1. BRIEFINGS & SEMINARS

On-day point-of-decision briefings
In-company round-tables and business breakfasts
 

In these short sessions, industry foresight perspectives are brought to in-company leadership discussions, and applied to a client's specific decision making process, allowing external perspectives to mesh with in-company and industry wisdom as key decisions are being made.

2. FACILITATED WORKSHOPS
"Deep Dives", Idea Factories, and Scenario Building
These are longer-term engagements where managers surface and critically explore their perspectives on future market, industry, technology, and regulatory conditions. While bringing cross-industry future perspectives, the facilitator is also a group catalyst  – helping a group unlock its own knowledge, providing high-energy, interactive, creative techniques to stimulate fresh thinking (and hard-boiled rationalism to rein in future fantasy) and then extracting and clarify key learning.

Each workshop is different, but a typical workshop may go through the following phases:

Horizon Scanning: identifying and considering external forces, and how they are influencing a particular industry, sector or decision situation. The Future Studio's ongoing horizon scanning process created in alliances with other providers - is put at your disposal.

Scenario Building: Proving structures whereby decision-makers mentally prepare for changing conditions. Rather than predict the future, we challenge the assumptions that underpin our "official view," and open up the cone of plausible uncertainty which institutions should plan for.
Determining Future Course: Here we narrow down, make choices, and turn future concepts and insights into tactical plans and action steps.  This is achieved, in part, through a powerful set of tools for finding innovative products and services (or policy changes) and integrating them into existing offerings. Together, we link what’s effective today with what’s achievable tomorrow, and create a path between the two. This may typically involve, new product & service development; R&D planning and funding; human resources development; M&A or other resources acquisition; or financial restructuring.
 

3. EXECUTIVE EDUCATION
In-company training and short courses
Successful institutions build internal capacity to integrate foresight leadership and innovation into the firm's knowledge base and culture. We provide leadership training in industry foresight and applied innovation, going beyond the classroom, to include on-the-job training and executive coaching. The following are sample seminars:

• Critically Evaluating Forecasts
  Highlights pitfalls and best practices in forecasting. Attendees learn how to filter and critically assess the forecasts they are exposed to in the media, analyst reports, etc., and extract the value they need.

• Industry Foresight Toolbox
  Provides a rigorous introduction to the toolbox of methods for industry foresight, and how and when to use each method. The focus is on tools that allow managers to anticipate events, and feed this knowledge into daily leadership decision-making.

• Planning Models and Methods
  Provides an critical overview of strategic planning practice, exposing problems and lessons learned, and adding new principles from industry foresight and innovation management to develop future focused managers and build savvy company planning initiatives.

• Scenario Building & Scenario-based Strategy
  Provides a thorough introduction to scenario-building methodology - why and how to do it, and how to use the results to test plans and develop robust forward strategy.

• Applied Innovation
  Introduces various methods of industry and value innovation — by which industry foresight is applied to a company's current product set and business model, in order to uncover and evaluate new opportunities or open new industry space, and turn foresight into action.

These in-company education solutions are based on MBA and EMBA courses taught by Adam Gordon, but are tailored to suit client needs, and can be integrated with existing management development and training processes, or with participation in corporate universities. Similar courses material has been developed for public policy and government institutions.

4. RESEARCH & LEARNING JOURNEYS
These are independently researched studies of industries or topic areas. They incorporate a broad synthesis of current-future literature, and feature forecast filtering techniques as outlines in the book "Future Savvy." They also go into the real world observe and evaluate cross-industry future-oriented user preferences and practices.