Introducing Foresight Alliance
See What’s Possible
June 2014
What sets us apart?
Foresight Alliance
… is a rigorous, creative, futures-focused
consulting firm.
We help our clients consider various ways the
future might unfold and what they need to do
now to anticipate and shape it.
Our foresight methods deliver potent new
business opportunities, more robust strategies,
and wiser decisions.
And our recurring engagements testify to our
success at making knowledge about the future
relevant and valuable for our clients—Fortune
500 companies, government agencies, and large
nonprofits.
• We customize our services to
the needs of the client. We
don’t sell canned processes.
• We are responsive and nimble.
We work closely with our clients
throughout each engagement.
• Helping our clients see the
business implications of our
work together—especially in
light of their unique
circumstances—is the end goal
of every project.
• We provide a team of seasoned
foresight professionals with a
range of viewpoints and
experience.
• We offer excellent value.
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We help our clients see what’s possible.
We have found that despite a rich diversity of project scales and client interests, our clients usually
face a common problem: how to understand and act in the face of an uncertain and complex
future.
• Our practiced approach to foresight begins by identifying and organizing the relevant forces of
change—uncovering and codifying the drivers, trends, and emerging innovations that are likely
to influence the future.
• This process brings comprehensible order to the elements of change—enabling us to synthesize
broad and complex operating environments into a manageable intellectual framework tailored
to our clients’ unique needs—allowing them to more deeply understand their present, what’s
changing it, and what they need to do to shape their preferred future.
• We provide concepts that our clients can use as a way to organize their thoughts about the
future, and a vocabulary they can deploy for implementing future strategy.
Through this holistic yet targeted approach, we help expand our clients’ capacity to see what's
possible.
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What is foresight?
• The first thing to know about futurists is that we are
not predicting the future—the future does not exist
as a single outcome.
• Rather, we help our clients understand the forces of
change that are active today—social, economic,
technological, etc.; what is driving these changes, and
how they will play out over a defined period of time.
• We work with our clients to explore a range of
futures, from wildly improbably to extremely
conventional, so they can have a better
understanding of the challenges and opportunities
• Result: our clients gain advance warning that enables
them to seize opportunities and avoid problems and
threats.
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Why foresight?
Developing foresight—an understanding of the possible ways the future may
unfold—is a valuable first step in both strategy and innovation.
• Futurists explore broadly—providing peripheral vision and synthesizing
information from disparate areas. Futurists go beyond what people are
thinking… to the factors that may change their thinking.
• Foresight-infused strategy is more informed and proactive.
• Foresight can identify “white space” and potential new opportunities.
• Foresight is best developed as a collaborative process.
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Recent highlights from our team’s portfolio of
foresight experience
• A major report for the US Grains Council, Food2040,
has been lauded for its insightful and provocative
look at food and agriculture futures in major East
Asian markets through 2040.
• Multiple foresight and innovation projects for a
Fortune 500 consumer products company yielded
innovative product platforms currently being
explored internally. In 2012 the client established a
new business unit based in large part on our
foresight work.
• A “weak signals” environmental scan and ensuing
implications wheel workshop helped the Industrial
Research Institute identify how emerging and
potential drivers of change could impact research
and technology management across industry
sectors.
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Foresight Alliance offers a full suite of services.
Innovation
Research
• Trend identification and
monitoring
• Alternative futures and
scenario development
• Whitespace identification
• Whitespace mapping
• Foresight-inspired ideation
Strategy & Visioning
• Exploration of adjacent
market spaces
• Linking foresight to operational
strategy
• Implications analysis
• Uncovering hidden assumptions
• Early warning and risk
identification
• Decision support
Action
• Visioning
• Organizational change practice
Building Foresight Capacity
• Futures methodology training
• Foresight capabilities assessment, strategizing, and development
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We enhance your organization’s strategy, innovation,
and resilience.
•
•
•
•
•
A 360° Perspective. We do comprehensive scanning of your operating environment,
consider extended time horizons, and examine deep drivers of change.
Infusing Your Perspective with Foresight. We provide “raw materials” for exploring the
future—trends, evidence, observations, etc.—and develop a framework for how the
future might play out in areas pertinent to you.
Strategy and Innovation Support. We work with you to identify which aspects of change
are most important and relevant, then collaboratively develop implications to feed
strategy and innovation.
Compelling Communications. We customize our products and presentations to meet
specific client needs, and express our insights in meaningful, compelling, and actionable
ways.
Capacity Building. We assess your organization’s foresight capacity and help you
strengthen specific in-house foresight capabilities using our award-winning proprietary
tool, the Foresight Maturity Model.
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Foresight Alliance partners are experienced
professionals.
We are a young foresight group with many years of
working together.
