We are super excited to announce that former Disney strategist and professional Futurist Joana Lenkova from Futures Forward will be leading this masterclass for the first time in Bulgaria! It teaches you how to spot and prioritize trends and build business strategies today for a successful future tomorrow. The event is organized with the support of United Partners and EO SEE.
In this engaging, hands-on masterclass, people from different sectors will learn the basics of the Strategic Foresight methodology, used by companies like Shell, Disney and Rolls-Royce to plan their strategy for the future and continue to succeed. Be prepared to challenge your assumptions, expand your mindset and start shaping the future you want.
Join us on November 25th, 2019. Places are limited, book yours now https://bit.ly/31S1Zv7
Book by October 20th, 2019 with an early bird discount of 25%, using this link https://bit.ly/2LRxHTB
The future is something we need to proactively work towards so that we can stand a good chance to survive as a business. We have the power to change it, but we need to learn how.
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The average lifespan of a company today is 20 years. It used to be 60 in the late 1950s.
Why is that? You would probably say, “it’s because of technology” but I won’t be so quick to agree. It is not only technology that is changing and while digitally transforming our organization is essential, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will be equipped to face the challenges of the future.
It is true that technology speeds up the pace of change but the change is also happening across the social, environmental, economic and political scene and it is driven by shifts in human values across the world.
Our companies are organized in a way that incentivises short-term thinking and our planning is linear, based on the company performance of the past. This type of strategy might have worked in the 60s but we live in different times, where disruption often happens from outside the industry and extrapolating past data into the future is no longer enough to sustain your business.
To anticipate where disruption may come from we need to change the way we do strategy. We have to look outside our industry and further into the future. We need to imagine it and map it, so we can better spot the possibilities and threats it may bring. In our strategies we should allow for different scenarios, different plausible futures, based on assumptions of where the colliding trends of today may take us in the future. We then need to look at our strategies and actions today and adjust them to make sure they would be robust and successful in these future scenarios.
We, as humans, don’t like change. In fact, we hate it. The unknown is a very uncomfortable place, so instead, we choose to stick to what we know, even though what we know and what works today, may be the very thing that kills our business tomorrow.
The truth is, we are simply not taught the skills and mindset to prepare for the future when the environment is so volatile and uncertain. Strategic foresight provides us with these skills and frameworks and the futures thinking mindset is what can help us navigate successfully through the unknown.
Strategic Foresight is a discipline that has been used in some companies since the 60s. One of the most famous examples is of Royal Dutch Shell and how they avoided the oil crisis of the 70s and 80s because of their scenario planning efforts.
To think like a futurist, you need to be ready to embrace change, because change is inevitable. You have to challenge your own biases and be very curious about the world around. It is a shift in mindset but the more and wider you scan the environment, the better you will be in spotting the trends that will shape the future, and therefore provide opportunities to your business.
Earlier this summer we held a workshop on Futures thinking in Bulgaria in partnership with United Partners – a leading SEE independent integrated marketing and corporate communications consulting agency. It was a huge success, so we have now created a masterclass open to the wider audience and are looking forward to having you in the room with us.
If you are interested to find out more about Futures training, including corporate or individual Strategic Foresight workshops, masterclasses and The Futures School certification program, get in touch here:
Stay up to date with all things Futures Thinking and Strategy by signing up to our Newsletter and Reading our Blog on www.futures-forward.com
Bio:
Joana has 15 years of international experience in the field of Marketing, Innovation and Business Strategy, and Strategic Foresight, across blue-chips (AB InBev, Societe Generale), and start-ups. Most recently, she held a Consumer Strategy role at The Walt Disney Company. In April 2019 she founded Futures Forward – a Strategy and Futures consultancy.
Graduate of Saïd Business School, University of Oxford in Strategy and Innovation and being passionate about building future-proof business strategies, Joana focused her research on how Strategic Foresight helps organizations innovate.
She is a founding member of the Global Foresight Advisory Council of The Futures School, and a member of the Association of Professional Futurists and the Oxford Union.