Future casting is the future
Strategic planning can be tricky and require a lot of guessing on what the future holds. It’s really easy to over-imagine the future and equally easy to miss the obvious. And the further out you look, the hazier the future will get. But it is still important – to be in business successfully for a long period of time requires a combination of being relevant to your customers, keeping one step ahead of your competitors and making the most of out the tools at your disposal. In order to develop and remain relevant for your customers, you need a vision and the ability to predict with some accuracy what the future might be.
In this talk we will discuss how you can plan for the future, focusing on the following three subject areas
- Pace of technological change and ensuring sufficient investment at the right time
- Keeping track of constantly shifting customer behaviours
- Impacts of wider macroeconomics events on market dynamics and what they mean for you and your customers
To support this, we will show examples of tools & techniques used to research and communicate a vision of the possible futures (yes, there are more than one). Some examples of these tools include:
- Trend analysis – Using data from recent history we can extrapolate linear, exponential and cyclical trends, covering technology, users, demographics and socio-political factors
- Comparative analysis – Looking at other countries, other industries, and other companies we can see the mechanisms of previous disruptions
- Horizon scanning – Using analyst research and technology commentaries we can cut through the hype and understand upcoming game-changers