Think Forward EP 126 - Art of Future Preparedness with Dr. Rene Rohrbeck - Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers

Episode Transcript
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Rene (00:00):
Welcome to the Think Forward show.
Let's explore the futuretogether.

Steve (00:05):
Welcome friends and fellow big thinkers to another
exciting episode of ThinkForward, where we explore the
ever-evolving frontiers of thefuture.
Today we have a guest whosecareer journey has been shaped
by history, transformation andthe ability to anticipate what's
next.
Imagine growing up in WestBerlin, surrounded by the Iron
Curtain, witnessing what seemedstable until it wasn't.

(00:26):
That experience shaped hisunderstanding of uncertainty and
the importance of strategicforesight.
From navigating the shiftingties at Deutsche Telekom to
pioneering systematic ways ofpreparing for the future, our
guest has spent his careerhelping organizations anticipate
change before it happens.
Career helping organizationsanticipate change before it

(00:47):
happens.
He's built a career out ofexploring how businesses can
stay future prepared,identifying patterns of
innovation and challenging thetraditional approaches to
strategy.
His research has revealedsurprising insights, like why
the most successful companiesoften ignore foresight until
it's too late, and he'sdedicated to changing that
mindset.
Today we'll dive deep into howorganizations can build future

(01:07):
fitness, why strategic foresightis making a comeback and how a
data-driven approach can helpleaders spot the opportunities
and the risks ahead.
Welcome to episode 126 of theThink Forward Show the Art of
Future Preparedness with Dr ReneVorbeck.
Rene, welcome to the podcast.
Welcome to the show.

Rene (01:27):
Thanks, glad to be here.

Steve (01:30):
So I've been following your work for many years.
As in you know, you have a lotof diverse backgrounds
cross-corporate foresight andjust the field itself.
But for those who are learningabout the space or learn about
your work, can you just kind ofgo into your background, tell us
about yourself and, you know,kind of your journey into
foresight?

Rene (01:53):
Sure.
So I mean, I'm born in WesternBerlin, so it was always a thing
which I think marked me to besort of in the in the center of
history, in the sense that WestBerlin was surrounded by the
Iron Curtain and this lookedvery stable when I was a child,
until it was no longer stableand the Cold War came to an end.

(02:15):
So I had this, this, this senseof okay.
You need to be able toanticipate what is happening,
and that caught up with me in mycorporate life.
So when I was working atDeutsche Telekom in particular,
a company which came from beingvery, very stable because it was
a state-owned monopoly, tosuddenly being in a free market

(02:38):
and a market which is basicallygoing upside down, so no longer
the companies which own thenetwork are powerful, but the
ones who are bringing theservices to the end customer are
powerful, new business modelsappearing, et cetera.
That is, I think, the twothings which marked really my
career, because it ingrained inme this desire to be able to be

(03:03):
systematic about preparing forthe future.

Steve (03:06):
So how old were you when the wall fell?
Sorry, how old were you whenthe wall fell, when the Berlin
Wall?

Rene (03:13):
fell.
I was 14.

Steve (03:14):
You were 14.
So that's a very influentialage.
I mean, that is a life-definingevent, you know, for everyone
in the world.
Yeah, so we're about the sameage.
I remember, I just rememberpeople dancing on it.
You know, I just remember this,you know, you just you could

(03:37):
see, you could watch historyhappening, right, you could see
a sense of change.
But you know things like youjust mentioned companies going
from state owned to, you know,free market.
Did that change?
Did that kind of change yourperspective on the opportunities
you had in front of you, Likethe things you wanted to do with

(03:59):
your life?
Did it just anything you mighthave thought of just completely
upended and you had to rethinkBecause you're also at a place
where you didn't have to go, youweren't in yet, right.
So you're kind of like what areyou going to?

Rene (04:11):
do right with your life.
It's true, I mean, I think formy first job was was really
influential for me.
I was working in the deutschtelekom laboratories and we were
kind of directly associatedwith the chief strategy and
innovation officer, so we got alot of these very strategic
questions on our desk and Istill remember that I was quite

(04:32):
fresh in the business, quitenaive, thinking okay, there must
be people in corporate strategywho ask the big questions and
find big answers to what will bethe future of our company look
like, what will be the businessmodel we're running?
How do we face up to all thesenew competitors suddenly being
in this space, which was calledtelecommunications and now is
being called information andcommunication technologies, and

(04:56):
apps coming, et cetera, only tofind out that a typical
corporate strategy department isoften very conservative.
I mean, they're thinking abouthow do we keep our business
model going?
Do we make maybe a strategicacquisition?
Do we need to get rid of partof our business because it's no

(05:17):
longer profitable?
But these kind of zooming outquestions where you take two
steps back and you ask yourself,okay, what will the future of
this industry look like and howwill we play in that future?
Very few people asking thisquestion and sometimes, as I

(05:38):
found out later also in myresearch, in my practice,
sometimes this is really adecision which needs to be taken
by the owners, not just by theboard of directors needs to be
taken by the owners, not just bythe board of directors.
And yet we are probably livingin times where more and more
companies will have thesefundamental considerations to
make.
So this is a little bit alsohow I'm wired and how I look at
this world to say well, actually, your business model might get

(06:01):
challenged in the future, youmight need to rethink how you're
positioned in your own industry, what your industry will look
like.
And the ones who think earlyare also the ones who get then
the nice spots in the world.
Today.

