Throughout the mid- to late-twentieth century, organizations engaged in strategic planning to remain competitive . Leaders identified a desired endpoint and worked toward it from their current state. To succeed in today’s market, however, organizations must embrace a futures thinking orientation. Futures thinking begins with the current state and uses foresight to lay down a path to meet estimated, yet unknown, future needs.
Foresight is not so much about predicting the future, as it is the ability to recognize changing events and accurately plan for possible future outcomes. The goal of using foresight methods within organizations is to understand potential triggers —recognizable points in time when action is needed. This action may increase collaboration , reallocate resources, or flatten hierarchical structures, all to help the organization become more flexible and adaptable to unforeseen challenges. The role of futures thinking is to assess the viability and executability of these response actions, and ultimately implement and institutionalize those that translate scenarios into success.
Challenges facing organizations today are extremely dynamic and stem from three rapidly changing forces: technology, globalization, and workforce diversity . Technologically, artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) , for example, have brought about embedded biosensors and advanced robotics, as well as cryptocurrency and blockchain support platforms. With such technological advances, companies are expanding their markets around the world, creating a new level of global industry driven by digitization and big data analytics. As the workforce needs to respond and support new trends in technology and globalization, a question becomes one of where to find needed talent within the everchanging fields of healthcare, banking, computer and digital engineering, transportation and utilities. Cost, availability (i.e., impact of immigration), and digital connectivity all play a part in an organization’s effort to secure the diverse skills and perspectives needed to ensure futures thinking .
Following is a review of the evolution of futures thinking within organizations, beginning with strategic planning and leading to the use of foresight methodologies. The impact of convergent/divergent thinking and sensemaking as related to strategic and corporate foresight is also discussed, as well as emerging new roles for employees, managers, and the organization itself. Additionally, barriers exist which may interfere with an organization’s evolution from use of foresight to full futures thinking capability and the closing section of this chapter describes these potential constraints.
Background: Strategic Planning, Organizational Foresight, and Futures Thinking
A primary goal of all organizations is financial viability (Kumar and Chaudhary 2013; Swift 2012). Businesses strive for increased value to shareholders; universities seek tuition, fees, and endowments to pay for the costs of providing education; and government and nonprofit agencies work to ensure funds for public well-being. When customers and clients find value in the products and services the organization provides, the enterprise can grow and profit.
Growth in population and rapid changes in communication and distribution of products and services have increased significantly around the world. With sixty million companies operating globally in today’s market competition has never been keener. Seven hundred eighty million professionals compete for 20 million jobs (Weiner 2018). Given that many of these jobs are digitally accessible, global competition is ever increasing. Consumer spending for household consumption across top-ranking countries (including the United States, China, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, India, Brazil, Russia, and Canada) totaled nearly 30 million USD in 2016 (World Bank 2018). The overall economy in the United States alone recently reached $19 trillion (International Monetary Fund 2017).
The world is operating in what futurists refer to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Weiner 2018), 1 and complacency is not an option if an organization wishes to remain in business . Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, companies began to respond to increasing competition by formalizing organizational structure and function. An accompanying management effort became known as strategic planning , and this process was used to analyze and direct resources and relationships toward attainment of long-term financial goals (Candy and Gordon 2011).
As Mintzberg recognized in 1994, however, “strategic planning is not strategic thinking” (para. 1) and increasing uncertainty in the marketplace demanded a more effective approach. Concepts of foresight , foresight methodologies, and futures thinking arrived on the scene. For some businesses, these new approaches became part of their organizational mindset . Foresight and use of foresight methodologies, for example, help organizations formally recognize changing events (Rohrbeck et al. 2015). Subsequent trigger points signaling when action must be taken spurs an organization to respond; (Caron 2013, p. 67). Futures thinking occurs when the organization identifies which of these actions is most viable for meeting the demands of an unknown future (McGrail 2013).
Strategic planning. Strategic planning conjures many scenarios for individuals who worked in organizations in the United States throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Driven by total quality management (TQM) theory, executives sought to develop a systematic approach to efficiency while maintaining quality on the production line and in customer service (Martínez-Lorente et al. 1998). Entire teams of operational staff learned the definitions of parody 2 and value-add, 3 and began writing detailed strategies for enhancing a company’s return-on-investment (ROI) while ensuring continued quality (Leonard and McAdam 2001). The outcome of these efforts were numerous strategic plans designed by organizations to guide performance and increase profits over a 3- to 5-year span.
Modern strategic planning began in the early 1920s with Harvard Business School’s development of formal processes to guide business purpose and policy (Blackerby 2003) and grew in popularity throughout the final decades of the twentieth century (Mintzberg 1994). Common among organizational attempts at strategic planning at that time was the use of an analysis tool referred to as SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats). Research by Helms and Nixon (2010) and Jorgensen (2008) describe SWOT analysis as a simple procedure for identifying strengths and weaknesses internal to the organization, as well as opportunities and threats from outside the organization. SWOT analysis, as a strategic planning process, is easy to use by individuals and easy to formalize by organizations; and it works well ...