Strategic Foresight
The Basic Idea
As the clock counted down to the new year on the 31st of December 2019, who would have thought we would soon find ourselves living through a devastating pandemic? Unexpected events happen all the time, yet we are consistently caught off guard when they occur. In times of rising uncertainty, there are tools that can help organizations better prepare themselves for the unexpected.
Strategic foresight is a systematic and planning-oriented approach to prepare for anticipated changes in the long run. It does so by using ideas about possible futures to develop action plans.
Also known as corporate foresight in the private sector, strategic foresight considers what opportunities and challenges could arise from a variety of plausible futures. These ideas about the future are then used to design potential solutions, which enable governments and businesses to prepare or implement strategies to mitigate future consequences.
Unlike forecasting, foresight explores the range of possible futures that may materialize. We can forecast something that has a high accuracy of probability, such as how long it will take to drive to work in the morning. A classic example is meteorologists, who use forecasting to make predictions about the weather based on past and present data. However, when we want to envision a future in which there is a high degree of uncertainty, it becomes far more difficult to forecast effectively. This is where strategic foresight comes in.
Rather than trying to accurately forecast future outcomes, the objective of strategic foresight is to investigate; it aims to expand consideration for a range of potential developments, opportunities and challenges that the future could present.1
Strategic foresight is the ability to create and maintain a high-quality, coherent and functional forward view, and to use the insights arising in useful organizational ways. For example to detect adverse conditions, guide policy, shape strategy, and to explore new markets, products and services. It represents a fusion of futures methods with those of strategic management.
– Richard Slaughter in his 1999 book, Futures for the Third Millennium: Enabling the Forward View
About the Author
Joshua Loo
Joshua was a former content creator with a passion for behavioral science. He previously created content for The Decision Lab, and his insights continue to be valuable to our readers.