Steve (06:13):
We'll get to that, I think, in a little bit, but I
wanted to ask you about whereFutures and Foresight.
Futures Research is a researchfield.

(06:33):
You're a researcher, but you'realso a consultant and a
practitioner, so you have both.
You take both sides of thatworld.
When you look at organizations,what do you see?
Is there a way to reconnectforesight, because it seems to
be an orphaned function.

(06:55):
If you will, it should live instrategy.
Logically, it should live inthis strategy, the strategy
group, strategy team or eveninnovation, you know connected
to innovation or some somepathway right to to feed in that
.
I've talked to some others andwe've talked about the
forecasting and the foresightfield almost kind of splitting

(07:16):
fracturing.
In the 70s and 80s they kind oflike went their separate
directions right and forecastingis just the extrapolation of
existing data on that versusforesight, which is a bit
different.
Where do you think it can be?
You know, kind of find fostercare or adoption, like.
Where do you think it its roleoptimally?
This is not a one size fits all, but where do you think it's?

(07:39):
As you said, there's changeshappening and companies need to
rethink things and readapt andthis is a perfect way to bring
that to.
I think, a powerful capabilityinside an organization.
Where do you think that's going?

Rene (07:56):
I think one needs to look at this on different levels.
I mean, one level which youmentioned is sort of where is
foresight in strategy?
And here I'd like to echo alittle bit the title of a
Harvard Business Review articlewhich Amy Webb wrote when I'm
sitting on the advisory board ofthe Global Foresight Network in

(08:18):
the World Economic Forum andshe said well, it's about time
that we bring foresight back tostrategy or into strategy.
Yes, and I think that's a verysound observation, because when
you go back some 30 years, thenit would have been very natural
to think about foresight beingcentral to strategy.

(08:39):
But once Michael Porter enteredthe world and also Jay Barney
entered the world, to say, okay,well, maybe strategy is more
about this positioning, so we'realready in the market and we're
not going to touch this, and inthat market I'm competing with
other companies and I need nowto work out in detail how I'm

(08:59):
going to be better than othersin this market in order to have
the most profitable spot or thebiggest share of the pie, and
this kind of focused away fromtruly strategic questions like
where do I want to play, how doI want to win towards a kind of
more optimization withinstrategy.

Steve (09:22):
So I think on this level of where is foresight in
strategy in organizations?

Rene (09:28):
well, it was pushed off center stage, but it's coming
back right now.
And it's coming back becausethere's way more uncertainty
surrounding companies.
So you realize that it's notanymore an optimization game of
target against Walmart, but itis okay.

(09:49):
What will the future of retaillook like, which is really going
to drive your business forward?
Now, I think a totally differentlevel of what is Foresight
doing to you is kind of askingwell, can we even imagine a
world where companies arecontinuing to live without

(10:12):
Foresight, so in other words,just optimizing themselves right
now?
And I think I can imagine aworld like this.
This is a world where is alsonot very resilient, because I'm
just trying to continue makingthe lifeline of my business
longer, While I should really beasking more fundamental

(10:32):
questions about, you know, willmy license to operate still be
viable if I'm a company in theenergy field and I'm burning
coal field and I'm burning coal?
Or will my business model beviable in the way I set it up,
with global supply chains whenthe world is fragmenting, et
cetera, et cetera.

(10:53):
So I think this role ofstrategy, almost more on the
level of the shareholders or thelevel of a strong supervisory
board is getting more and moreimportant.

Steve (11:07):
You did some seminal research and I shared with you
and I've cited you often in somany things and you've been
unwittingly a great advocate inme making the case for corporate
foresight with places,especially for those who are, I
would say, more quantitative andshort-term.
You did a paper in 2015.

(11:28):
You talked about measuringcorporate foresight's impact.
I mean, what other things, likeI would say, findings, if you
will, should leaders know aboutthis kind of relationship, like
when you talk about that?
That research was fascinating,like how it came to be.
It's a longitudinal study.
I mean, it took many years todo so.
Did that impact?

(11:48):
Is this?
Is that impacted?
Um, you know the conversationstoday as well that you have with
people yes, I think there's.

