Foresight in Strategic Planning and Innovation
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Did your company foresee that a 14-year old with a smartphone can wield more influence over your company’s reputation than your PR director can?
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Do you have a strategy when she produces an improved version of your product or service?
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Will she thrive working for your company in the future?
Strategic Foresight differs from traditional strategic planning in its underlying presumptions about the future. Whereas traditional strategic planning primarily uses trends and data from the past, strategic foresight accommodate for uncertainties in the analysis. The future is not predictable, and strategies that anticipate the future only by looking at past trends will have trouble seeing new threats and opportunities and fostering real innovation.
Generational change is a key component of Strategic Foresight. As Generation Z comes of age, they bring new uncertainties and contingencies that can alter the path of existing businesses in transformative ways. Understanding how Generation Z is shaping the future can be key to corporate survival.
Strategic Foresight is often used interchangeably with Scenario Development. It is true that scenarios make up a great portion of the strategic foresight discipline, but fleshing out scenarios is really just the glazing on top of mountains of relevant insight and analysis. Strategic Foresight is an entire discipline and incorporates methods that can take years to master. At its core Strategic Foresight is the continuous application of a 360º vision of trends and weak signals, understanding how these trends interact, and find effective ways to act on these changes. After the Millennials goes beyond traditional foresight work, and also uses custom surveys, data mining and artificial intelligence.
Analyzing Contextual Conditions
The first objective is to establish the context so we can have a better understanding of the “pain points” that need to be resolved. After the Millennials’ contextualize post-millennials in a larger ecosystem of driving forces they interact with. Our main framework for collecting this information can be called STEEP, PEST or PESTEL analysis. STEEP stands for Social, Technological, Environmental, Economical and Technological, and refers to the domain where the kernels of change can be identified.
The second step in the process is to gain enough company or industry specific knowledge to determine the strength and weaknesses, threats and opportunities that exist in the business environment. Usually the company or industry we work with has done some preliminary introspection or analysis of its micro environment. The company may have been through stakeholder analysis, Porter’s five forces or traditional SWOT (Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). The job now is to integrate the micro-environmental conditions of the company with the changes and disruptions we are witnessing or expecting in the larger ecosystem.
“After the Millennials has experienced success at predicting new trends sometimes years before they were confirmed by traditional research.”
Environmental Scanning
To understand which weak signals, trends and driving forces affect a business, a continuous environmental scanning system is of absolute necessity. Environmental scanning is the art of scouting for early signals of change. It is the food for all other foresight efforts. Without sufficient data from environmental scanning efforts, strategic plans and scenarios will be skewed and likely give us an inaccurate picture of the situation.
While the environmental scanning process traditionally have used analog methods for collecting data and insights, we can bring cutting edge data analytics and machine learning approaches into the scanning process, which helps us see patterns we didn’t think existed and remove the perception of patterns that are illusory. By combining both quantitative and qualitative, computer-driven and human-driven methods, we can better tell signals from noise. This approach gives us a more accurate understanding of present conditions, and can reduce the the effects cognitive biases and limited or skewed information could otherwise exert on other parts of the process.
Scenarios
The main objective of foresight is not prediction. Our usefulness is mainly in making our clients aware of future contingencies and their enterprise’s alternative trajectories in the strategic environments. In this process scenarios can be very useful. Scenario development is often a component of workshops held within an organization and draws on the tacit knowledge and cooperation between the participants. There are many different approaches and methods that can be applied, but a main objective is that participants get to conceptualize and understand, not only one, but a number of alternative futures. This exercise helps identify new opportunities and prepare stakeholders for the unexpected.
But despite common perception, scenarios are not a necessary component in good foresight work. More than anything, scenario planning is a tool for collective learning, reframing perceptions and accommodating uncertainty. But it is fully possible to deliver the core elements of foresight without doing scenarios.
Prepare for transformative prosperity!
We use the phrase transformative prosperity to accentuate three goals you might achieve by using foresight;
- Harness transformative change: You will understand how to both shape and adapt to a future that may look radically different from the present. What seems to be a challenge today might in fact be an opportunity if you can break out of the existing mold.
- Experience measurable business growth: Companies that actively work to improve their future preparedness over time increased their profitability with 33% and 200% higher growth than the average.
- Be part of the solution: The ethical code of professional futurists is to help enhance the future that will benefit future generations. This code is at the core of After the Millennials‘ existence. The good news is that what is good for future generations is also good for business. The challenge is just to discover where those opportunities may exist. Let’s discover these opportunities together!
After the Millennial’s existence is based on good work. We want to deserve your business. Whether your needs are limited to a shorter strategic interview or a larger foresight project, please contact to discuss the many options or have a detailed look at Services.