I have been thinking lately more about how Foresight and Design can work together.

This is one way.

But how does Foresight now fit into the innovation spectrum? In short: Foresight focusses on opportunity detection instead of problem-solution-market fit - i.e. Foresight addresses the (fuzzy) front end of innovation. It aims at identifying a time or a set of circumstances that might enable future product or service opportunities, in Design Thinking terms a challenge that needs to be translated into more concrete solutions. Thus, Foresight can set the stage for other practices such as Design Thinking, but basically: it complements and doesn’t compete.

Most methods from the innovation spectrum range from exploring a problem space, to finding possible solutions for the problem(s), before iterating the best solution to fit the market, finding the best business model, and preparing to scale. But what if you’re looking for a new field to explore, or a field of the future? More and more Innovation Managers tell me something like this:

“We have done plenty of sprints over the course of the last few years. I feel that we have solution concepts for most current and foreseeable problems that are relevant for us. For these, it’s a matter of execution now which is out of our hands. My key question has become: what are the opportunities of the future?“

Foresight will not give you the opportunity of the future. Rather, it let’s you open up an Opportunity Space, a field that is not as broad as for example the future of learning but also not quite a specific problem, pain, or gain that can directly be addressed with a solution. Foresight’s methods and tools such as Horizon Scanning, Drivers of Change, Impact-Uncertainty and Cross-Impact Analyses, Opportunity Radars, Finding the Future Me, Scenario-based Innovation and/or Business Modelling, the Future’s Wheel, Future Experience Groups and Future Fitness Tests can extend the common innovation toolkit at the front end.