Strategic Foresight:
Linking Foresight & Strategy
Maree Conway
Purpose
 An overview of what foresight is about
and
 how it relates to strategy development in
organisations.
futures inspired strategy
Terminology
 Foresight: an often unconscious individual capacity to think
about the future.
 Strategic Foresight: an organisational foresight capacity.
 Futures: the broad academic field now developing globally;
interdisciplinary and inclusive in its approach.
 Futurists: those who work in futures, either as academics,
consultants (outside organisations) and as practitioners within
organisations.
 Scenario planning: a futures methodology.
futures inspired strategy
Terminology
 Foresight is the capacity to think systematically about the
future to inform today's decision making. It is a capacity that
we need to develop as individuals, as organisations, and as
a society.
 'Futures' refers both to the research, methods and tools
that are available for us to use to develop a foresight
capacity, and to the field in which futurists work.
futures inspired strategy
Terminology
 When we consciously use foresight in
organisational processes to inform strategy, we are
practising ‘strategic foresight’.
futures inspired strategy
Developing Strategy
 Challenges
 How to anticipate and interpret change in the external environment.
 How to leverage that change into ‘winning’ strategies.
 Knowledge Questions
 Do we have some sense of the different ways in which our
environment and our market might evolve over the next five years?
 Do we know which factors, or drivers of change, are most likely to
dominate how our industry will evolve?
 Do we know what our strategic and organisational responses would
be if a future were to unfold that was distinctly different from the one
anticipated by our current plan?
Adapted from Fahey, 2003
futures inspired strategy
The External Environment of
Universities
Social Environment
Driving
Forces
Education
Environment
Suppliers
Students
Educational
Organisation
Social
Technological
Economic
Ecological
Customers
Clients
Members of
Wider Society
Factors / Trends
Issues / Forces
Competitors
Political
…
Driving
Forces
Adapted from K. van der Heijden
futures inspired strategy
The Strategic Landscape
‘The Star’—
The purpose of the organisation
• A “future-focused role image”
• Not completed or “used up”
Our enduring and
guiding social role
The strategic objective:
• A compelling, relevant future
• BHAG—“Big Hairy Audacious Goal”
• A concrete, specific goal
• A challenge, but achievable
‘The Mountain’—
What we hope to
achieve
The strategic environment:
‘The Chessboard’—
• Strategic implementation and tactics
• Threats and opportunities
• Actions of other strategic actors
• Driving forces
• Mapped and understood using scenarios
Issues and challenges
we are likely to face
‘The Self’—
Our values and
attributes as a strategic
player
The ‘self’
journeys across
the chessboard
to the
mountain,
which lies in the
medium term
future
“Star, mountain, chessboard, self” image © 1999 Hardin Tibbs
Strategic identity:
• Current reality
• Self-knowledge
• Strengths and weaknesses
• Values
• Preferences and experience
futures inspired strategy
Strategic Foresight & Strategy
 Strategy is about the future, not the present.
 All our knowledge is about the past, but all our decisions
are about the future.
 But … future strategy is developed in the present.
 How do we integrate knowledge about the past, present and
future to make wise strategy today?
futures inspired strategy
Developing University Strategy
Foresight
Council/
Executive
Strategic Thinking
Strategy Review and
Decision Making
Strategic Planning
Implementation
Individuals
Options
Decisions
Council/Executive
Planning Workshops
Strategic Directions
Statement
Council/Executive
Strategies
Plans
Performance Reporting
Faculties
University Planning
Workshops
Results and
Feedback
futures inspired strategy
Strategy Framework
Strategic Thinking
Strategic Decision Making
Strategic Planning
Action
Review
futures inspired strategy
Strategy Framework
Foresight
Strategic Thinking
Strategic Decision Making
Strategic Planning
Action
Review
futures inspired strategy
Generic Foresight Model
Inputs
Interpretation
Prospection
Outputs
Foresight
Analysis
things happening
“what seems to be happening?”
“what’s really happening?”
“what might happen?”
“what might we need to do?”
Copyright © 2000 Joseph Voros
Strategy
“what will we do?”
“how will we do it?”
futures inspired strategy
A Foresight Framework
Strategic Environmental Scanning
Gathering
Information
Analysis
Categorising
What seems to be happening?
Interpretation
Contextualising
Sense Making
What’s really happening?
Innovation
Prospection
What could happen?
futures inspired strategy
A Foresight Framework
Strategic Environmental Scanning
Gathering
Information
Competitor intelligence, competitive intelligence, business
intelligence, social intelligence. Focus on past, present and
future.
Methods: Delphi analysis, 4Q/11L Scanning Framework
Most scanning work undertaken today
focuses on the past and the present.
futures inspired strategy
A Foresight Framework
Current approaches at this level are largely quantitative in nature.
Analysis
What seems to be happening?
Categorising
Trend analysis, emerging issues analysis,
quantitative benchmarks, cross-impact analysis.
futures inspired strategy
A Foresight Framework
Interpreting the analysis for the university’s context.
Making sense of the data.
