Using Foresight—Not Prediction—to Guide Strategy with Amy Webb

“Whenever there has been a global catastrophe or new technology that is crossing over into mainstream vernacular, or if there's an undercurrent of societal anxiety, you start to see the term 'futurist' or’ futurology' popping up again.”

Amy Webb?is a quantitative futurist and a bestselling, award-winning author. She is a professor of strategic foresight at the NYU Stern School of Business and the Founder of the Future Today Institute, a leading foresight and strategy firm that helps leaders and their organizations prepare for complex futures.

Amy has advised CEOs and heads of strategy of some of the world’s largest companies, three-star generals and admirals and executive government leadership on strategy and technology. She is the author of several popular books, including?The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity, which was long-listed for the Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year award, shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Digital Thinking Award, and won the 2020 Gold Axiom Medal for the best book about business and technology. She also wrote?The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream, which won the Thinkers50 Radar Award, was selected as one of Fast Company’s Best Books of 2016, Amazon’s best books 2016, and was the recipient of the 2017 Gold Axiom Medal for the best book about business and technology.

Amy was named by?Forbes?as one of the five women changing the world, listed as the BBC’s 100 Women of 2020, and the Thinkers50 Radar list of the 30 management thinkers most likely to shape the future of how organizations are managed and led.

Listen to Amy's interview now.

How to Think and Work beyond Predictability to Conquer the Market

1. Quantify:?Amy believes in reversing standard perspectives. Tracking the trajectory of a timeline is useful, but time isn’t linear. Uncertainties must be embraced. Instead of using a line, she portrays the future as the wider end of a cone – full of possibilities and anticipations. As the cone expands, the inside angle of the cone indicates the uncertainty over time. Preparing yourself for a diverse future can mitigate potential risks. Your plan B could be someone else's plan D or E.
2. Accept Uncertainty: Businesses are volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Uncertainty is multidimensional, and long-term prospects are yet to be understood. Organizations often get caught up in near-term analysis without considering vision and transformation. As you address current problems, analyze their short- and long-term implications simultaneously. Instead of relying on predictions, it is more important to reorient your strategy around possible disruption. You may think of it as rehearsing for the future. Milestones and KPIs are just models, but preparing for flexibility and variability can keep you on top of your game.
3. Commit to urgency: Amy explains a strange paradox that exists in many organizations – there is a sense of urgency to innovate and find new white spaces, yet there is little motivation to make substantive changes that may impact immediate P&L. In order to create space to focus on future impact and transformation, resist typing all KPIs and compensation to quarterly P&L.
4. Research to maintain relevance: Those who practice strategic foresight get their insights from the edges. Rather than making predictions, futurism is about researching, mapping, and modeling to develop an array of possible futures. Look for signals outside of your industry. Track long-term trends and map out plausible scenarios. Ask questions until you come up with your preferred image of the future. Then, work backward and plot what you will need to do to get there.

Listen to the full interview.

More Resources:

1. Learn more about the Future Today Institute's 2022 tech trends report.
2. Follow Amy on Twitter.
3. Connect with Amy on LinkedIn.