [ 30 ] contend that probing phase of corporate foresight is under-researched In order to contribute to these research agendas, we will first describe steps of application of CF in an SME in details. We will then try to provide answers to the following research questions related to the probing phase which have been formulated based on both the abovementioned research gaps and our client’s concerns:

Research question 1 : In the probing phase of a CF process, how can scenarios be used to challenge manager’s perceptions?

Research question 2 : In the probing phase of a CF process, how can scenarios be used to test the resilience of preexisting strategies?

Figure  1 presents the detailed process of the research.

Detailed process of the research

In the prospecting phase of CF, we used CIB which is an expert-based technique of analyzing “the mutual impact of relations of a system’s principal elements” based on “qualitative impact networks” [ 70 ], p. 6). In this soft system approach, once the list of most important factors (descriptors) is created, the expert panel discusses their interdependencies in several rounds. In the cross-impact matrix, experts are asked to evaluate the impact of descriptor i on descriptor j using the following qualitative scale [ 70 ], pp. 8–10):

 − 3: Strongly restricting influence

 − 2: Moderately restricting influence

 − 1: Weakly restricting influence

0: No influence

 + 1: Weakly promoting influence

 + 2: Moderately promoting influence

 + 3: Strongly promoting influence

Once the matrix is filled by the experts, it is fed into ScenarioWizard software to create the consistent scenarios. When the list of principal’s elements of a system is high, checking the resultant matrix manually is a herculean task. ScenarioWizard facilitates the process of investigating interdependencies, removing inconsistencies, and developing scenarios. This can be considered as a methodological enhancement to qualitative scenarios especially when the number of principal elements is high or the group conducting the CF has a quantitative background.

Description of the CF process in our case study

In order to construct scenarios and after a quite extensive literature review and semi-structure interviews via skype due to the pandemic lockdowns, in the transition from perceiving to prospecting, firstly, brainstorming sessions were conducted inductively to elicit trends, weak signals, and emerging issues from the members of the foresight team. Next, the results of the literature review, environmental scanning, and brainstorming sessions were deductively presented to the foresight team during several expert panels. Their relevance, probability, significance, and impacts were thoroughly discussed. When there was a huge discrepancy between, say, an emerging issue and organizational routines of the team, futures wheel was used to initiate a strategic conversation and explore the primary, secondary, and tertiary consequences of it [ 21 ]. Eventually, 52 variables were collected and elicited as the initial variable inventory. Table 2 provides the list of these variables. They were then ranked using importance/uncertainty matrix for the next round of prospecting phase. Table 3 shows the list of 10 selected key variables.

Figure  2 presents importance-uncertainty matrix created by the foresight team in an expert panel. Different scenario-planning techniques suggest different procedures to reduce the list of initial key variables to a couple driving forces which can be used as the primary building blocks of scenarios in a deductive manner. The perceptional knowledge iceberg, i.e., event, patterns, and structure (Senge, 1990 as cited in [ 67 ], pp. 103–104), influence diagrams [ 67 ], p. 231), and expert-oriented techniques have all been suggested and used to detect the underlying forces of change. In this study, key variables which had importance and uncertainty of higher than or equal to 5 were selected as the final list of driving forces (see Table 3 ).

Importance-uncertainty matrix

To create scenarios based on uncertainties which can turn out to have opposing eventualities, the. foresight team drew several influence diagrams based on their similarities, interdependencies, and causal relations and reduced driving forces into four critical uncertainties. We tried to investigate the interplay between driving forces and investigate uncertainties. The critical uncertainties can be seen in Table 4 . This table presents grouped similar driving forces, the underlying critical uncertainty related to those driving forces, and various possible states of the critical uncertainty. We reduced the number of drivers by groping similar variables and attributing a main driver to them. For instance, consider \({U}_{1}\) : we grouped failure to form an agreement with the USA and European countries, the risk of war, tourist flows to Iran and “price competitiveness” of tourism industry in Iran together, and attributed “international interactions” as the major driver of these variables. These systematization and prioritization leads are an irreducible element of any scenario work. Critical uncertainties can take each of these alternative states and lead to different eventualities. As Table 4 illustrates, 2, 2, 2, 2, and 3 states were designated to international interactions, China’s growth, environmental conditions, regimen of production, and the role of customers in value chain respectively. These different states were labeled and fed into ScenarioWizard software.