Rene (11:59):
There's a lot of things which are extremely contemporary
in in this and where, in manymaybe, this study was just ahead
of its time.
Actually, when you look at, youknow who cites this, who uses
this.
Many of those citations they'recoming more from recent times.
So I asked at that time aquestion which many few people
were asking.
So typically, you know, thequestion was more around well,

(12:24):
if I want to have a kind of lifeinsurance towards the future,
shouldn't I pay at least one ortwo futurists which are sitting
inside my organization and whichare informing me about big
trends coming up?
Or should I maybe hire afuturist once a year to come and
join a board meeting, et cetera?
And I asked a completelydifferent question and I was

(12:45):
asking the question what are mycapabilities?
So something I can do regularly, can rely on, which makes me
future prepared?
And remember that at 2008,where all this research started,
people were looking at me withbig eyes and saying what are you

(13:06):
even talking about?
So I started to build a modelwhich allows me to track okay,
what are people doing in orderto load themselves with insights
about the future.
What are companies doing?
And I call this prospecting, tomake this mental time travel

(13:29):
into a world which might bedifferent from their world today
and which lives already in thepotentiality which I'm observing
today.
And then how do I probe intothis to find out if there's new
business potential?
Do I venture into this?
Do I have innovation which Iaccelerate, etc.
So this model, equipped withthis model, I went into the

(13:50):
field.
I did first a lot of casestudies to find out what are
companies actually doing andwhat do they get out of it.
And then I said, okay, let'slook at this also quantitatively
.
And the first quantitativeresult was a shock.
What I did is that, in 2008, Isaid, okay, let's look at who

(14:12):
has great strategic foresightcapabilities and how good is
their financial performance,hoping obviously to see, okay,
there's a strong correlation,you need to be future prepared
in order to be successful.
And then what I find is theopposing correlation.
So the companies are doinggreat, they're actually not

(14:34):
having a lot of foresight, and Ithought, okay, how can that be
explained?
And then, in more case studyresearch, you come to the
realization that you're alsomeasuring the opposite.
So when you have highprofitability, when you're doing
well in terms of growth, thenyou're not interested in asking

(14:55):
what-if questions about your ownfuture.
So then the next questionobviously becomes well, what if
we wait?
What if we look at what ishappening with the companies
over the next couple of years?
So here indeed, and we wewaited seven years, or we rather
tracked also some companiesover time, and here we find now,

(15:19):
luckily for our field, right,we find the correlation in the
right direction and there's acouple of very interesting
phenomena which we uncover.
So we did a number of differenttests in the data.
So one of the things we wereinterested in is to find out
whether there were companies whoare future prepared and who
made it from the top of the pilein their industry to being

(15:43):
outperformers in their industry.
And that's something you canonly do with case study research
.
So we had only 15 case studiesin this, but there's six out of
them who made it from the bottomof the pile to the top of the
pile because they made also whatwe like to refer to as a

(16:04):
meaningful strategic move.
So, for instance, one companywhich was just a drug company
and it was in a kind of me-toosituation there's all the drugs
they're selling pretty much theywere also sold by other
companies and it's this real redocean.
And they realized okay,digitalization is entering my

(16:25):
field.
So what if I'm not only givinga drug but I'm also helping?
You know, local doctors um,there's also malaria drugs they
had, and so on and I'm givingdigital tools to, um, the um,
the people on the field, andthey were the first one to do it
and that allowed them suddenlyto have a digital interface with

(16:50):
their customers.
And this is, of course, very,very interesting.
And ultimately, what we findalso when we look at the total
sample, is that companies whichare what we call vigilant, so
that they have the right levelof foresight for their given
situation, they outperform thecompanies which have not by

(17:12):
quite big margins 33% higherprofitability and 200% higher
growth rates.

Steve (17:19):
So you mentioned case studies.
Did you do surveys to gatherspecific data points in the case
studies?
And secondly, did you track thekind of?
Were there actual people doingthose roles?
Were there people that had itas a function and like, how did
you define them as doing thistype of work?

(17:41):
Like, were there differentbuckets or categories of of the
of the functions they did?
Like she kind of like level oneor two, like, did you?
You it's kind of the growth youtalk about going from the
bottom of the pile to the top ofthe pile.
There had to be a function inthe, in the growth of the.
What they did as a in in theirorganization.

(18:01):
Right, they had to have morepeople or more research or
trends like, or systems like.
What did you look at in thatway?

Rene (18:10):
and we we try to get a holistic picture when we do our
research and we try to be robustalso in our measurement.
These are the different ways ofsetting something up and
setting up the foresightfunction, if you will.
So there's a couple of thingswe do.

(18:33):
So the first thing is that wewant to identify the need of an
organization.
And we define the need of anorganization to do foresight by
two main factors One is thelevel of uncertainty which
surrounds it, and then thesecond is its strategic ambition
.
And there we are asking whethera company wants to be what we
call a prospector, so one whichis always first into a market,
it's creating new markets,completely new offerings or

(18:55):
whether it's an analyzer whichis kind of the second one into a
market, or whether it's adefender which basically
protects the market whichalready exists and protects the
market which already exists andprotects the market share.
So these two main factors,they're influencing the need of
an organization.
And now when you ask, okay, howgood is an organization in
foresight?
And I could in principle go andand count heads of how many

(19:19):
people are doing foresight orthings like that.
But we try to drill deeper andwhat we are asking is, along our
model, along the functions wewould like foresight capability
to be able to execute on, howmature are you?
And we have a maturity modelbehind.

