Every day you make future related decisions in your private or work life - at least small and near-future related decisions.
There are future related decisions made every day also in business as part of the everyday activities outside the actual strategy work. They may often be conclusions from the past or reactions on ongoing events.
However, as the world is changing in an accelerating pace the old ways of working are no longer adequate.
The strategic foresight feeds input to the decision making but it would be good to have all personnel involved into futures thinking and understand how the world is changing, as well as to get their thoughts heard. Everybody is involved in the change anyway: Within work, markets, values, etc. Ensuring success is a common goal of both employees and the company.
Global megatrends touch everyone in a way or another and therefore understanding of their possible impacts is important. Also much smaller things with local impacts could indicate change factors that a company can use as a source of new ideas and success factors. The ability to observe and innovate is essential. Developing that ability is well worth of the effort.
Foresight practices include also other elements that we'll guide you taking the advantage of.
It is hard to harness the creativity without proper tools. As an example, we think that the form below is an excellent tool for consumer trend analysis. You can use it when considering a product, service, or business idea.
What does Foresight mean?
Futurists are trying to get hints of the direction of the future in several ways:
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Identifying weak signals that could indicate new trends
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Imagining unexpected events (so called black swans) that would be good to prepare for with at least a crisis plan
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Observing human behavior, natural phenomena or technological development and based on them making conclusions on megatrends
Various methods and tools can be used also in companies to provide material from available research studies and observations to support their strategy work.
Check out the examples of consumer trends in the video published by Ericsson. Surely you should use also other sources than YouTube in exploring information of trends... Internet is a treasury of lots of information but it is difficult to determine how reliable is the data you get. On the other hand, you can get inspiration from almost anywhere!