Thought Piece

Futures tools and techniques: Futures analysis can’t tell us what the future will bring but there are clues as to what may await us.  These can be explored systematically through futures tools and techniques that aim to help us think more sensitively about the future and how we might prepare for it.   For example they can help us identify drivers of change, trends, new developments, scenarios, key uncertainties, weak signals, discontinuities, counter-intuitives and wildcards, and then consider how to take awareness of these into planning and product design. Read full editorial written by Susan Clayton. If  you would like to publish a piece of interest to our members here please contact Mike Jackson.

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Latest Additions

Every week, we are adding new content to Shaping Tomorrow. During the past week, we have added the following links:

18 organization
13 industries
9 technology
8 economics
5 healthcare
4 society
3 environment
2 politics

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to our extensive database covering many of the 1,500+ global trends and forces for change that are constantly acting on society.

By viewing the new material and the other links in our database you can anticipate how the future will be different for you and your organisation. Doing this regularly will assist you to see patterns emerging, help you to innovate faster and mitigate likely upcoming risk earlier.

Only Shaping Tomorrow members can access the database.  Membership costs 25 British Pounds (+17.5% tax for those based in the European Union), or $49 in the United States. You can pay using one of many credit cards.

Why put yourself at a disadvantage to our members. Click here to join, today.

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Coping with change

We have added another 150 blindspots this week to 'My Shaping Tomorrow'.  If you are a Shaping Tomorrow Professional Member (to become one see below) you can use this organised  and searchable listing of over 800 global trends, forces for change and wildcards to plan for tomorrow. 

The arrival of the knowledge economy has made decision-making by organisations increasingly complex. Simultaneously, the competitive environment in most industries has become highly dynamic. And, there is now increasing awareness that innovation and risk management are two key weapons in the search for future survival and success.

In response, organisations are learning to adopt more future intelligence activities into their planning systems hence generating better pictures of possible longer term opportunities and issues.

As senior businessmen, not futurists, we appreciate just how hard it is for organisations to conduct environmental scans and spend sufficient time considering the future. Not just the finding and interpretation of the complex information you need but having the methods to manipulate and interpret your findings into a highly usable, fast and robust decision making system. At Shaping Tomorrow we have built such a business-orientated environmental scanning system. We place a very high emphasis on solid qualitative and quantitative analysis and are positioned to help you better deliver and disseminate your outputs to stakeholders.

You will need to become a Professional Member to gain access to our environmental planning system. Being a Professional Member gives you immediate access to our ‘blindspots’ analysis, ‘100 trends analyses’, ‘expert views’, ‘2005 predictions’ and ‘top pops’. We can provide you with a no obligation quote for customising our environmental scanning system to your requirements and helping you use ‘wisdom of crowds, ‘our network’ and additional ‘search techniques’ to maximum advantage.

If you are interested in exploring the details of our environmental scan let us know you want to upgrade to Professional Membership. Just contact Mike Jackson.