Strategic Foresight, an important subfield of futures studies, is a discipline organizations use to gather and process information about their future operating environment. This information can include, for example, trends and developments in their political, economic, social, technological, and legal environments.

In public Organisations or any business, it is so easy to get caught up in the hamster wheel of busyness. The practice of Strategic Foresight is a way of stepping out of the hamster wheel and re-igniting your capacity to shape the future.

This article is written by Professor Sohail Inayatullah, UNESCO Chair in Futures Studies, Professor at USIM. Tamkang University, Melbourne Business School, The University of the sunshine coast.

If a foresight program is to be established, someone needs to do the work. That's the first and primary resource. But human resources need to be supported by other resources too, from information sources to internal networks. In this article, we focus on the human and information resources needed to build and run a successful foresight program.

Sohail Inayatullah, PhD and Professor of Future Studies, presented compelling cases about foresight in practice at the Strategic Foresight Summit. This article is based on content presented at the Strategic Foresight Summit 2018, organized earlier this year by Futures Platform.

Organizations should involve their people in creating a vision that is shared by everybody. Great foresight tools invite employees to participate in, and get inspired by, foresight work. Technology alone doesn't ensure participation. But easy-to-use tools certainly help in fostering engagement, especially if people are scattered around.

Foresight deliverables are often simple signals of change that an organization gathers from its environment. The organization also needs to be able to process these signals. This could involve angular reviews, deep dive analyses, or workshops. All of this requires a defined purpose, owner, and format.

Collecting information that eventually comes to be called “foresight” is a process. Whether we’re talking about within a systematic foresight program or in a single project. So what exactly is the “foresight process”?

In a VUCA world, organisations can't afford to be complacent and avoid changes if they want to stay ahead of the curve. However, they shouldn't make abrupt decisions or aimlessly follow every change either. In this piece, Jari Koskinen explains why organisations need to have foresight and change capabilities in the decision-making process.

Dr. John Geis is the Director of Airpower Research Task Force for Air University. He came to the Strategic Foresight Summit to talk about the alternate futures work he has done for the U.S. Air Force since the 1990s. “My goal is to show that these alternate futures analyses have a way of doing pretty well,” said Geis.

Key Success Factors of a Foresight ProgramA good foresight program doesn't pop out of anywhere. Organisations that wish to understand the future and prepare for it need a good program in place.

Successful foresight activities must answer: What are the alternative futures the organization faces? How likely are the different futures to unfold? And, given the options, what actions can the organization take to achieve its goals? Foresight analysis, when correctly done, has many proven benefits for businesses and organisations across all industries.