Building corporate foresight for turbulent times

A key practice in the new strategy playbook is building corporate foresight. Corporate foresight is a firm’s ability to interpret changes in the business environment and to develop insights into future alternative states that are based on these changes. It includes the activities that aim at screening, interpreting, and acting upon key drivers of change in a company’s business ecosystem.

In this white paper, we present the crucial steps in the foresight process and describe the challenges and the typical managerial biases associated with looking into an uncertain future. We also provide some recommendations for organising your foresight activities and a test to assess the foresight maturity of your organisation. But we start off by elaborating on what foresight is and what it’s not. This is definitely needed, because there are many misconceptions and many wrong expectations about building foresight.