(19:40):
So it's 21 factors which welook at.
And all of these factors theyare capabilities.
So an organizational outcomewhich I can get, and that goes
all the way from being aware ofsignals, trends, et cetera, to

(20:00):
taking action.
So it's fast.
I often like to simplify a bitby saying this is we try to
track the nervous system of anorganization directed at the
future.
So it goes much further thanjust asking how many foresight
people do you have.
It's really asking well, areyou actually using scenario

(20:26):
thinking regularly in yourstrategic decision making, for
example?
And that could be done by aforesighter, it could also be
done by a strategy unit, itcould also be done by the top
management team themselves, andwe want to be agnostic of how
you do it, but we want to knowwhether you have it and whether

(20:48):
you can be sure that thiscapability is always there for
you to enjoy.
This is how we measure.

Steve (20:56):
Great answer.
You know I, I I used a lot offutures work in my innovation
work and I know you wrote apaper on three roles in
enhancing capacity.
I find that not just thestrategy group but the
innovation capability of anorganization is a sweet spot for
this.
Because if you think about thelens of, say, like, a chief

(21:19):
product officer, they're kind oflooking at that 12 to 18 months
, right, the portfolio they'regoing.
I mean, they're looking atthings but they're relying on
the innovation function.
I separated even from R&D.
But the innovation function ofnew business models, product
services that can make itthrough its portfolio
investments and become productsfor the product officer, right.

(21:42):
But like leading that outward,how do you know what possible
future is evolving, what themarkets are doing?
Where do you make those bets?
Right, it kind of has to informthat.
So it's almost like that tip ofthe spear edge of the farthest
to the telescope, right, thedark side of the moon telescope
that can really see things moreclearly, to inform the

(22:04):
innovation function, the darkside of the moon telescope that
can really see things moreclearly to inform you know the
innovation function.
So you know what did you?
What did you find with thoseLike what are those three roles?

Rene (22:13):
Like for the for for those who haven't read, obviously
read the paper, so Well, here wewe also went basically into the
field and identified companieswhich have a four-side function
and we asked them simply what doyou do?
And then every case study iskind of informing about

(22:36):
typically one or two or threespecific things a certain
function in a given company isperforming.
And for this particular paper Ithink we used some 15 such case
studies and what we then did isthat we kind of tried to
cluster this around what is thisdoing to innovation?

(22:58):
And we identify three roles.
So the first role is what wecall the initiator role, and
that's probably also somethingwhich most people would
associate with foresight.
So maybe you know also a bitlike design thinking.
You get signals, and you're notonly getting signals from what

(23:19):
your customers can tell youalready today, but you also
think about what our futurecustomer needs.
You think also about what kindof capabilities would new
technologies enable in yourproduct and service portfolio?
What else could you offer?
And an initiator role istypically also a kind of

(23:42):
matchmaking role between themarket and the technology-facing
units.
So this is something which wesaw in many of the 15 companies
that they have a role to playwhere you say, well, what is the
technologies which will becomemature in five years' time, and

(24:03):
what kind of functions in myproducts and services could that
enable?
And then, how big is the marketfor these functions?
What's the willingness to pay?
Can we make it happen?
And so that eventually itbecomes an R&D project or a
product development project?
The second role is is issomething which which we are

(24:25):
somewhat surprised at first,because we were really only
thinking about this initiatorrole when we entered the field
that, through Steve Jobs, whowas the biggest opponent you can
think about in a tech drivencompany, being a marketeer, I'm

(24:51):
not excited about thistechnology.
I want to know what this isdoing.
And for every successfulproduct, you typically have a
strong innovator, but you havealso a strong opponent who makes
sure that you get the best outof this innovation effort and,
with that, having also winningproduct or service.

(25:13):
And what in many organizations,the foresight units were asked
to do is to come in in strategicproject reviews, in project
definition meetings, in gatemeetings, in order, with their
broader perspective, to say okay, all this is nice when you

(25:34):
think only about us, but there'sthis company out there which
we've seen and they have analternative technology and it
will be, in the end, superior toour technology.
So we either close our projectdown or we better talk to these
guys and see if we can have acollaboration.
So this opponent role can beplayed out in different ways,

(25:56):
but it's a very important one inorder to get to winning
products and winning services.
And the third role is what werefer to, the strategist role,
and I think in your question youalso were hinting a bit at that
.
You know it's often thisquestion okay, where does that
lead us?
So, if we have a product orservice like this, is that so

(26:20):
unique in our value chain thatwe can control the markets, that
we are kind of this centralpiece in the puzzle of the
market?
Also, where is that taking usin terms of future market shares
, future pockets of value?
Are the pockets of value so bigthat we can also consider M&A

(26:43):
activities to capture thatmarket, etc?
So it was surprising for us atthat time to see that not all
companies have all roles, but ifyou look across companies, that
there's quite a diverse set ofactivities Foresight units can

(27:04):
engage in and create value for acompany.

Steve (27:08):
I love how you tied all that together and it leads me to
kind of this you originally hadyou created a thing called the
future fitness model and Iwonder where that is, because
your recent work on net positivebusinesses, which I wanted to
maybe are they connected?
Are they connected more?

