The one line answer is 'by interpreting from the future back to today'.
In short, mixing business with Foresight is not easy!1 Most businesses find the theory
and practice of Foresight/Futures Studies completely outside their boundaries. What is more, they, quite rightly, do not want to have to encompass it.
2 Most Foresight/Futures Studies are done (again rightly) from an
academic, technical, or sociological perspective, none of which is easily directly linked with most business interests.
3 Foresight/Futures, of necessity, tends to be woolly with fuzzy edges; businesses tend not to
be. Most businesses want a simple, direct, view of the future, on which to base their thinking and actions. In other words they want absolutes not uncertainties.
4 Uncertainties and business do not go well together,
and the older the business the less well they go. So a new start-up deals well with uncertainties, as when it starts that is all there is. As time goes on these are minimised, thus making a much more comfortable
existence for everyone. Trying to add uncertainty back is an uphill, if not vertical, task.
5 Businesses function today, Foresight/Futures Studies function in the future. There needs to be a way to connect the two
that is meaningful for business people.
6 Foresight/Futures practitioners often make the common mistake of assuming that their life's work must be important to a business. They forget that it is only one of many, many
sources of information with which a business deals. The skill in business is to know what priority/value to assign to what (often conflicting) set of information.
7 Businesses need two things doing between the
'academic/management consultancy' element of Foresight/Futures and the needs of a business. These are firstly translation and secondly interpretation. Translation means putting things together, and using language that
is relevant and pertinent to that business. Interpretation means working out what to do differently today as a result of the new understanding gained. In my experience everyone, including business schools, think that
managers can somehow automatically get from an understanding of the outside world (futures or otherwise) to knowing what they should do in the business to deal with it (positively or negatively). In my experience they
can not do this. I believe that there is a methodology gap, perhaps a skills gap, in the skill of interpretation. I think I tend do it intuitively, and would love to know how I do it so that I can teach others.
8 A
few other points. Those people who 'do' foresight best, and derive real value from it (i.e. in business terms ££££), seem to do so intuitively and without realising it. They just do it. If they were exposed to
Foresight/Futures they would probably make little of it. I have a very worrying hunch that this will always be the case, and that for most businesses, Foresight and business will never mix (at least not in a way that
produces value). Ted Fuller of DUBS works on the basis that Foresight is a business skill, i.e. a personal ability, and I am sure that is right. How to quantify, teach, and show its value is another question.
9 The
bottom line for business is £££. Unless Foresight/Futures can have an impact here, and not only have and impact, but be seen to have an impact, it will never serve business and will remain and academic skill and
enjoyable individual exercise.
10 So to summarise: businesses need to know what to do differently today from what they are doing now (as a result of Foresight/Futures understanding), and also need to be able to be
sure it is worth the (considerable time and £) cost.
I am still far from sure that for most companies, the cost/benefit calculation for engaging in Foresight will ever be in a business's favour. I worry that
natural and intuitive practitioners may be the best we will ever get!
Averil Horton
March 1999