As Table 4 illustrates, 5 critical uncertainties can have 11 different states. Next, we did a CIB in an 11 × 11 matrix. The focal question, at this stage, was “if any of designated states of each critical uncertainty occur, how can they effect other states?” A qualitative scale from − 3 to + 3 was used by experts to fill out the matrix. To fill out the matrix, for instance, at the intersection of second state of \({U}_{1}\) (boundless interaction) and first state of \({U}_{5}\) (consumption), the expert was asked the following question: if Iran had a boundless interaction with the world, how would that influence the state of consumerism approach? The given qualitative evaluation (+ 1) means that according to the experts, normal interaction with the world has a “weakly promoting influence” on the level of consumerism Table 5 .

Figure  3 demonstrates 4 consistent scenarios developed by ScenarioWizard software. In what follows, the states of critical uncertainties in each scenario are described as follows:

First scenario: Boundless interaction with the world/China on top of world economy/collapsed environment/production is majorly centralized or factory based/customers are passive consumers.

Second scenario: Bounded interaction with the world/China on top of world economy/collapsed environment/production is majorly centralized or factory based/customers are passive consumers.

Third scenario: Boundless interaction with the world/China on top of world economy/collapsed environment/production is majorly centralized and factory based/customers are prosumers.

Fourth scenario: Boundless interaction with the world/China on top of world economy/resilient environment/production is majorly distributed and home based/customers are co-creators along manufacturers.

Consistent scenarios produced by scenario wizard software

In Fig.  4 , we have provided a short narrative describing the scenarios. The original scenarios were much longer. These scenarios were initially drafted by participant in the workshop and revised and finalized in several rounds by collaboration of the foresight team. The narration is in the first person—as if a member of foresight team narrates the scenario in 2032.

A short narrative of constructed scenarios

In the next step, similar to immersion technique described in Wilson and Ralston [ 72 ], we used scenarios as an immersion space and asked the foresight team to reimagine some dimensions of their organization within each scenario in mind (see Table 6 . The organizational dimensions were chosen based on the macro levels of the contextual environment investigated using PESTEL technique and micro-organizational levels. It should be noted that the list of these dimensions is exemplary and not exhaustive; scenarios can be used as an immersive medium to investigate any other dimensions at micro, meso, and macro levels.

After that, we used scenarios for wind tunnel testing of preexisting strategies. In this framework, a wind tunneling table is formed where suitability and resilience of already-existing strategies are assessed and stress tested within all scenarios [ 66 , 67 ]. Prior to this CF intervention, the strategy department of this Iranian SME had conducted several conventional strategic planning projects and had formulated 18 strategic objectives which were the highest level of strategic guidance of the company (see Table 7 ).

Once scenarios were constructed and comprehensively discussed within the foresight team, in one expert panels, we asked experts to discuss the suitability and resilience of these strategic objectives within all scenarios. Subsequently, they gave a score on Likert scale from 7 (the most robust) to 1 (the least robust) to each of these 12 strategic objectives based on their robustness within each of four scenarios. Figure  5 presents the robustness of these strategies in each scenario.

Radar diagram of robustness of preexisting strategic objectives within scenarios

The panel consensus was that any strategic objective with a score lower than 4 is considered as being not robust within that particular scenario. Five strategic objectives proved to be robust in all scenarios:

Creating competitive advantage by customizing products

Make a differentiation in market by maximizing the automation of products.

Timely delivery of the product

Increasing customer satisfaction

As Fig.  5 illustrates, while the second scenario which can be regarded as the worst-case scenario challenged many of the strategic objectives, in the fourth optimistic scenario, most of the strategic objectives were regarded meaningfully robust. The red scenario contested the participant’s understanding about the nature of risk and the boundary between “normal” and “abnormal” [ 18 ], and many participants initially confused scenarios as a “possible future state” with a “probable future state” and thus attributed a low probability to this scenario.

Epilogue: probing phase, scenarios, and research questions

Scenarios can be used to investigate strength, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities, once business as usual is replaced by alterative realities. It provides the organization with a chance to reconsider its long-held assumptions and sources of competitive intelligence. Nonetheless, mangers usually have difficult time deriving strategic thinking from scenarios [ 68 ]. To facilitate this and move toward probing, we combined scenarios with SWOT, a modified version of strategy canvas [ 35 ], and robust decision-making [ 38 ]. We used scenarios as an immersion space [ 72 ] to check the dialectic between external factors and internal organizational issues. Next, we used scenarios as a wind tunnel — a playing field — to evaluate robustness of corporate strategies. We will use the results of this case study to provide some answers for our research questions in this section. In doing so, a certain degree of generalization will be unavoidable:

Research question 1

In the probing phase of a CF process, how can scenarios be used to challenge manager’s perceptions?