(27:29):
Is it an evolution of that?
I'd love to kind of, I mean,you can explain the fitness
model but maybe let's reallykind of move toward the net
positive, because it's really, Ithink that statement is, I
think, a much more palatablephrase for companies.
You know, and how to adopt it.

(27:51):
You know, fitness is a goodbrand, it's a great brand.
So but yeah, if you could like,let's talk about future fitness
real quick, like kind of that,because I feel like that's
foundational to like thisevolution, like where it is to
make net positive businesses.

Rene (28:07):
Yeah, yeah, sure, I mean.
We started to call it futurefitness only a couple of years
back, because before we calledit future preparedness, a
company how indeed fit a companyis, in order to pivot when the
market is changing, when a bigchange is coming their way and

(28:41):
in our mind, fitness, or forhaving a future fitness you need
at least three things.
The first is that you need tobe capable of this future back
thinking.
You need to be able, as acompany, not just to say where
am I today, what are mycapabilities, what can I do with
it, but also to say, well, ifwe look five years, 10 years

(29:01):
into the future and the marketwould be very different how do
we get a favorable spot in thatmarket?
What is my superior position inthe markets of the future?
What is my superior position inthe markets of the future?
It also means that you need, asan organization, be capable of
finding and defining strongnarratives so that you can bring
people along that you can say,okay, today we Kodak and we are

(29:25):
a chemical company, but tomorrowwe still Kodak and we are a
digital company.
And what does that mean?
And how do we pivot?
And finally, you need to beable and that's also where
foresight can help, but which isinside future fitness is.
You need to go beyond this kindof linear thinking of saying

(29:46):
today I'm here and then I needto be there and you know,
there's just a change project Ineed to execute on.
Typically big changes.
They come on a system level andI need to be capable, as an
organization, to understand howsystems shift.
And they don't shift in alinear fashion, they shift in in

(30:07):
an S curve fashion.
They also, for a long time,look implausible until they
start to happen very fast, andthey are.
You know, they're oftencounterintuitive.
So this is something whichorganizations and their planning
mechanisms and their governancemechanisms they need to be
capable of dealing with.

(30:27):
And what sort of made usmigrate now towards then.
Also, what will become a newcenter here at the EDEC Business
School in France, which is oneof the top 10 business schools
in Europe, is one of our corestrategic pillars is to say,

(30:49):
well, we as business schools, weneed to be part of creating
organizations which have ahealing, which have a
regenerative impact on itsecosystem.
And if you want, you know, onone hand, that goes all the way
back, maybe to the 70s, wherepeople like Klaus Schwab, who

(31:12):
was the founder of the WorldEconomic Forum, has written a
book about stakeholdercapitalism.
It can even go further back,you know where.
Here in France there wassomebody called Gaston Berger
who created what is known as theprospective school, where he
says humanity needs to becapable of taking destiny into

(31:33):
its own hand.
And and I think this issomething where, um, obviously
you know, foresight would have astrong set of mechanisms, a
strong set of tools to help.
So already some some years back,we started to say can we not
apply Foresight on an industrylevel and help organizations who

(31:56):
share one industry?
And we're working on twoindustries today.
One is the building sector andthe other one is the agriculture
, food and health sector.
We see this kind of connectedand say what are pathways in a
sustainable development?
So what are sustainabilitypathways?
And this is something which nowcomes back in an even more

(32:23):
powerful approach to say we wantto not only think about how can
we become better, but also whatis the missions which we have
actually as an industry and howcan we apply future-backed
thinking and future-backedplanning to get there.

(32:43):
So today in most cities, theindustry of buildings,
construction, real estate, etcetera.
They're failing all of usbecause they are not getting us
livable construction, realestate, et cetera.
They're failing all of usbecause they are not getting us
livable, affordable andsustainable buildings.
Often it's the opposite,particularly the young ones,

(33:04):
which are not yet in the realestate market and don't own real
estate yet.
So how can we create anindustry which can deliver for
us what we as humanity need?
And, of course, how can we alsoensure that we safeguard our
life support system, our planetEarth, and what needs to be done

(33:25):
there to decarbonize industries, etc.
So it's really this trajectorywhich, in a way, for us was very
natural, but where I'm taking alot of joy out because it's
hands-on.
Often when we talk foresight,we talk big visions, scenarios,
et cetera, but for us it'sreally about okay, where do we

(33:47):
need to invest, where do we needto change business models and
how can we execute on thattogether with the partners in
our programs.

Steve (33:55):
Well, it's interesting that you talk about the fitness
versus preparedness, right.
So I always talk about futureswork as navigating uncertainty
very much, charting a course,because you know, as the adage
goes, futures don't predict thefuture.
We look at possible futuresright, preferred all the
different.
All the adage goes, futuresdon't predict the future.
We look at possible futuresright, preferred all the
different P's in the cone, inthe futures cone, right.

