How futurism offers the antidote to chaos

By Sospeter Opondo

Kenya: Futurism is the process of discovering what will change our world, analysing its potential impact on specific activities, and then communicating to stakeholders or colleagues what lies ahead.

As part of strategic planning or regular collection of business intelligence, it has had a long history of success.

Yes, the world is changing quickly. With its promise of chaos and opportunity, it may seem overwhelming. But the good news is that understanding the future as it affects your decisions can become an everyday part of the way you think.

Exploring the future is about finding a few trends that could change the world and keeping an eye on them on a regular basis. It is about paying attention to both society and technology and asking yourself: “What will this mean in five years? What about in 10 years?”

These simple acts change the way we think about the future, such as whether to sell a small business and retire in a decade, or build three new factories in different counties that could take six years to become profitable.

To start with, discover and get the tools that will help you take the information you have available and turn it into a cogent view of the future.

Once you have that vision, you can use it to enhance every decision you make. That way, you won’t be making plans believing film is the future of cinema. You will not miss changes like the MP3 and end up lamenting decisions. You will see new opportunities before your competitors, just like Samsung did. You will understand your role in a bigger world.

In 1999, consumer goods companies wanted to know how the future would change packaging. They wanted to know about the soup can and the shampoo bottle of the future.

Packaging engineers live for cardboard boxes, extruded plastic bottles and aluminium cans. With the help of professional futurists, they tore apart the trends in society and technology.

They learned that future packaging designs would really mean something to the developing world and people would want to reuse bags, boxes and cans.

Because of this study, consumer goods companies realised packaging would need to become part of the digital economy — cans, bottles and plastic bags would need to be smart.

Governments use this kind of thinking in a variety of ways. For instance, terrorism is a scary but potential scenario. National governments could use futuring to predict the capabilities of the terrorists of tomorrow. They’d do this by monitoring developments in both society and technology to figure out where terrorists could gain the edge.

Hundreds of organisations use future studies to make sure their strategic plans are on target and to help them design products and services that will remain relevant.

Smaller companies can keep abreast of the future to anticipate the needs of the larger companies that make up their customer base.

Studies of the future allow individuals who run organisations to recognise the kind of world they are creating for their children and be aware of the massive power they have to alter history. They can change the lives of generations of people. Once you understand how to see what is coming next, it will change how you see the world and where it is heading. Onward, then, to the future!

The writer is a business development consultant.

bizbeat@standardmedia.co.ke