In a tech-driven world and business environment of accelerating change and increasing complexity, the ability to see and think like a futurist offers a growing strategic advantage. But “embracing the future” in business has too often meant succumbing to endless hype cycles, techno babble & wishful thinking. We offer a practical alternative: a solutions-oriented grounding in futures-thinking that cuts through the hype and gives leaders the tools to identify emerging opportunities/threats and to understand the future as a dynamic space for experimentation and learning. We combine principles and practices from the worlds of strategic foresight, social entrepreneurship, tech innovation, and design to create a unique introduction to envisioning the future and learning how to seize it.

If disruption, like change itself, has become a constant, can anything accurately be described as disruptive? We call bullshit on the prevailing narrative and offer instead a contrarian view of the dynamics of disruption in this deep dive. Drawing on dozens of exclusive interviews with category-defining innovators as well as leaders of incumbent organizations that have weathered paradigm shifts in their industries, we provide a practical framework and battle-tested principles with immediate value for both successful (but vulnerable) incumbents and rising entrepreneurs. This session draws a bright line between allowing the future of your business to be something that happens to you versus something that you take an active role in shaping to your advantage, and we invite you on the hard but essential journey to the other side.

The most fundamental change in the marketplace over the last 40 years is that product pyramids are turning into hourglasses, and the middle is disappearing before our very eyes, sending massive ripple effects through the global economy. Over the last decade, we have identified and tracked this seismic shift. In this session, you will learn insights and strategies taken from our research to ensure your company adapts to exponential shifts in technology and markets to survive and thrive.

In a competitive environment where business models get disrupted daily and your competition looks nothing like it used to, how do you not only stay relevant but leapfrog forward? The future of innovation today belongs to the crowd who can outperform and outcompete closed systems. You will learn from first-hand experience how to harness the power of decentralized ideas, resources, and skills; how to bridge untapped geographies and leverage innovation at the edges.

While technologies are maturing exponentially, organizational structures and processes remain stubbornly linear. Yesterday's best-practices – like the Five-Year-Plan or Innovation Funnel – are not sufficient to navigate today's fast-paced, tech-driven world. Explore the groundbreaking new Seven-Layer model which describes and provides actionable insights into the makeup of the future organization. Learn why most companies fail in their digital transformation by only focusing on the upper layers of the model and how to truly transform your business into a future-forward organization.

Building on neuroscience research and strategic foresight practice, we’ll help you break out of the typically unproductive set of responses most leaders have to rising uncertainty (denial, avoidance, paralysis, etc.) to adopt a new generative approach. You’ll learn to differentiate between types of uncertainty, to use irreducible uncertainties to imagine alternate future scenarios, and to transform reducible uncertainties into a sandbox for engaging curiosity and focusing experimentation and learning.

We often find ourselves with the challenge of finding ways to rapidly iterate on our ideas, gather customer feedback, and validate our assumptions – all the while keeping cost down and time spent at a minimum. In this interactive session you will learn the art and science of the innovation methodology used by organizations such as Alphabet/Google [X] to move from conjectures to validated insight in the least amount of time with the least amount of resources.

Our present moment of heightened uncertainty is a perfect time for exploring the relationship between the questions we ask and the answers we find and for learning to use today’s uncertainty as a springboard for tomorrow’s creative inquiry. The question generation workshop (like an ideation session where you start by assuming that you DON’T already have the answers – or even the right questions) is one of our favorite tools for engaging curiosity, opening a more inclusive conversation, challenging assumptions, and fostering innovation.

How do we reconcile the need to focus on short-term results with the critical importance of long-term planning and vision? How do we building adaptability with the desire for control? Leaders face a class of challenges – polarities – which exist not as problems to be solved but rather as tensions to be managed, and learning to manage these tensions effectively through polarity thinking unlocks a new approach to continuous transformation for organization and leader.

Going beyond the nomenclature, participants will explore the practical “Eight Word Mission Statement” framework to connect purpose (both your companies and your personal) to an actionable and guiding mission statement. Going from the bigger why to the actionable and measurable how is imperative to bringing purpose to life, applying this framework to the triptych of self/other/world will make for better, more effective leaders.

Disruption Mapping provides a simple, intuitive system for organizing thoughts about a likely future development or trend and identifying possible long-term implications (positive and negative) in a structured but highly collaborative way. This highly interactive, practice-oriented workshop will help you think more deeply about the dynamics of disruption — anticipating future implications and exploring unintended consequences. As a result, you & your team will be better able to foresee future opportunities and emerging threats to your business.