(34:17):
But as those things, thosefutures, become the present, we
have the ability to make moreproactive type of change.
And when I look at, when Ithink of the word preparedness,
I think of like emergencypreparedness or you're preparing
for a thing to happen and whenit happens you have to react to
it, activate to it, right,versus to your other word of you

(34:41):
know, fitness, where you'realways training but you're
always, but you're doing thingsyou know, I think of just on a
personal level, like I snowboardand I love it deeply.
Will I be able?
Hopefully I can do it when I'm80.
I'm not like going on theterrain park and doing crazy
things, but I have to be fit.

(35:04):
I have to do strength trainingbut I'm actively doing the thing
that I'm enjoying, so it's kindof the active practice of it
and the fitness of it.
So I like your distinction,your bifurcation of those two
and how you moved away from that, because I think actually older
futures were definitely moreprepared, like preparedness
driven.

(35:25):
You know Herman Kahn's work.
It's always about we'reprepared for a nuclear war.
You don't want it to occur, butit's like like you have to
prepare for eventualities.
It's kind of like what Shelldid early on.
It's like preparing for an oilembargo or a thing to occur
itself.
Versus the proactive change andI think the use of net positive
and we can I don't like to useget all rosy colored.

(35:50):
I'm very much an optimist whenit comes to the future but at
the same time thinkingpositively about that.
How do you make the change?
How do you bring those together?
I think is a really whole, isis I use another you know fluffy
term like holistic, it's like,but it is giving someone, I
think, who is non-futuresfocused an easier access to what

(36:14):
it means to use this in anorganization.
Right, and you know you hadmentioned you had 21 kind of
elements of like, maturity andthings like that.
Do you categorize that in termsof organizational size,

(36:39):
practice tool set, mindset,right, it's like you know, how
do you break that down?
Like, how do you take thematurity, like when you look at
it, because it's a good lens tokeep, because you can look at
that longitudinally over time,is you know, and you obviously
can tweak it, but it definitelysets a set of foundational.
You know, as my wife is aresearcher, it gives you the
grounding in the data.
Over time you can continue touse that as your model.

Rene (37:03):
Yeah, of course I mean the indicators we check.
We can also check over time andin this way you can measure
your own fitness right when yougo to to.
Either you know your, yourphysician, who who tests your,
your fitness and sport, or youknow your, you monitor yourself
with a wearable device.
The same thing we want to dofor for organizations.

(37:25):
Um, it's sometimes funnybecause there's people who tell
me look, rene, typically youknow, the older you get, the
more relaxed you get, but youseem to getting more and more
anxious and in a way, you know,I think it's true I'm getting
not anxious, but I'm actuallygetting more impatient that's a
stark difference.

Steve (37:46):
There's a stark difference in the anxious versus
impatience right, because youjust do it now versus the you
know, is it going to happen?
Yeah, that's a good distinctionbetween that.

Rene (38:00):
So for me, it's really that I'm also starting to get a
bit impatient with us as a field, in a sense of saying look, I
mean, if you're telling somebodythat they are in an uncertain
world and that they need to domore to sort of cope with this
uncertainty, it's not aparticularly positive message.

(38:20):
What we as a field also need tobe capable of doing and I think
we are quite capable of doingit, but we need to focus
attention is to tell people okay, well, there's, there's a lot
of opportunity you have ofapplying these types of thinking
methods, this type of planningmethods, in order to be agile

(38:43):
enough to lead change, to becomeproactive about your own
destiny, to lead your companyand maybe also your industry and
maybe even humanity to a betterplace.
And that is sort of what, onthe one hand, you know with
future fitness we're trying toput an emphasis on.

(39:03):
It's like you who was thinkingalready about when is the snow
good enough to be back on theslope?
And companies also want to befit to be back on the slope.
Companies also want to be fitto be back on the slope and they
need something to measure thiscapacity, and you can, of course
, measure it in the outcome.
So I can come with my cameraand film you and then I'm

(39:24):
telling you look, last year youwere a bit faster down the slope
and you looked a bit cooler.
So maybe you need to dosomething more.
The slope and you looked a bitcooler, so maybe you need to do
something more.
Um, and that's something we do.
Also, look at we say what's yourtrack record as an organization
to have ventured into newbusinesses, um, to accelerate

(39:45):
new, new parts of your offerings?
So there's an outcome component, but there's also a throughput
component.
So how capable are you inobserving what's going on around
you?
Are you capable of seeing 80%of all the factors which will

(40:05):
influence your business in thenext five years, and that ahead
of competitors?
Are you capable of doing that?
And we can can, of course, alsothen check over time whether
that is continuing continuously,true or not true, or it's
getting better or it's uh, it's,it's starting to deteriorate.
And we need to remember thatwhenever we're doing very well

(40:28):
as individuals or as companies,we start to become complacent,
we start to feel, okay, we'redoing good, why should I worry
too much?
And what we can maybe affordonce we have paid our mortgage
and once we had enough stocksstuck away, a company cannot
afford.
A company can at any time failand our job as futurists is to

(40:54):
prepare them for, sometimes, theunexpected.
But what I would also emphasizeis we need to prepare
organizations for the big tideswhich are moving in.
Most companies are quite capableof saying, ok, there's another
wave, let's prepare for this.
And I know this because there'swaves coming all the time.
But you might still remember,either for yourself or for your

(41:17):
kids, you know this frustrationwhen you build this fantastic
sandcastle and there's thesewaves coming and there's always
withstanding these waves, andthen you go and grab some lunch
and you come back and yoursandcastle is gone.
You say I cannot even see whereit used to be.
And the same can happen withcompanies where you say I'm

(41:38):
doing great and getting attackedby competitors, but then you
know five years later you haveoverlooked that your entire
industry got digitalized andyour entire sandcastle is gone.
And this is also something weneed to help companies because,
by default, our planning methodsand also our perception as

(41:58):
humans is not wired towardstides, it's wired towards waves.