Scenarios can be used as an immersion space [ 72 ] to help participants to have a firsthand experience of alternative realities, decrease their psychological and hypothetical distance with alternative realities, and challenge their deep-seated assumptions. Questions addressing the consequence of scenarios can be asked: “What are the opportunities and risks for us as a result of the scenario? What would we have to do in case the scenario became reality?” [ 17 ], p. 364). This kind of techniques can play a pivotal role in integration of CF and conventional strategizing, thereby building the so-called connecter. The dialectic between past and future, between external and internal, between “business as usual” and “alternative realities,” and between “preexisting strategies” and “strategies from future” can lead the strategic conversation toward either synthesis in a Hegelian sense or a transformative spiral change of mental models which pushes the envelope of strategy and results in a strategic epiphany. For CF to flourish, this dialectic has a profound significance both at methodological level of designing and implementing techniques and cognitive level of affecting mental models of CF clients.

Scenarios can target “the microcosm” or “the picture of reality” [ 68 ] of the foresight team. As they distinguish the intrinsic difference between contextual and transactional factors, the frame their strategy rests on can be revealed [ 47 ], the “dialectic between the need to know and the fear of knowing” [ 11 ], p. 944) kicks in, and the dominant orthodoxy of inside-out approach is likely to be challenged. The impact of the contextual layer on the transactional layer can also be felt. In our case study, for instance, the foresight team found this dialectic both revelatory and at times difficult to digest. As they delved deeply into green scenario, they realized that proliferation of renewables, high rates of carbon taxation, and full blossom of reinvention of energy mean that they need to undergo a massive transition in terms of their identity, their mission, their customers, and the essence of their management. The “centripetal force” which kept the company within its “orbit and boundaries” was “counterbalanced” by a “centrifugal force” which invited the company to ask probing questions about the edge of the business and industry [ 12 ], p. 140). It even included thinking about the unthinkable: what if our company ceased to exist?

In such an immersion space, the internal–external juxtaposition and going to and fro between “the central and “the peripheral” are likely to reveal some alternative ways of organizational development which can prove to be radically different from the status quo. In our case study, the participants found this unpleasant and difficult to digest. Due to human’s psychological aversion to discomfort and fear, the team occasionally got defensive or opted for “scenario denialism”: “this is not what we do,” and “we cannot and should not rock the boat” were brought up by some members of the team. Reactions of this nature provided that they are directed articulately, we believe, and can be regarded as classic symptoms of a successful CF intervention. Because it is a disciplined process of walking out of your comfort zone and experiencing angst, in fact, feeling uncomfortable and apprehensive is an irreducible component of strategy making [ 40 ]. Spiral dynamic or transcendence can only be achieved if second-order change instead of first-order change—which challenges ingrained presuppositions—is sought, welcomed, and accepted [ 69 ], p. 23). The willingness to “lock-in” on one scenario should be replaced by the ability to shuffle our mental schemata and switch among alternative scenarios to develop a fuller conception of what future can bring about.

Research question 2

In the probing phase of a CF process, how can scenarios be used to test the resilience of pre-existing strategies?

In CF intervention as in ours, participants are inclined to confuse scenarios as a “possible future state” with a “probable future state” and thus attribute a low probability to any scenario particularly scenarios they personally find unpleasant. Nonetheless, one should bear in mind that the added value of scenario thinking as a major component of CF will be deeply appreciated if only all scenarios are treated equally regardless of our subjective evaluation of them in terms of their desirability or probability. Inclusion of a wild card scenario can even improve the added value of scenario thinking. In the case of such scenarios, managers should try to decease organizational vulnerabilities toward them [ 62 ] by creating future options and/or contingency plans. During the discussions, the attribution of a low probability to the red scenario was more of a defense mechanism than a strategic response. In others words, many of the strategic objectives in Table 7 had been inadvertently formulated by “hoping for the best” but “not planning for the worst.” To facilitate this, we conducted a “premortem” session [ 36 ] during which the most important strategic objective of the company had not been achieved and all plans to achieve them had gone wrong. This genuinely shook the foresight teams’ optimism and overconfidence and made red scenario more tangible and worthy of preparing for. As declared by one of the middle managers in the expert panel, the whole process of counterfactual thinking changed the metaphor of management in his mind from locomotive operator steering a train on fixed tracks to a captain who is in charge of ship amid sea waves. To overcome the pervasive optimism bias, with the help of CF, organizations can ponder over the worst-case scenario, distinguish between “the preventable” and “the not preventable,” and prepare for both of them when they have the luxury of enough time.