• Extensive track record of delivering high-quality,
well-managed projects
• Global perspective
• Complementary and diverse skills
• Professional foresight training
• Broad variety of industry experience:
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Food and beverage
Entertainment
Petrochemical
Transportation
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Government agencies
Nonprofits
Consumer durables
Hospitality
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Why should I choose Foresight Alliance?
• Our time-tested foresight methodologies deliver actionable
results—potent new business opportunities, more robust
strategies, and wiser decisions.
• Our clients see the bigger picture. We broaden your peripheral
vision, extend your time horizon, and examine deeper drivers of
change—so the future won’t take you by surprise.
• Our clients gain clarity and comprehension. We help you “connect
the dots” so that what was a gut feel becomes a reasoned
conclusion.
• We facilitate creative exchanges in which clients can develop
innovative ideas and processes in which to capture and evaluate
the best options.
• Our clients build internal foresight capabilities.
• Our clients are able to work smarter and be more effective. We
raise their personal influence and the influence of foresight within
their organizations.
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Our clients testify to the value we provide.
• Ted Farrington, Senior Director, PepsiCo Advanced
Research: “I’ve had the pleasure of working with
Foresight Alliance on two strategic foresights projects in
the last few years. The first was for PepsiCo and
investigated what would be driving consumers’ food and
beverage choices ten years from now. The second
project, IRI2038, was for the Industrial Research
Institute and asked what research and technology
management might look like 25 years in the future…
Both studies are highly regarded and I would definitely
work with [the Foresight Alliance] team again.”
• Vicky Yobp, American Industrial Hygiene Association:
“Thank you for your strong interest and enthusiasm
during the project. Your approach and deliverables were
exactly what we needed to identify a range of strategic
opportunities. We would welcome the chance to work
together again should the opportunity arise.”
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Our clients testify to the value we provide.
• Thomas P. DeRoche, Director of Educational
Programs, International Foundation of Employee
Benefit Plans: “Bill Croasmun and Terry Grim
collaborated on creating and delivering a unique
training program for our members that focuses on
leadership development, project management,
customer service and strategic planning. They took
the time to learn our industry and design a
meaningful curriculum to help our members be
more productive in their varied professional roles.
Bill and Terry are expert facilitators and their
comfortable working chemistry maximizes the
learning experience for students. The evaluations
[they receive] are always outstanding.”
Administrators
Masters ProgramSM
Introduction
Terry Grim
Partner
Foresight Alliance
Houston, TX
BillCroasmun
Croasmun
Bill
Partner
Partner
ForesightAlliance
Alliance
Foresight
Woodbridge,CT
CT
Woodbridge,
The opinions expressed in this presentation are those of the speaker. The International Foundation
disclaims responsibility for views expressed and statements made by the program speakers.
Introduction
Management Skills
Course Overview
Saturday
7:30
– 8:15
• Introduction
8:15
– 9:45
• Leadership skills
9:45
– 10:00
BREAK
10:00 – 11:30
• Management skills
11:30 – 1:00
• Fundamentals of project
management
1:00
• Case study / WORKING LUNCH
– 2:00
Sunday
7:30
– 9:00
• Communication skills
9:00
– 10:15
• Customer service
10:15 – 10:30
BREAK
10:30 – 12:00
• Effective strategy—reaching a goal
12:00 – 1:00
LUNCH – ON YOUR OWN
1:00
• Putting it all together
– 3:30
2
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See What’s Possible
1
Foresight Alliance
To See What’s Possible for your organization, visit our website at
www.foresightalliance.com
Or contact us at
christopher.kent@foresightalliance.com.
Appendix: What is foresight?
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There are three futures perspectives.
• The expected future: where we are headed.
The expected future is the logical result of the
momentum of present trends.
• The alternative futures: what might happen
instead. Alternate futures are the outcome of
various contingencies.
• The preferred future(s): what we want to
happen. The preferred future is the result of
agency—of vision, goals, and plans.
We often tell our clients that they should work to
a preferred future, be prepared for an alternative
future, and avoid the thinking that traps you in
an expected future.
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Exploring what’s possible: The cone of possibility
Implications
Innovations
Trend
Seed trend
for a cluster
Cluster
Present
Past
Time
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Exploring what’s possible: What does a typical
futures project look like?
• Generally we start with an environmental scan—research into
ideas, trends, weak signals, and emerging issues within the
scope defined by the client.
• As we cluster these trends and weak signals, large,
overarching ideas about the topic begin to emerge. The
objective is to separate signal from noise, to distill a lengthy
list of items down to a manageable set of "foresights”
supported by a broad research base.
• From these clusters of trends we are able to describe possible
futures in the form of forecasts, hypotheses, scenarios,
vignettes, or personas.
• We identify implications—what these possible futures will
mean for the organization, its customers, and its offerings.
• We help our clients move from foresight to application—most
often to strategy development or innovation.
Trends, weak signals,
emerging issues
Clusters—big ideas
Forecasts,
hypotheses,
scenarios, vignettes
Implications
Innovation
Strategy
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