Steve (42:05):
It's interesting.
You bring that up To myresearch.
I agree with you completely.
We're at a bigger pivot inhistory than people realize and
you hear news about that.
It's always it's like, oh, thiselection is the biggest and the
last and it's the changinghistory or this thing.
Well, I'm one of the things inmy work.

(42:28):
I'm a cycles theorist.
I look at pattern cycle changeright, and I look at macro
history very much so, and I'velooked at like the last thousand
years of history and for meI've looked at this in terms of
200-year ages.
And then within that there areeras it's called the ages and
eras, social change, andappropriately, because that's

(42:52):
what it is.
But it's like those cycles andwithin that I look at waves.
I call them get waves.
So there's a geopolitical,economic, technological, and
when you look at a wave, rightyou have the swell, the crest,
the break, the trial, right, andit comes in and they come
pinion and they continue tochange and make that we're at

(43:14):
this and they're not like thisimmediate cutoff, they kind of
overlap the ages themselves,this last 200 years and people
will talk about, you know, likeklaus talked about the fourth
industrial revolution, the third, and you know, you know ict.
I look at it as this this islike an age of machines, like
for the last 200 years.
We've automated with machines.
We've automated everythingmechanically, building how we do

(43:35):
things right, and that factoryapproach, even our workplace,
like you I worked in.
I remember one job I went into.
It was like they did a lot ofpair programming.
I worked with this company andit was just rows of computers
and people would work together.
You could replace that withsewing machines.
It was still a factory of sorts, right.

(43:55):
So that factory mindset, theTaylorism, that Fordism, and
even in the way we constructeducation to prepare people for
a workforce, it's the same.
It's all that model.
So we have to rethink, not justlike the last 70 years of
institutions, but the last 200,as generative AI, other types of
intelligence.
It's a new age of intelligence.

(44:16):
And what does that mean?
As things overtake you, right,that is not just changing.
Like you know, your a newproduct or service.
That could be fundamental,radical shifts in the business.
And, to your point, a businesscan go out of business at any
time, right, if they're notprepared for it.
To me, this field is not thepanacea, not the solution for

(44:42):
all, but is a darn good tool,it's a darn good force for good
to make that change.
So I agree with you in that,you know, having that look, you
know, and it's and it kind ofleads me to making the case
right.
It's like you've got this greatresearch you've done, you've
done work with a lot of greatcompanies.

(45:03):
We've.
You know, I've talked to a lotof people across the years.
But when you talk to the peoplewho are, let's say, more short
term, you know, financial driven, you know they're just, they're
good at what they do, right,they build businesses, they run
companies, they're awesome,they're operators right.
When you make the business case, how do you help those who's

(45:25):
like say, it's like me, like oneperson, who's that futurist
team of one, right, they'retrying to move the boulder up
the mountain like Sisyph one.
Right, they're trying to movethe boulder up the mountain like
Sisyphus, right, maybe they getsome budget and they bring you
in.
How do you help make the case?
And it's also for peoplelistening like, when they're
trying to make that case, how doyou advise in that way?

Rene (45:47):
I mean I always and that's maybe also a transition in how
I approach our field and ourwork, coming from the past where
I was very much an analyst.
I love data, I love planning, Ilove looking at very clear
theories and hypotheses which Ican prove, and so on and so on,

(46:08):
very clear theories andhypotheses which I can prove,
and so on and so on.
And I would be kind of contentat least I used to be content by
delivering this brilliantreport which is spot on, which
tells you, based on data, what'sgoing to happen and what the
implications are, et cetera, etcetera.

(46:28):
And one advantage of growing abit older over time is that you
realize many of the brilliantanalysis you've done.
They have just not been put inpractice.
So my own practice and that'salso maybe to your point what
would I advise?

(46:48):
Well, it's all about the peopleyou can take with you, either
directly, by you engagingforesight projects, or
indirectly, by engaging themwith the material.
You have One thing which wasalso influential, if you want,

(47:11):
in my thinking about all of Bigpredators have already gone and
you start picking the smallfries until we got ourselves

(47:39):
organized, and that's what wecall the consciousness
revolution.
And that's only some 70,000years ago and you can trace
humanity on the planet some300,000 years where we were
quite an unremarkable species.
But after the consciousrevolution we started to get
organized.
And today it's amazing how youcan get organized right.

(48:01):
I mean, you can be a companylike Bosch with 430,000
employees and they're somewhatorganized together.
It's a huge force.
Same thing, obviously, forcountries, and what ties us
together is narratives,narratives which people
subscribe to who are inside thatorganized group.

