Strategic foresight uses existing science and engineering to project the future trajectory of technologies. To achieve this effectively requires the development of mathematical algorithms to enable the trajectories to be modelled.
This is where CyberThinc consultancy can provide a real strategic business advantage. Our strategic foresight analysis can advise you what technologies to plan for, how likely they are to happen, how they will impact you, what will happen, and when it is likely to happen, with confidence levels provided for the projections.
The initial strategic foresight work undertaken by CyberThinc looked at technology trend analysis in the IT sector and medical sector, however, as we undertook technology trend analysis work starting in 1998, we realised that analysing the IT sector in isolation did not always give accurate results – as was evidenced by the forecasts of some of the consultancy and research companies and futurologists we looked at. To be fair, with any analysis of this sort that is not evaluating multiple disciplines and how they affect each other, it is hard to provide more than a general overview – this is why we felt the need to cover many disciplines in our analysis.
Strategic Foresight – CyberThinc Technology Forecast Presentation
The development of Strategic Foresight consultancy at CyberThinc.
Given our wide breadth of knowledge of technology as a whole, practical experience of technologies such as embedded systems, sensor systems and our work in a variety of industry sectors, we expanded the technology trend analysis to encompass a wide range of industry sectors, to evaluate their interdependencies, and thus improve the modelling accuracy, this in turn enabled the strategic foresight modelling to be used for strategy planning and analysis methods such as scenario planning
We have also evaluated and incorporated such concepts as Kondratiev wave theory, game theory, aswell as concepts from reliability modelling and risk analysis such as Weibull distributions and perturbation analysis which we had used for client assignments. The combination of these factors has proved rather successful, and led to CyberThinc being able to expand beyond technology trend analysis to offer more comprehensive strategic foresight consultancy.
Various potential scenarios, events, business risks and development timelines can be modelled mathematically, with weightings, perturbations and realistic error margins applied, as well as the effects of applying mathematical game theory where appropriate. The result of this is that we can then assign probabilities of events or technologies developing at certain times.
We take a mathematical approach because many providers of strategic foresight or futurology approach the discipline non scientifically, and without a formal scientific or engineering background, we think it is hard to understand, much less analyse the development of technology – if one doesn’t understand technology, it will always remain an enigmatic black box, and without an understanding of what is inside the black box, it is impossible to accurately analyse the interdependencies of the various components, and their own technology development timelines. Consequently, we are keen to bring some scientific rigour to the strategic foresight / futurology area.
Sectors covered for Strategic Foresight consultancy at CyberThinc.
A CyberThinc Strategic Foresight Capability Infographic
Having initially analysed the IT sector and medical sector, over time, the strategic foresight analysis CyberThinc has undertaken has grown to evaluate sectors ranging from consumer electronics, industrial systems, transportation, renewable, fossil fuel and nuclear energy, health and wellness, biology and manned and unmanned space research, providing a wealth of critically important information for scenario planning and other strategic planning methods.
There is overlap with many of these sectors, and analysing how that overlap will influence various sectors is a specialty of the strategic foresight consultancy that you could benefit from.