APPLICATION OF FORESIGHT TO SPECIFIC FIELDS
Practical foresight
The most significant trends affecting organisations know no borders or markets and affect every part of society today. Global trends, uncertainties and wild cards have the potential to significantly change the way the world works tomorrow. They may impact on you far faster, and more profoundly, than you might think.
Organisations too face additional new challenges including:
- Severe competition
- Market convergence
- New entrants
- High volatility in all aspects of their activities
Greater prospects for global, national and local disruption and shock are increasingly in evidence. Forecasting models projecting past patterns can therefore no longer be relied upon to predict the future. Shaping the world we want to live in means being more aware of the future and seeking better approaches..
A new, more agile and resilience focused, approach is being led by smart, forward-thinking organisations. They have learned that searching for emerging trends, tipping points and weak signals is a vital intelligence tool to help them survive and thrive in an ever more competitive future.
What can be done? In a world where only uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity seems to be the norm these days organisations need wider global knowledge obtained from many more external sources and a new set of cognitive skills to determine their best future responses.
The following critical cognitive skills need to be mastered:
- Trend assessment: the competency to understand trend directions, weak signals and wildcards, assess their likely impact and effect on one another and respond in a timely and appropriate manner
- Pattern recognition: the ability to see patterns rather than individual factors
- System perspective: the capability to envision the entire system rather than the isolated components
- Anticipation: to anticipate short and long term consequences over time, novel situations and geography
- Instinct and logic: to rely on a combination of instincts and logic rather than purely rational analysis
Organisations that inspire, engage and enable their people to use foresight through developing their strategic competencies can acquire and maintain a sustainable futures-orientated edge in their global marketplace(s).
Next practice Leading organisations use systematic, collaborative and strategic foresight capabilities to see what's coming next and respond ahead of the competitive curve. This guide serves as a documented description of how our clients, and others well known to us, achieve successful outcomes, avoid upcoming risk, innovate and thus create next practice through practical foresight.
Source: First chapter - 'Practical Foresight': www.shapingtomorrow.com
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