Future Foresight – How Does It Work?

Future Foresight does not describe an attempt to predict the future. On the contrary, it is a structured approach to dealing with uncertainty rather than suppressing it.
Future Foresight brings together:

The goal is to make possible futures (yes, plural!) visible and tangible. The uncertainty mentioned at the outset is not a bug but an asset: the point is not to commit to a single fixed scenario, but to make more robust decisions in the present in the face of manifest ambiguity.

In short, Future Foresight helps organizations recognize potential change earlier, think differently, and respond to it consciously.

Many strategic models implicitly assume absolute stability. True to the motto:

Reality looks different. Technological breakthrough innovations, societal upheavals, and geopolitical disruptions – along with their spillover effects – ensure that linear planning is increasingly reaching its limits. Future Foresight starts precisely here: not as a replacement for strategy, but as an extension that takes paradigm shifts seriously.

The guiding question is no longer “What will happen?” but instead shifts to “What could happen – and what would such a change mean for us?”

Future Foresight is not tied to a single tool; rather, it resembles a broadly conceived way of thinking and working. Typically, it encompasses several interconnected steps.

At the beginning are so-called weak signals: early indications of change that are not yet dominant but may gain influence over time. These can include technological developments, emerging behaviors, political debates, or cultural shifts. What matters most when it comes to weak signals is the potential one perceives in them.

Individual signals are rarely meaningful on their own. Patterns only emerge in relation to one another.
Future Foresight therefore asks:

This step is deliberately analytical, but not purely quantitative.

Based on these dynamics, scenarios are developed. These are by no means forecasts, but consistent and plausible future present-day constructs.
Good scenarios:

Future Foresight deliberately uses speculative elements at this stage to push the boundaries of thinking.

The most important step comes at the end and is all too often underestimated.
Future Foresight therefore asks:

It is precisely at this point that thinking about the future becomes actionable in the present.

Future Foresight is not aimed at those looking for quick answers, but at organizations and individuals who regularly have to deal with uncertainty. Decision-makers in particular benefit when they carry responsibility under conditions where past experience alone is no longer sufficient.

Through Future Foresight, organizations gain the ability to make resilient strategic decisions in the face of uncertain prospects — decisions that remain viable across multiple possible futures. Instead of reacting to individual trends, a deeper understanding of systemic interdependencies and long-term dynamics emerges.

Innovation, strategy, and transformation teams also benefit, especially because Future Foresight establishes a shared framework for thinking. Complex developments are not simplified, but taken seriously in their complexity. This reduces blind spots and ultimately helps ensure the connectivity of different perspectives.

Finally, organizations benefit most from Future Foresight wherever the future cannot be delegated: wherever decisions are made today whose consequences will only become apparent years from now, Future Foresight proves to be a particularly worthwhile endeavor.

Future Foresight can be many things, but it is certainly not a pastime to be taken lightly. While sound future-oriented projections do rely on free imagination and creative speculation, even the most open-ended exploration ultimately depends on the careful evaluation of concrete signals. Whether strong or weak, every envisioned future scenario is only as good as the analytical method that continuously underpins it.

By now, a wide range of such methods exists: from environmental and contextual analysis, as expressed in the STEEP method, to qualitative trend mapping and scenario-based approaches such as backcasting, all the way to participatory practices like conducting a Delphi study. This provides a broad pool of possibilities to draw from as needed.

So even if the process may occasionally feel playful, Future Foresight is not a gimmick.