Innovation is all about the future and trying to find possible threats and opportunities which we can work with to shape today’s innovation strategy. 

 

So, if we want to explore in this direction it’s worth looking at some of the powerful tools available.  For example:

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• Scenarios – creating rich ‘science fiction’ stories about the future , narratives which we can climb inside to look for opportunities

• Delphi methods – using panels of experts to give their best predictions about the future and then integrating their insights into a shared picture

• Forecasting tools – techniques like trend extrapolation to look at how current trends may play out – for example in the power and performance of technologies or the size and distribution of markets

• Foresight  - approaches to bring key actors together to create shared pictures of the future and develop strategy and policy towards them

• Road-mapping – looking ahead to desirable futures and then ‘back-casting’, working out which steps would have to be taken in order to arrive at that point

• Rich pictures – using visual representations to capture scenarios in visual format