Design-inspired foresight : strategic foresight techniques for preferable futures

Abstract

The external environment in business is becoming increasingly a major source of uncertainty, especially for decision-makers in charge of sustaining the advantage of the organization over time. While tools and practices have been developed to envisage likely evolutions of trends, this paper is motivated by our limited understanding of how designers and inter-disciplinary innovation teams consider desirable futures, especially, when the planning horizon is 5, 10, or even 15 years. Accordingly, this paper engages with the literature to present different perspectives between strategic planning in business, and foresight as emerging activities in strategic design. A design-inspired foresight approach is presented through applied research, where the author employed qualitative data collection and analysis techniques (Delphi, Three Horizons scanning, and futures scenarios building techniques) in a Financial Services industry study to the year 2030. By engaging decision-makers in futures thinking, the value of foresight in business and design as preferred-change provoking, is supported through lessons from this futures study as an emerging practice of foresight in design.