Another issue raised during discussions based on wind tunneling was the number of strategic objectives which resembled “a scrambled mess of things to accomplish—a ‘dog’s dinner’ of strategic objectives … [and] the label ‘long-term’ is added so that none of them need be done today” [ 55 ], p. 5). “When everything is deemed important, it creates an overflowing-plate syndrome” [ 31 ], p. 5). This was problematized both by failure of strategic objectives at the wind tunnel of scenario and the realization of implicit optimism bias and planning fallacy which underlay formulation of the strategic objectives. Using scenarios as a wind tunnel to evaluate the resilience of corporate strategies can help organizations to overcome the optimism biased, revisit their strategic objectives from a futuristic perspective, include “strategies from future,” prioritize them and prepare a contingency plan for worst-case scenarios, and try to nurture a crisis-ready culture within themselves. As for the limitations of this study, our research tried to demonstrate how CF can be conducted in an SME and how it can reshape their strategy. We tried to report as much evidence as possible in this paper. Nonetheless, what we have provided here is anecdotal evidence of a single case which might be uncorroborated by other CF projects elsewhere. Multiple cases and longitudinal studies are needed to enhance the theory and implementations of CF.

This paper presented a detailed know-how of how to implement CF in an SMA in the secondary-packaging industry in Iran. We demonstrated how various methods can be woven together to design a sound CF process. Apart from a methodological contribution, the case study provided the researchers with an opportunity to examine subtle nuances of CF interventions. The intraorganizational team had difficulties handling the dialectic between “business as usual” and “alternative realities” and between “preexisting strategies” and “strategies from future.” Foresight-based activities — external internal juxtaposition, wind tunneling, and counterfactual thinking revealed that they had a tendency to deny the periphery of their enterprise and they suffered from optimism bias and had formulated strategic objectives regardless of their robustness or feasibility. By the way, there was no strategy and symptoms of preparedness for emerging technologies, i.e., 3-D printers which can change the landscape of packaging industry. The CF intervention pushed the envelope of their strategy and nudged them that besides “hoping for the best,” they should “plan for the worst” as well.

The name of the company will not be revealed due to the research agreements.

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Mohsen Taheri Demneh, Ali Zackery & Amir Nouraei

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A: MTD. B: AZ. C: AN. A conceived of the presented idea. A and B developed the theory and performed the computations. A, B, and C verified the analytical methods. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Demneh, M.T., Zackery, A. & Nouraei, A. Using corporate foresight to enhance strategic management practices. Eur J Futures Res 11 , 5 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40309-023-00217-x

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• Corporate foresight
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What is Strategic Foresight?

Here's what it is and why it matters.

FUTURE PROOF-BLOG BY FUTURES PLATFORM

Strategic foresight, an important subfield of futures studies, is a discipline organizations use to gather and process information about their future operating environment. This information can include, for example, trends and developments in their political, economic, social, technological, and legal environments.

WHAT IS STRATEGIC FORESIGHT?

While the discipline of market intelligence has been around for a while, strategic foresight is relatively new in businesses and public organisations. For that reason, many are not familiar with its terminology, and as an organizational activity, it is not as commonly practised as, say, competitor monitoring and market analysis. But in a VUCA world , the lack of a reliable foresight program can have disastrous consequences for all types of organisations.

Many people in organisations believe they can foresee developments in their industry or sector. At least over the next couple of years.

Yet, the most critical threats or greatest opportunities often emerge in other industries or sectors. New trends , developments or phenomena can emerge in adjacent fields or in society at large. And while at first they may seem disconnected, they are often the drivers of change that will eventually affect one’s own future, too. And often in dramatic ways.

Hence, it’s important to have a broad understanding of the changes in industry and society.

But a broad understanding of these changes is not sufficient. While you can still have a good understanding of changes occurring within the next 2 to 3 years, looking at longer-term changes becomes more difficult. As you expand the time horizon, possibilities multiply and a variety of possible futures emerges.

So what can organisations do after identifying a range of possible futures?

One important activity is to identify the plausible futures ( see how here ). After that, an organisation should identify the probable futures, those most likely to come about. To do that, it is important to identify the key drivers of change and monitor them systematically.

Then, some organisations may have a strong vision of their preferred future and will take action to influence developments in order to increase the chances of that future becoming true. Often, however, management teams admit that any one of the different scenarios is possible and will do their best to ensure their organisation is ready for many different futures.

This article is based on Futures Platform’s eBook Key Success Factors of a Foresight Program . Get your FREE copy today and get ready for the future .

WHY IS STRATEGIC FORESIGHT IMPORTANT?

Without Strategic Foresight, an organisation may have a good understanding of the short-term trends in their industry. Or even general long-term trends in society. But, more is needed in an interconnected world where change is occurring ever more rapidly and where the boundaries between industries are blurring.

