Category: Transform

Foresight Lessons from Disney’s Encanto Surely by now you’ve watched or at least heard of the new Disney animated film, “Encanto.” Having been quarantined over Christmas with my 14-year old, I had the pleasure of experiencing the tale of the Madrigals, an enchanted family from Colombia, more times than I care to admit. Due to my repeated viewings as I sheltered in-place on the precipice of COVID’s two-year anniversary, I couldn’t help but draw parallels between one of the movie’s…

What is futures thinking? Is it the same as Strategic Foresight? What makes someone a futurist? Futures thinking is a mindset that is most commonly associated with creative problem-solving and bold, provoking innovations. Strategic Foresight is a decades-old discipline that allows us to create functional views of alternative futures and possibilities. Through this process,  organizations are better prepared for potential threats and are able to capitalize on hidden opportunities. You can think of Strategic Foresight as a sport, a futurist…

The conditions are right for us to find solutions to our long-standing problems if we have the courage to be adaptive, resilient and transformative (ART).

We will never be successful in navigating our way through uncertainty by only extrapolating historical data or exploring the possibilities that exist within our dominant narratives — our world is much too complex for such simple ways of thinking; we must move beyond adaptation or resilience as our response to the future, and begin cultivating a mindset of transformational change.

Early in the 20th century, Austrian-born economist Joseph Schumpeter coined the phrase ‘creative destruction’ to describe the disruptive process of ongoing technological and economic innovation within capitalism.

We love it when a story or movie has a resolution, or when the conflicts we face can be overcome with a straightforward answer. More specifically, we love it when all of our problems and solutions fit neatly into the confines of our prevailing mental models. We get exasperated and become belligerent when our stories don’t go according to a fixed script, or when our heroes don’t always wear masks and capes when defeating the villain.

Old systems that were built on mindsets of linear thinking, simplistic viewpoints and predictable models act as traps that keep us from evolving past short-term strategies, fear-based governance and “fight and flight” reactions.

Many are wondering what is in store for humanity after The Great Pause. Beyond asking “When?” Or “How?”, a better question may be, “Where will our futures take place?”

Right now, the world feels like it has shifted a bit on its axis. It is as if someone flicked the globe with their fingers bouncing us back and forth. Soon the world will settle on a new axis point. As a result, our new normal will emerge and everything we know to be true today is open to a new interpretation.

A short primer from Kedge Founder Frank Spencer on the concept and application of Holoptic Foresight Dynamics™(HFD).