Fueling Strategies & Innovations With Foresight

New Approaches & Mindset

To remain ahead of the crowd

It is clear that most organizations in these volatile and complex times require new approaches and mindsets. Today’s business leaders must remain focused on what’s next. In order to future-proof their Strategies & plans, they need greater visibility about the future. 
Traditional models are no longer enough and effectively blind leaders to all threats and opportunities outside their narrow view. 

What is needed is an instrument for building resilience, adaptability and envisioning opportunities through recognition of emerging patterns. FUTURES THINKING IS THAT INSTRUMENT, AND STRATEGIC FORESIGHT PROVIDES THE FRAMEWORK.

A growth gap is the gap between  the targets you have set; and what you will achieve if you carry on doing business as usual,  making only small ‘incremental changes’ as you go.

Closing the growth gap

An Organisation’s Innovation Strategy Provide The Areas And Domains For Focus, In Which It Can Create And Deliver Innovative Changes That Will Successfully Fill The Growth Gap.  Developing These Initiatives Should Be An Integral Part Of Your Strategy And Are Likely To Result In The Development Of New Ways Through Which You Can Create And/Or Capture Value By Developing New Products, Services, Business Models & Processes.

Our Methodology

Strategic Foresight Framework
Step 1: Discover

In-depth approach to learning everything about the brand and the strategy, industry, competition, the employees and the customer perceptions.

Key Activities & Tools:

  • JTBD Research Safaris
  • Quantitative Research
  • Service
  • Shadowing
  • Observations

Step 2: Scan & Map

Identify the potential inflection points in your industry and its adjacency. What new patterns & trends will emerge to the point of significance and new technologies will converge to open up both potential disruptions and new opportunities.

  • Identify Driving Forces
  • Identify Critical Uncertainties
  • Develop Plausible Scenarios
  • Discuss Implications & Paths

Step 3: Solution Design

Having developed a point of view on the future and come to terms with its implications for your existing businesses, it’s time to focus on what you will offer as part of your envisioned future state, how you will create value, and how you’ll address your looming growth, positioning, and capability gaps in doing so. We find it helpful to systematically think through three tried and true growth categories:

  • Core Opportunities to extend or evolve your core offerings to maximize their relevance in the future environment.
  • Adjacencies Distinct new products and services that can augment your core offerings or opportunities to take your core offerings into different geographies and markets, with either option (or combined options) leveraging the existing business model.
  • New growth  initiatives that may leverage core capabilities of the organization but in new and distinct businesses, typically with new business models.

Step 4: Test

When you’ve determined how big each line of business must be to fill your gap by your target date, pressure test how well your future state portfolio hangs together. Ask questions like:

What would have to be true for a business in market x to attain $y million of net new growth by Year z? Can we assume the overall market will grow fast enough to make that a realistic Proposition?

Analyses like these can give you more reason to believe your strategic development is the right one, or it can warn you that it’s not—in which case you’ll need to revise your vision.

Go out & talk to your stakeholders & subject experts, frontline and back office staff then pilot scenarios that enable the organisation to learn from  customers and staff what works and what does not in your new growth portfolio.

Step 5: Implement

while execution within the core business might be an area of consummate strength for  firms, the implementation of a transformative, long-term strategy requires a different set of processes and overall capabilities.

  1. Formalize the roles and responsibilities of the senior leadership team as champions of both the strategy and growth innovations
  2. Set up a dedicated units model that protects & isolate transformative innovations from the prevailing influences of the core
  3. Manage initiatives with an explore and discover process so senior teams and innovation teams can learn their way to success together

Objectives & Results

HOW COULD OUR APPROACH
HELP COMPANIES?

To remain ahead of the crowd

Insight-Led

understand needs and expectations, help design services that enhance the customer experience and enable the organization to deliver high level services.

Design Approach

our collaborative approach generates internal and external information while the co-creation process creates credible and actionable solutions.

Cross-Industry Expertise

working with a wide range of companies allows us to leverage revolutionary thinking and insight to produce business impact.