What happens on one side of the world has an impact on the other side of the world. A small startup today may disrupt the largest company in the world tomorrow. Political instability can change the balance of power and have widespread consequences across the globe. Not to mention no one knows where AI, automation, and other rapidly developing areas will take us.

Fortunately, with these topics dominating conference agendas and coffee table discussions, systematic foresight activity has gained momentum.

More and more organisations want to understand in greater detail how the world is changing and how they can make the most of these changes. The purpose of Strategic Foresight is to help them in that difficult task. And, of course, to ensure that organisations make informed decisions based on carefully analysed views of alternative future scenarios.

If you are looking for a comprehensive tool that helps you do foresight and make futures plan fast and easily, get a free demo at Futures Platform and collaborate with your team to make your future-proof plans.

These two disciplines play distinct yet complementary roles in strategic decision-making, both essential for success in today's volatile environment.

Foresight is a vital practice for all organisations today, but it's not always easy. Foresight practitioners encounter common challenges that can obscure their view of what lies ahead.

Research has found that strategic foresight has a significant impact on an organisation’s bottom line – those who think about the future could be looking at up to 33% higher profitability and 200% higher market capitalisation within their industries.

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A Call: Principal Media Case Studies

By Bill Duggan     May 31, 2024    

T he Association of National Advertisers (ANA) recently released a study (" The Acceleration of Principal Media ") revealing that when it comes to buying media, ad agencies are increasingly acting as principals rather than agents. That means they actually acquire the media — therefore becoming the owner, or "principal," of that media — and resell the media to their clients.

The study is intended to increase awareness and help educate marketers — the background, benefits, challenges, and guidelines — so they can make an informed decision about the role of principal media for them. It features four case studies highlighting how marketers have leveraged principal media. We welcome additional case studies. Those in the paper are from companies in these industries — financial services, alcoholic beverages, CPG, and pharma.

• A financial services company. "Principal media can have a beneficial role in the overall mix to get high efficiencies on commodity media, especially when faced with unexpected savings requirements. We've successfully used it, mainly with linear TV, to help achieve marketing's contribution to enterprise-wide efficiency goals, as well as to maintain optimal weight in response to ad hoc budget reductions. It's a relatively turnkey lever for savings of 10 to 15 percent on pockets of standardized, "spots and dots," non-biddable media. You just need to do your homework and have the appropriate controls in place. That includes an agency contract stipulating it's used only on an opt-in, case-by-case basis with prior written approval every time by a designated executive, as well as full post-buy deliverables. Principal media has perfectly valid applications for advertisers that manage it tightly, and I know several client-side media stewards that wouldn't want it removed as one of the arrows in their quiver."
• A marketer of alcoholic beverages. This company uses some television in its media plan, acquired via the traditional upfront. But it is not a major TV buyer. Given the need to support a new product, more television was required. The scatter market was tight at the time, so that inventory would carry a CPM premium. The agency suggested principal media as a solution.
• A CPG. The product portfolio for Company X is heavily dependent on a commodity whose price has increased significantly in the past two years. Price increases for the company's core product have already been implemented, but margins continue to be squeezed. Company X is cutting back on overall advertising spending and is now using principal media for the first time in recent memory, given the cost savings. The agency guaranteed cost savings of approximately 15 percent. Company X is viewing this situation opportunistically. If principal media is able to meet the performance KPIs of its traditional, agent-based media buys, it could become a bigger part of the company's overall spending going forward.
• A pharmaceutical company. This company uses principal media specifically for a division that has been challenged with declining sales and therefore also declining marketing budgets. Those declining budgets have meant that no funds are available for much-needed research support that could help optimize media investments. This company turned to principal media as a solution. The use of principal media has resulted in cost savings of approximately 15 percent, which has been reinvested in research focused on media effectiveness and marketing mix modeling. About 10 percent of the budget has been placed via principal media. For all principal media deals, the client requires that the agency provide a detailed cost/benefit analysis to support the recommendation, which includes an option without principal media. The marketer maintains that the principal media must be auditable for quality/performance and placement — including IVT, viewability, brand safety, and adherence to inclusion/exclusion lists. The client understands that costs cannot be audited but insists that quality/performance and placement are indeed auditable. Overall, principal media has been a good solution, given this company's situation.

These are good case studies — and we would like more. Consider this a call to the industry to provide additional case studies, which ANA would then feature on our website here — www.ana.net/principalmedia (where the white paper also lives). Those could be with or without specific attribution to the agency and client.

Email them to [email protected] .

The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the ANA or imply endorsement from the ANA.

This article was originally published on MediaPost .

Bill Duggan