Foresight/Prospective

Futures Literacy

According to the UNESCO (adapted) :

Futures Literacy is the skill that enables people to better understand the role of the future in what they see and do. In our complex world, the global challenges we face require more inclusive and agile approaches to policy design and decision-making. Rooted in the discipline of anticipation, Futures Literacy can enhance our ability to shape policies and systems that withstand shocks and create long-term resilience. Futures Literacy helps people understand why and how we use the future to prepare, plan, and interact with the complexity and novelty of our societies.

Futures literacy enables individuals, government, for-profit, and non-profit organizations, and communities to better understand the role of the future in order to better anticipate it, adapt to change, and ultimately create a preferred future. It fosters resilience, innovation, and equity in an uncertain world. It helps businesses innovate, governments develop adaptive if not forward-thinking policies, educators prepare students for unfamiliar careers, and individuals develop the capacity to envision alternative futures. For regions and localities, it enables tailored responses to urgent challenges, sustainable development, and community co-creation. Combined with the mindset of antifragility, futures literacy transforms uncertainty into opportunity, ensuring that systems adapt, change, and thrive under pressure while building a better future

Why ?

Foresight is that continuous activity that allows organizations to explore possibilities, options, or alternative futures, articulate scenarios, study their impacts, and select the best or preferred future. It helps develop a “future” attitude.

Objectives
The practice of foresight has two broad specific objectives: (1) the anticipation of alternative futures and scenarios (2) the creation of a preferred future.

Future-readiness

In a world marked by complexity, instability, and accelerating change, being “future-ready” isn’t a slogan—it’s a strategic necessity. But what does this expression really mean?

We believe that future readiness has two complementary dimensions.

The first dimension is the conceived future—the one we actively shape. This is the domain of foresight. It involves imagining desirable futures and guiding today’s decisions to achieve them. This approach is proactive, creative, and relies on openness to the external environment. This is what Daniel Kahneman would describe as stepping outside our mental frameworks to consider alternatives, sometimes radically better ones. This is how organizations ensure their long-term continuity.

The second dimension is the received future—the one we anticipate without being able to control. This is the domain of risks, resilience, and adaptation. Here, preparation involves equipping the organization to react with agility in the face of uncertainty.

Being ready for the future therefore means both anticipating what’s coming and resisting what’s happening. The best-prepared organizations know how to do both.

Prospective is participative

Foresight provides an essential element in building a comprehensive strategy, namely that it relates to managing the uncertainty of the unknown future and the growing dynamics of rapid, discontinuous and interconnected changes.

Part of foresight or the foreseeing of futures is done through the research of external events but also and above all by probing the future of a larger number of people which allows to discover unknown and surprising futures.

Prospective or foresight could be said to be a crowdsourcing affair, the more people, the more futures, the better!

Who is foresight for ?

Foresight affects and interests all types of organizations, large, medium, or small, private or public, and includes national, provincial, or regional governments.

Foresight involves the participation of multiple teams and individuals within an organization:

Senior management and directors (board of directors);
Middle management and those responsible for innovation, strategy, and risk management.

These are the teams and individuals necessary for effective participatory foresight (participatory in discovering where and in whom the future we need is hidden, and who knows it without our knowledge).

Future included

Beyond the traditional continuity model

The traditional business continuity plan (BCP) model aims to help organizations survive short-term disruptions—whether natural disasters, cyberattacks, or supply chain disruptions—by ensuring the rapid resumption of critical operations. This is essential, but it is no longer sufficient.
In a rapidly changing world, continuity is not just about recovery; it’s about relevance. Markets evolve, technologies advance, and customer expectations change. A company that survives a crisis but fails to adapt risks becoming obsolete.
That’s why the definition of continuity needs to be broadened. In addition to crisis management, organizations need strategic continuity: the ability to remain relevant and competitive in the future.
This involves integrating foresight into decision-making, monitoring early warning signs, exploring alternative futures, and renewing business models before they become obsolete. It’s about preparing for transitions, not just disruptions. In other words: resilience allows you to bounce back; strategic continuity allows you to move forward. It’s not just about risk management, it’s about managing relevance.
By combining forward thinking with traditional planning, organizations are shifting from mere survival to leadership. In a context of constant disruption, adaptability becomes the best form of continuity.

Future is proprietary

The future, your future is yours and yours only. It can be inspired by other poeple and the market, weak signals of what may come but it is something that is chosen, not imposed and not copied and pasted.

The involvement of third parties to properly analyze and discern the determinants, trends, and external signals, something we call DONE FOR YOU PROSPECTIVE (DFYP) is a step that shortens your access to this type of information.

That said, the future of an organization must be articulated by it and it alone, it is an act of creativity, independence, agency and determination.

Impacts on performance

Profitability and Growth

A study by Rohrbeck & Kum on the impact of foresight on organizational performance concludes that: “So-called ‘future-ready’ companies, defined as those with a foresight practice, posted 33% higher profitability than the average company and 200% higher growth.”

Disappearances |

Due to a lack of anticipation and preparation, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, no fewer than 50 billion-dollar companies disappeared in the United States alone (McKinsey).

Kodak, Blackberry Motion, Motorola, Nokia, and Palm are well-known examples of the failure to innovate and adapt to the future, and of a delayed response.

Bankruptcies |

CB Insights reports that since 2015, 154 of the largest US retailers have filed for bankruptcy and asserts that Amazon isn’t the only reason brick-and-mortar retail is struggling: rising debt, retailer missteps, and a lack of adaptability are also to blame, among other factors.

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