Practical Foresight

This book solves a mystery: if corporations have more data than ever before, why do they continually fail to respond to every new crisis? In this book, Dr. Sam Ladner describes the social reality of practicing foresight, how it complicates everyday foresight work, and where this reality can be bent. Dr. Ladner first traces the major reasons why corporations fail to respond to changes that are both plain and obvious. She then offers practical steps on how to do foresight, given this social reality of today’s corporation. This book guides practitioners toward effective foresight work through practical, applicable practice.Dr. Ladner describes the social reality of practicing foresight, how it complicates everyday foresight work, and where this reality can be bent. She reveals The Twin Challenges – temporal and epistemological – and how they create both time poverty and wilful ignorance. She provides extensive examples from the business world of how these Twin Challenges play out so that readers can understand why an objectively good foresight practice can in practice become practically useless.Written for strategists, researchers, designers, and futurists, Practical Foresight: Practicing Strategic Foresight in Today's Corporation will help anyone who has found their organization continually trying and failing to plan for the future.