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IRI2038 aimed to give IRI and its members a wider view of potential futures so that they could recognize change in the R&D environment and manage research proactively. A decade ago the Industrial Research Institute (IRI) recognized that the emerging future reality across the next 25 years would challenge members' mental models. Six Key Implications for All Futures While each scenario presented a different view of the future, the research team identified six key implications likely to occur across all futures: Artificial intelligence (AI) would transform project and portfolio management. Keywords: Foresight; Future; Innovation EN Foresight Future Innovation 22 26 5 11/07/23 20231101 NES 231101 Foresight exercises serve an important purpose in expanding mental models of the future to recognize change and act in uncertainty. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the theme of "Agency" in the context of the World Futures Studies Federation's 50th anniversary celebration. It explores how organizations have become more aware of the risks and unintended consequences of their actions, which has limited their ability to create better futures. However, new developments have sparked a belief in agency, leading to a greater reliance on foresight and innovation at the corporate level. The article also highlights four "biomes" of agency: Environmental Anthropocene, Social Equity, Technological Leverage, and Virtual Hyperreality. It discusses the potential future developments and challenges in each of these biomes and emphasizes the importance of innovation leaders being aware of and adapting to these changes. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the increasing popularity of foresight in companies and the potential pitfalls that innovation teams may face when using foresight products developed for other purposes. It emphasizes that the future is not monolithic and that different departments within a company may have different goals and needs for foresight. The article suggests that innovation teams should work with larger corporate foresight products to align their innovation portfolios with the company's overall vision of the future. However, it also highlights the need for customization and adaptation of these foresight products to suit the specific needs of innovation teams. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of engaging a large cohort of people in the foresight process to gain valuable insights and broaden perspectives on the future. [Extracted from the article]

In I The Princess Bride i (Reiner [3]), the evil genius exclaims to the hero that he's fallen victim to one of the classic blunders. As the tumult of operational and publicly available artificial intelligence (AI) begins to roll over our professions, it is important to reflect on the value of human experience. One of the first temptations of users of AI large language models (LLMs) is to forecast the future. [Extracted from the article]

A culture of innovation that can continuously change to ongoing external market shifts will be a critical source of competitive advantage for organizations over the next decade. The lessons for leading such a culture of innovation come from humanity's earliest beginnings and are communicated through our myths. The authors discuss the use of the Hero's Journey with modern change management and innovation techniques such as foresight, customer-centered research and lean startup, to anticipate challenges along an established road of creating a culture of innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Once the leadership team does the hard work of convincing an organization to look beyond its operational environment, the first question is often how far into the future the organization should forecast. Companies that enter the market early often build the wrong product for the wrong customer. Using minimum viable prototypes and constantly evolving products, designed with consumer input, can allow companies to enter markets in small ways and adapt products to scale when and how the consumer is ready for them (Crews [3]). However, many companies still use more traditional development process, clinging to a develop-and-launch-at-scale mentality, which is particularly dangerous when the company overestimates the market's growth in the near term. [Extracted from the article]

Overview: Machine learning applications in business that return forecasts or predictions of future market or consumer behavior must pay attention to nontechnical aspects of how those forecasts are created and used by leaders. Machine learning projects can generate better forecasts that have greater effect by embracing key methods developed through almost 50 years of corporate foresight practice to improve the adoption and use of forecasts in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there are many consequential moments in the young life of the American Republic, arguably the most defining moment occurred when George Washington refused to run for a third term and facilitated the peaceful transfer of power to John Adams. Manufacturing companies will need to launch business models that turn their products into experiences to participate in the consumer spending boom. Linking business decisions and investment to what happens after what comes next can ready companies for both future states, justifying early investment to not miss the boom by ensuring companies are prepared to thrive in the longer-term fundamentals of a new marketplace. [Extracted from the article]

A capability for foresight improves innovation. Foresight professionals spend more time capability building within innovation teams, and designing foresight projects, while devoting less time to doing foresight research in large, long-term studies. Foresight professionals are also spending more time on project team capacity-building, helping internal innovation teams learn to do more of the work themselves. [Extracted from the article]

The COVID-19 pandemic (also called the novel coronavirus pandemic) will offer invaluable lessons for the world to understand how wildcard events like this happen and is a good example of the benefits of foresight. At that time, I reassigned the novel coronavirus pandemic from a high uncertainty wildcard to a low uncertainty driving force. By February 5, 2020, just 10 days after my initial analysis, it was clear to me that a novel coronavirus pandemic would occur and that the impact to the global economy would be severe (Crews [2]). On February 28, 2020, 12 days before the WHO declared it a pandemic, I could categorically state COVID-19 would become a pandemic (Crews [3]). [Extracted from the article]

More companies are realizing they have a role to play in solving some of the most critical problems of our time. Corporate ESG Initiatives - The Challenge In the past, companies refrained from pursuing ESG initiatives due to the rules of incorporation, which typically state that 100 percent of profits must be returned to shareholders. Engaging in a foresight process with external stakeholders that creates hard visions and identifies leverage points to guide innovation can help business leaders identify ESG innovation opportunities that improve communities and may improve the bottom line. [Extracted from the article]

In 2004 I joined a company that derived most of its profit from services related to physical mail. In my role as a futurist, it was my job to alert company leadership to how the holistic business communications market would develop, and especially to ensure they were not surprised by threats. The nature of technology market development means that company leaders will have heard the hype and disregard the true long-term disruptive threats. [Extracted from the article]

Single Sources of Change Five years ago in "Welcome to the Long Term" (Crews [1]), I discussed how change happens in multiple sectors of society, and that it can be a mistake to focus only on one source of change - technology, for instance - when forecasting the future. Foresight came of age in the postmodern era where borders were fuzzy, formal rules were regarded with suspicion, and science itself was being questioned. Christian is the head of Wavepoint and a founding member and previous board member of the Association of Professional Futurists. [Extracted from the article]

The disruptive nature of the current pandemic is provoking people to look back at previous pandemics and other disasters to derive some structure to think about our very chaotic and uncertain near-term future. Like the 1918 flu pandemic, it is global in scale, but this pandemic has not taken place during a world war. The Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev charted 70-year waves of economic activity, and British-Venezuelan scholar Carlotta Perez has found patterns in technology adoption. [Extracted from the article]

Previous investigations of organizations adding breakthrough innovation capacity to already strong incremental innovation engines have shown that it can be a challenge to see past the time horizon for incremental innovation in order to set robust objectives for longer-range research teams. This article reports on a program that employed a customized process that incorporated several strategic foresight methods commonly used by futurists to influence the strategic research agenda at PepsiCo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the value of strategic forecasting in business innovation and covers the advantages of a Lean Startup methodology. He argues in favor of a business strategy based on starting, testing, and being prepared to pivot from plans rather than adhering to long-term plans.

The article discusses IRI2038, a project of the Industrial Research Institute (IRI) offering forecasting on research and development management. The use of implications wheels and expert panels to project future trends and information generated during the discovery initial research phase of the project is discussed, with forecasting on workforce augmentation used as an example of the process. It is noted that the development of implication wheels is an inexact process involving judgment. The wheels are examined as part of the extrapolation phase of IRI2038.