Design foresight - strategic innovation decision-making

Abstract

Formulating the beginnings of new and varying approaches that are dealing with uncertainty in strategic business and design innovation decision-making, this longitudinal research (body of work) is spanning the Foresight, Strategic Innovation and Design Management disciplines. The objective of this on-going research is to make the case that decision makers need to rely on new approaches to the future in the increasing turbulent environments they face today. The emphasis in this body of work, in the main, is on how innovation stakeholders might engage with the future in order to overcome the challenges in strategic innovation decision-making. Derived from design futures thinking field research conducted over a four-year period, critical perspectives were generated that illustrate how systematic futures thinking can inform decision-makers concerning the innovation challenges and opportunities emerging over medium and longer-term (5-15 years) time horizons. Combining foresight and design in an approach herein referred to as “Design with Foresight”, the emergence of new and more creative possibilities were envisaged that offer inclusion and common goal alignment between diverse stakeholder groups within traditional sectors of industry (e.g. Financial Services). Consequently, the “design with foresight” hypothesis resulted in ongoing learning through in specifying a portfolio of desirable futures, and to engage ecosystem partners in conceptualizing, prototyping, experimentation, and demonstration, using design and foresight tools and approaches to achieve deeper insights and alignment around current reality. By using common language in the form of ‘scenarios’, processes applied to the development of alternative futures become inherently heterogeneous, increasing the transparency among stakeholders of social groups and perspectives in the decision-making process. Hence, the aims were to facilitate a more productive conversation across interdisciplinary participants, to aid n active experimentation that generates new knowledge and sustainable value for economic and societal gain. To this end, each research project (BoW) produced critical insights into the strategic value of ‘design with foresight’ as an organizational learning capability and futures literacy competence.