Introducing Foresight Alliance

See What’s PossibleJune 2014

2

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.

What sets us apart?

• 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.

See What’s Possible

3

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.

See What’s Possible

4

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.

5

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.

6

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.

See What’s Possible

7

Foresight Alliance offers a full suite of services.

Research

• Trend identification and monitoring

• Alternative futures and scenario development

• Exploration of adjacent market spaces

• Implications analysis

• Early warning and risk identification

Innovation

• Whitespace identification

• Whitespace mapping

• Foresight-inspired ideation

Strategy & Visioning

• Linking foresight to operational strategy

• Uncovering hidden assumptions

• Decision support

• Visioning

• Organizational change practice

Building Foresight Capacity

• Futures methodology training

• Foresight capabilities assessment, strategizing, and development

Action

See What’s Possible

8

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.

See What’s Possible

9

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:

Food and beverage Entertainment Petrochemical Transportation

Government agencies Nonprofits Consumer durables Hospitality

See What’s Possible

10

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.

See What’s Possible

11

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.”

See What’s Possible

12

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.”

See What’s Possible

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.

14

Appendix: What is foresight?

15

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.

Exploring what’s possible: The cone of possibility

16

Past

Limit o

f Nove

lty / R

elevance

Time

Present Limit of Novelty / Relevance

Trend

Cluster

Seed trend for a cluster

Implications

Innovations

17

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.

Clusters—big ideas

Implications

Trends, weak signals, emerging issues

Forecasts, hypotheses,

scenarios, vignettes

Strategy

Innovation