By Sam Douglas-Bate, Founder, ForgeFront
Nobody can predict the future, but you can prepare for it effectively.
How?
As any small business leader will know, we get a myriad of approaches from people who claim they will help our businesses succeed: marketing and sales support, head-hunters and HR services, AI tools and digital technologies, management consultancies and accountancy firms. The list goes on.
Much of this support will be services you or your competitors already use. In some cases, you may already have the in-house capability.
However, one area in which the small business community falls behind government and big businesses is in the utilisation of futures and foresight, the service that my own firm, ForgeFront, specialises in.
What is futures and foresight?
In a nutshell, it’s the craft of thinking about several possible tomorrows, then making better decisions today. The UK Government has a useful explainer on their website.
It’s not crystal ball-gazing. It’s a series of methodologies and tools underpinned by decades of research from academia and industry.
While the origins of the discipline remain contested, many believe it had its roots in the work of the U.S. defence community during early parts of the Cold War, American thinkers such as Herman Kahn, and organisations like the RAND Corporation. Just like today, this was a fragile geopolitical moment when clear strategic decisions, based upon a more standardised approach, emerged as a pre-eminent priority for US and European businesses and political elites.
Kahn was one of the people who coined the phrase ‘scenarios’, perhaps one of the techniques you might be familiar with. Based in LA, he wanted to find a way to communicate his work publicly, so consulted screenwriter Leo Rosten on the problem. Rosten suggested the term to Kahn to mean the methodical creation of stories to explain a range of possible futures, from which strategic decisions can be made.
In the years since the scenarios methodology was created, the tools futures and foresight professionals deploy have expanded significantly with increasing complexity. We now use other techniques like backcasting, morphological analysis, Delphi exercises and roadmapping.
And it works.
One of the earliest examples was the oil company Shell, which used scenarios to see the 1973 oil shock coming while rivals were caught cold, a story told in the Harvard Business Review.
Another famous example is Japan’s large-scale foresight surveys, run every five years since 1971, originally by the Science and Technology Agency and now by NISTEP, which look at technology trends 30 years ahead.
A third illustration is the US National Intelligence Council’s (NIC) Global Trends report, published every four years since 1997, which looks at the forces shaping the world over the coming 20 years.
All this is diverse work which shows some of the wide range of tools any good futures and foresight practitioner has in their armoury today.
Read the work of NISTEP or the NIC and you will uncover rich insight for your small business on the big picture, but what does implementation of futures and foresight look like? A good place to start is the UK Government Futures Toolkit.
The UK Government rates our discipline so highly it runs a dedicated Futures Procurement Framework (FPF), a vetted list of 35 suppliers that departments can call on to help them think about the future. ForgeFront is proud to be one of them.
If you get it right, the benefits could separate you from your competitors. A landmark study by Rohrbeck and Kum (2018) tracked companies over seven years. Firms with mature foresight were 33% more profitable than the average and grew their market value by 200% more. There are benefits for people too. A systematic review of 21 studies linked future-oriented thinking to higher engagement and stronger self-belief, both of which a small business needs from its people.
So, what can a small business leader do to incorporate futures and foresight into their organisation?
The first thing is to start small: undertake research into the types of techniques you think might be helpful in the Futures Toolkit. Put some time aside to take a strategic issue you face, and run through the clearly organised steps to see if it can help give you clarity.
Secondly, invest in upskilling your colleagues. Many futures and foresight consultancies are expensive, so the barrier to entry can be high, but many also offer online courses: some free, some paid for (and while we’re at it, a quick plug for our own industry-leading offering here!).
Finally, engage with the wide community of futures and foresight professionals who are often happy to chat if you ask nicely. A good place to start is the Association of Professional Futurists, or any of the suppliers on the FPF. ForgeFront’s own colleagues would be happy to chat: find us through the SBREC business directory, visit our website, or simply pop by our desk if you see us around the Centre. We are the ones debating the future.
*We strive to do our best when supporting small business and their growth. Our business databases can give you information and data that can help you with advertising, market research, company information, and industry factsheets. If you have already taken the plunge, we would love for you to join us at a seminar, our workshops cover digital marketing, business model canvas and planning, demystifying taxes and intellectual property to name a few. Visit our events page or website for more information.
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