It’s not about predicting the future, but to make it possible to imagine multiple futures in creative ways that heighten our ability to sense, to shape and to adapt to what happens in the years ahead of us. Farsightedness or Strategic Foresight is not what to think about the future, however, to figure out how to think about it.
Since 1976 the painting of the Dodo is hanging in the office of the Head of Shell’s Global Business Environment, currently led by Jeremy Bentham. After the Scenario Plans ‘Oceans’ and ‘Mountains’, in Spring 2018 the latest scenario plan ‘Sky’ was launched. ‘Sky’ assumes that the world in 2070 still needs 50-60 million oil barrels/day and describes what must be done to meet the objectives of the Paris Climate Agreement. Everybody who makes analyses knows that we have to re-organize the complete world economy within the next 50 years. Jeremy Bentham: “It’s my accountability that Shell doesn’t become a Dodo”.
An important issue in HBR in March/April 2017, dealt with information that challenges your assumptions and allows you to perceive a looming threat or opportunity. When a dramatic shift is on the horizon, the first indications may usually appear in ambiguous events on the fringes of the market. A key problem is getting information that senior management have not demanded because they do not know how to ask for it. Often, this may be a development brewing that may ultimately redraw the lines of competition for the future. One way to describe the unanticipated risks became famous in 2002 as ‘unknown unknowns’, thanks to Donald Rumsfeld, the former US Secretary of Defense.