Flash Foresight
- 1. Start with Certainty
Make a list of hard & soft trends. “What can I be certain about? What do I know will happen in the next few weeks, months, and years? And how can I innovate to take advantage of what I now know for certain about the future?”
- 2. Anticipate
Make the decision anticipatory, allowing us to change inside out instead of being forced to change. “What are the problems I am about to have?” Look for creatives ways to solve the problems before they happen. “What are some of the steps I could take to shape my future now?”
– 3 digital accelerators: multiplying increase in processing power, storage and bandwidth
– 8 pathways of technology transformation: dematerilization, virtualization, mobility, product intelligence, networking, interactivity, globalization, and convergence
- 3. Transform
Transformation means doing something completely different. “How can I give my current and future customers the ability to do what they can’t do but would want to do – if they knew it was possible?” Start crafting strategies to transform how you sell, market, communicate, collaborate and innovate.
- 4. Take your Biggest Problem – and Skip it
The key to unraveling our biggest problems is to recognize that they are typically not our real problem. Skipping our biggest problem, instead of trying to solve it, sets our minds free to discover and engage with the real problem.
– Don’t get stuck, move forward: Forget what you think the problem is. Often the real problem (and its solutions) will surface once you eliminate the perceived problem
– Peel the Onion: Peel the problem by listing the components of the problem. “Why is that a problem?”
– Focus on one issue at a time
– Suspend judgment
- 5. Go Opposite
Take note of where everyone else is looking, and then look in the opposite direction. How can I gain an advantage by doing the opposite? Think of the opposite to see new opportunities.
- 6. Redefine and Reinvent
Reinvention is not the same as adding a twist or a new feature; once something is reinvented, it never goes back to being the way it was before. Shift from economy of scarcity to economy of abundance
– Forget competing; instead leapfrog the competition by redefining anything and everything
– Decommoditize continuously: look for creative ways to make the mundane exceptional and transform the normal into the extraordinary
– Reinvent the old by using it in new ways
– Find your core
– Be extraordinary: look at what the competition is doing, and do something else
- 7. Direct your future
Manage future and add value. Data –> Info –> Knowledge –> Wisdom