future mapping
the why and the how
future mapping
Naturally, these three ideas — uncertainty ability, the experimental organization, and strategy as creation — are just a sampling of the approaches we see emerging as complements to strategy in more stable markets. Uncertainty science doesn’t invalidate the prior strategic frameworks, but it does draw a boundary line, arguing that if you want to... See more
Nathan Furr • Strategy in an Age of Uncertainty
But it’s only when we sacrifice the certainty of answers, when we take our training wheels off, and when we dare to wander away from the street lamps that breakthroughs happen. If you stick to the familiar, you won’t find the unexpected. Those who get ahead in this century will dance with the great unknown and find danger, rather than comfort, in
... See moreOzan Varol • Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life
inside-out & outside-in thinking combined, alongside strong brand strategy, are how brands get to rich new spaces for breakthrough innovation.
Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes—you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable,
... See moreRebecca Solnit • Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
in the face of uncertainty and constraints, Challengers don’t shrink back. They drive progress for their brand and beyond, into the categories they shape. And to realise those ambitions, they believe that success is predicated on creating an internal culture of bravery, as much as it is manifesting that bravery externally.
eatbigfish. • The Cost of Mediocrity
If you can get everybody just to go, what if this assumption isn’t true? We need to imagine a different reality… If you can get just a proportion of people to do that...
even as the most popular doll in the world, Mattel looked to confront the way they’d always done things. “We attacked every aspect of the business, from product to communication to content to social mission,” McKnight explained. This helped them ask more upstream questions about their own incumbency – challenging themselves to think about what
... See moreeatbigfish. • The Cost of Mediocrity
But you can’t optimize systems in a context that’s changing, especially if it’s changing in unpredictable ways. Removing inefficiencies when circumstances are as anticipated means that there isn’t much slack in the system to respond when the unanticipated happens. Optimization is intrinsically brittle , because it’s about closely matching the
... See moreMandy Brown • Against Optimization
Path dependency is alive and well throughout businesses as mediocre, middle-of-the-road thinking doesn’t rock the boat, whether you are in product development or marketing. But, from what we see, this type of behaviour also doesn’t reap any great rewards. This is why Challenger brands question incumbency at every level of their organisation in
... See more