Sponsor Impact report The heart of future planning Foresight is a practical capability Strategic foresight is about used to make better decisions in the expanding our vision away from diversity of thought and perspective, plausible futures that we might not present. Good foresight depends on so is most effective when it is a collaborative process, ultimately owned by everyone. The best teams or practitioners will be those that seek out a wide range of insights from different types of people internally and externally, rather than just looking where we feel comfortable. This helps to spot trends you may not have otherwise found or learn when a trend youre banking on is not going to bend. assumed futures into alternative have considered. Essentially, its foresight as a strategic practice, and produce an annual external diagnostic report to help inform planning. We are currently working on a about thinking long range, with longer-range horizon-scan project, to tools such as scenario planning can and their potential implications on the multiple futures in mind. Foresight be helpful for this, but if you dont have the capacity or internal expertise to do so, it can also be helpful to tweak decision-making practices and ask: What assumptions are we making here and what if were wrong? At the British Heart Foundation (BHF), we have been increasingly investing in b) different outputs, says Quoirin. But who will live these scenarios? Can we imagine what thats like? That requires different disciplines, different thinking, different toolkits and thats interesting. But I do think its making the work so much more robust. Quoirin stresses that the human dimension is vital, arguing that people should be put into the scenario planning equation, both in terms of who designs it (rather than an over-relying on technology and straight lines), and who is going to experience the outcomes of it. Jeff Roberts, partner, Dive Without Fear, has a succinct take on the rise of foresight work: The most powerful businesses arent those with the clearest plan, but those with the most places to jump. Effective foresights provide measured evaluations of emerging possibilities. Recognising and being prepared for what might come ensures the business knows where it can jump if needed. Mintel, meanwhile, has been working with clients on what it calls foresight frameworks. Richard Cope, senior trends consultant at the company, observes that firms are increasingly open to being challenged and provoked with quite extreme scenarios that might threaten the status quo and their position. Consumers often hold the key, for although they might not be able to outline the future by answering research questions, their fundamental needs and desires whether practical or emotional remain constant, albeit, these grow at different rates because of the influence of macro forces. Its important to link foresight to consumer needs such as status, convenience, escapism or comfort, says Cope. The voice of the consumer can also be a great way of bringing trends and foresight to life, by showing better understand key uncertainties BHF. We are also using tools such as scenario planning to build our organisational capabilities and inform functional strategies. Leila Varley, strategy manager, futures and foresight, the British Heart Foundation their openness to future innovations or scenarios. C Spaces Concannon is also enthusiastic on this point. You can get consumers to be creative and think about the future, but only in the right way, she says. Things such as creative visualisation or painting a picture of what the future could look like, and getting them to think about that. Or bringing in example technologies for them to imagine whats possible, or creating videos around what might happen in five years time priming people to think, in a creative way, about the future, because its quite hard to do that without stimulus. Last year, C Space joined forces with Innovation Everywhere essentially the Lego Groups in-house consultancy to clarify Legos strategic offering. Lego is big on looking to the future, and within the groups Creative Play Lab there is a dedicated foresight arm, known as the futurology team. It is driven by the belief that, if the company is to build the future of play, it needs to understand future scenarios of childrens lives and how play might unfold within these possibilities. We are very lucky because our work is grounded within these scenarios from the outset rather than them being one of many inputs at a specific stage within a project, says Innovation Everywhere lead Lizzie Carr. Often, a member of the futurology team becomes an integral part of the project team, thereby fusing foresight into thinking from day one. By placing the future and its scenarios at the forefront of our innovation challenges, we can actively shape the future of play, from a user and futures perspective, from the outset. Various approaches and methods exist to help people think more critically about their assumptions about the future, notes SOIFs Curry, which helps get to better 26 Impact ISSUE 43 2023_pp22-29_Report.indd 26 18/09/2023 12:06