A futures consultancy for the decisions you are making now.
Strategic foresight, scenario planning and trend research for organisations that need a credible view of the next three to seven years — and a decision at the end of it. We have built futures programmes, playbooks and keynotes for Oracle NetSuite, Henley Business School, Capita, Marshalls and Howdens.
Foresight programmes
A structured view of the forces reshaping your sector over a three-to-seven-year horizon, built from evidence rather than opinion and organised into a few pillars a leadership team can actually act on.
Scenario planning
Three or four rigorously built futures, tested against your strategy. Not predictions — a way to find which decisions hold up whichever way the next few years actually go.
Trend and signal analysis
Scanning across technology, regulation, culture and behaviour, filtered down to the handful of signals that genuinely move your category — and what each one means for you.
Futures playbooks and reports
Research written and designed as something people read and use. It is the format behind the Retail, Hospitality and Energy Futures Playbooks we made with Oracle NetSuite.
Keynotes and futures briefings
Sixty minutes that gives a leadership team, a conference audience or a partner’s customers a shared picture of what is coming, and a clear argument about what to do about it.
Futures workshops
Sessions that move a team from reading about the future to prototyping it — what we call foreshape: finding out how people respond instead of predicting how they might.
Frame the decision
We start from the decision you are actually trying to make — an investment, a category move, a five-year plan. That sets the horizon, the scope and how much primary research is worth doing.
Gather the evidence
Desk research, data, expert interviews and signal scanning across the forces that touch your sector. We show our sources, so the conclusions can be argued with rather than taken on trust.
Build the futures
Scenarios, trends or a playbook, depending on what the decision needs. Structured into a few pillars rather than a long list, so it stays usable under pressure.
Make it land
A report, a film, a workshop or a keynote, designed so the thinking survives contact with the rest of the organisation instead of sitting in a folder.
What does a futures consultancy actually do?
We research how a market is likely to change over a defined horizon and turn that into something a leadership team can decide with: scenarios, a playbook, a strategy or a briefing. The output is a decision, not a forecast.
How is foresight different from market research?
Market research describes the present with confidence. Foresight describes a range of plausible futures with honesty about the uncertainty, then helps you pick a strategy that holds up in more than one of them.
How long does a programme take?
A keynote or briefing takes a few weeks. A full foresight programme or futures playbook typically runs eight to sixteen weeks, depending on sector breadth and how much primary research is involved.
Who do you usually work with?
Leadership teams, strategy and innovation functions, and organisations publishing futures research with a partner. Recent work spans retail, hospitality, energy, leadership, housebuilding, foodservice and nuclear.
“Design at its very best is a powerful alchemy of insight and intuition, forethought and foresight.”