Contextualising
Sense Making
Interpretation
What’s really happening?
And what does it mean for the university?
Most strategy work stops at this step.
Decisions are made once interpretation has
occurred.
futures inspired strategy
A Foresight Framework
Focus on the future. Deriving a broader range of strategy
options from the analysis: what options are available to us in
the long-term? What might be the impact of those options in
the long-term? What will influence those options? What are
potential obstacles?
Scenarios, visioning etc.
Prospection
Innovation
What could happen?
futures inspired strategy
A Foresight Framework
Integrates a step to allow decision makers TIME
at the BEGINNING of the strategy process
to consider POTENTIAL future events
and POSSIBLE implications for strategy
rather than REACTING to future events which
might have already undermined that strategy by the
time those events become apparent.
futures inspired strategy
Building a Strategic Foresight
Capacity
 All individuals have the capacity for foresight – we
use that capacity every day.
 The aim is to move that individual capacity to a
shared, organisational capacity.
futures inspired strategy
Building a Strategic Foresight
Capacity
 Individual foresight is:
 unconscious
 implicit
 solitary
 Strategic Foresight is:
 conscious
 explicit
 collective
futures inspired strategy
Building a Strategic Foresight
Capacity
 Understand how successful organisations apply
foresight to inform their organisational strategy.
eg Shell, GBN, CUB, SKb, DEST, Toyota
futures inspired strategy
Building a Strategic Foresight
Capacity
 Generates a challenge: strategic foresight takes
time to develop:
 mangers and leaders do not have much time,
 managers and leaders are rewarded for certainty, not
uncertainty.
 Need to demonstrate value of taking time out in the
short term to consider long term issues
 particularly when urgent imperatives in the ‘here and
now’ need to be dealt with.
futures inspired strategy
Institutional Time
1905
Past
2005
2105
Present
Future
Universities have a past, present and
future. All three times are interdependent.
One time cannot be considered in
isolation from the other two.
futures inspired strategy
Institutional Time
1908
Past
2004
2108
Present
Future
Strategy Decisions
Strategy decisions now are based primarily on
interpreting information about the past and present.
futures inspired strategy
Institutional Time
1908
Past
2004
2108
Present
Future
Strategy Decisions
Strategy decisions today can be strengthened by
interpreting information about the future.
futures inspired strategy
Institutional Time
1908
Past
2004
2108
Present
Future
Strategy Decisions
Strategic Hindsight
Strategic Foresight
Strategic perspectives and interpretation need to
be applied with the benefit of both hindsight and
foresight.
futures inspired strategy
Why strategic foresight?
“The future does not just happen to us; we ourselves
create it by what we do and what we fail to do. It is
we who are making tomorrow what tomorrow will be.
For that reason, futurists think not so much in terms
of predicting the future, as in terms of trying to
decide more wisely what we want the future to be.”
Edward Cornish
President, World Future Society
futures inspired strategy
Why Strategic Foresight?
All our knowledge is about the past, but all our
decisions are about the future.
What we don’t know we don’t know
What we know
we don’t know
What we think
we know
What we know
Most of what we need to know to make good decisions today is
outside our comprehension: we don’t even know it’s there.
futures inspired strategy
How do you ‘do’ Strategic
Foresight?
 Step 1
 Make a commitment to develop and use explicit futures
processes.
 Give permission for staff to take time out from the here
and now to think about the future.
 Encourage the use of a wide range of methods to
support strategic thinking.
futures inspired strategy
How do you ‘do’ Strategic
Foresight?
 Step 2
 Build a scanning framework – what do we need to know
more about? What do we need to keep an eye on over
time?
 Value multiple sources of information – quantitative,
qualitative, from staff, from experts, hard data,
possibilities…
 Value information that relates directly to strategy
implementation today and information that is a bit more
‘left field’ and seemingly unrelated.
 Scan the mainstream and the periphery.
futures inspired strategy
How do you ‘do’ Strategic
Foresight?
 Step 3
 Systematically and regularly review and interpret
scanning reports using a range of approaches –
 What does this mean?
 Is there anything we need to pay attention to now?
futures inspired strategy
How do you ‘do’ Strategic
Foresight?
 Step 4
 Have regular strategy events or processes to
collectively consider information that has been
gathered over time.
 Step 5
 Make strategy decisions, and review them regularly. The
world can change overnight.
futures inspired strategy
Foresight and Strategy
 Strategic Foresight is about thinking, not doing.
 Thinking helps the doing.
 But … only if time is committed to allow people to
think as well as do.
futures inspired strategy
Foresight and Strategy
Schedule regular
‘thinking’ time.
Systematically
develop and use
strategic scanning to
inform thinking.
Make Strategy
Use a range of
futures methods to
structure output.
futures inspired strategy
Foresight and Strategy
 There may be no apparent link between foresight
work and day-to-day work.
 Assumption that tangible results are the only valid
results. Intangible results in terms of changes in
thinking are not readily measured.
The benefit of foresight is only apparent in
hindsight!
futures inspired strategy