5 Benefits of Using Foresight.
Chances are, if you're a CEO or Board member, you're always looking for ways to stay ahead of the competition. And while there are many different strategies you can use, one that's often overlooked is foresight. Foresight is the ability to see beyond the present and into a range of futures, and when used correctly, it can provide several benefits. So if you're looking for a way to boost your organisation's performance, foresight may be just what you need. In this post, we'll explore five benefits of using foresight in business. Keep reading to learn more!
Hammoud, M.S., Nash, D.P. in their 2014 research paper "What corporations do with foresight."(1) identified the top five ways that foresight helped organisations as:
Shaping futures.
Foresight is the art of examining a range of alternate futures and understanding how you can influence what happens next. By using foresight, decision-makers can determine their course for moving forward in an organised manner so that staff will be clear on who does what role within this plan as well as prioritises various tasks based on potential outcomes.
2. Improving corporate agility.
Foresight is the key to pushing beyond conventional thinking so that you can see change opportunities in a positive light. This allows more agile organisations with an ability to anticipate future events, which will make them even better prepared when it comes time to take action on those changes emerging around us.
3. Improving organisational alignment.
Foresight planning breaks down silos. In most organisations a range of people and functions may at any one time be tracking changes across society, technology, economics, environment, and politics (STEEP). However, the necessary insights tend to remain disconnected because they are localised within the people or functions that do the tracking. Marketing may monitor relevant social trends and how they are impacting consumers and markets; the IT department may stay up to date with the latest trends in technology; the legal team may stay up to date with political and legal issues, and people who engage with strategic planning may stay aware of economic trends that impact the sector and stakeholders. With a foresight project, you can coordinate the collection of data and information from multiple sources. This gives you a distinct advantage in decision-making and strategic planning. Foresight enhances alignment across the whole organisation.
4. Improving the customer’s perception of the company.
Foresight planning can help a company appear more innovative and forward-thinking than its competition. By positioning itself as the go-to organisation for new ideas, you create an edge that leads to increased business success.
5. Increasing the ability to see opportunities.
Foresight projects can help organisations be aware of new opportunities before their competitors. These forward-focused activities provide early insight into upcoming changes, which ensure leaders have an enhanced framework for decision making and allow them to stay competitive in the market place by understanding what is happening around them better than others do.
In business, foresight can provide several benefits, including shaping futures, improving corporate agility, improving organisational alignment, improving the customer’s perception of the company, and increasing the ability to see opportunities. By using foresight planning techniques, businesses can break down silos within their organisation and become more agile to anticipate future events. Foresight planning can help a company appear more innovative and forward-thinking than its competition, which leads to increased business success.
insight & foresight supports CEOs and Boards to use foresight to plan and make decisions for impact and future growth with more confidence and great reliability. We use the world-leading Futures Platform as a source of emerging change and trend data to significantly improve foresight outputs. To learn more get in touch with us today.
Read the full business case for foresight here.
References
1. Hammoud, M.S., Nash, D.P. (2014) "What corporations do with foresight." European Journal of Futures Research 2, 42.