(48:22):
And then you can cascade thatdown and ultimately, our
capacity as foresighters tobuild collective narratives
which people believe is what,what allows us then to make big
changes, and the same true as isfor any change maker.
This, this kind of myth that youknow a big company is like,

(48:44):
like an army, everyone justfollows orders.
It's just that.
It's just the myth, right.
But foresight and leadership isall about creating a joint
understanding about whysomething is desirable, how we
can get there, and that this isrealistic.
And then you have peoplefollowing this and people

(49:04):
pitching in, doing somethingwhich was not planned for but
which is taking you in thatdirection.
So even even as the you know,if I want to stay with your
picture of this lone foresighterin a 250,000 employee company,
you know, I would not advise tosay try to make the most

(49:26):
brilliant report and thenpublish it to everyone so that
they can read.
I would encourage to thinkabout this from the other angle
and say who can I impact and howdo I create joint narratives
with these people?
Not just my narrative, and theyneed to read it, but what's the
joint narrative which cancreate real action and real

(49:49):
movement in my organization?

Steve (49:51):
Yeah, my advice when I give it is and I'm giving the
unsolicited advice here is I'mcurious to get your.
Your take on this is find yourtribe.
So it can be, it can take awhile, but, to your point, make
that impact, get some word ofmouth, but even just having a
like, if you can get permissionto do an internal newsletter on
like little trends you'refinding and just share that with

(50:13):
people.
I find that there's threelayers of group.
There's the core, truebelievers, the people that you
find that really want to buildsomething.
Then the second, or the futuresfluent.
They want to bring this intotheir work, they want to learn

(50:35):
the craft but they're not likethat's the pure future.
They see its value and theycould be your best evangelist.
To me that's the power circle,but it has to be powered by the
true believers to be able tohelp push that out.
And then there's what I willcall future friends, or future.
You know they're the futuresinterested.
That's where you kind of geteverybody on a Slack group or

(50:58):
Slack channels right, or youcreate a newsletter.
You get people interested inprojects or even just sharing
trends.
They find it just kind of likea signals.
You know people just thatreally are interested in this
and find it a fascinating space.
But they also become aware ofthis so that when, to your point
, when you make those small bitsof impact, they can share that

(51:21):
with their boss, a place that,like Bosch, which is going to
you know hundreds of thousandsof people, but if they're a part
of that, you can reach parts ofthe organization.
That's what I find, but it takestime.
It does take time to do thatand even finding that core, true
believers.
You might be alone for a whilebut you still can find people.
But I think, to your point, astime goes on, I am impatient as

(51:44):
well.
I think this decade is justcritical for it to be.
It will be used by those whoget it and I think it's to those
who don't or ignore it at theirperil.
I do, but you know there'speople who have successfully
done it and they fail to bringthis in.
I mean, you've worked withcompanies and seen the varying

(52:05):
degrees of success.
I mean, what do you thinkseparates the?
I won't categorize it in termsof losing or winning, but like
those who have been successfulat it and those who have
struggled with it, like where doyou?
Where do you see the what'swhat separates them Like?
What are those factors?

Rene (52:27):
I think that I mean, I'm seeing many foresight units
which have fantastic thinkersand which are often so well read
into so many things.
They're very brilliant and theycan have fantastic
conversations with one anotherin the group, in the group, but

(52:56):
they find it hard to find thereal pain points in an
organization because they oftenlook almost too mundane or too
uninteresting, et cetera, andthat's often a kind of recipe
for failure.
Right, you're doing fantasticwork and the other professionals
of the field they applaud this,they find this great, you

(53:16):
influence each other, but you'renot addressing real pain points
of an organization.
And I had the chance early inmy career to drop on such pain
points.
It was actually quite funnystory.
We've been sort of doingforesight work on the corporate
headquarter for some time.
We had some reports out thereand so on, and after some time,

(53:37):
you know, we got asked hey,you're spending a lot of money,
can you find out where you'recreating impact?
We said, oh well, yeah, that'sprobably a question we should
have some answer for.
So we started to go around toall these people who receive our
reports and suddenly I've gotthis call with a colleague from

(54:00):
T-Venture, which is the venturearm of Deutsche Telekom and at
that time they were investingsome 800 million euros into
small companies in order to havethis window to innovation.
And they said, yeah, you'rethese guys from the technology
radar.
Look, it's here on my desk.
And every time I'm looking atmy deal flow, I'm looking

(54:22):
whether it's also in your radar.
I'm like, oh, wow, okay, well,it's not meant to be used that
way, but it's probably quiteuseful and we're glad that we
have such a customer as you'rehere in at the inside and you
realize that they had a hugepain point, so they had a really

(54:43):
hard time to figure out in ourindustry.
What is this startup even doing?
So I can look at a startup justat the slides.
They give me the financialnumbers they have.
Or I can ask the moreinteresting question of what is

(55:03):
the end game this startup isliving to create.
Will that be disruptive in myindustry, and if yes, how?
What will happen?
Will that be disruptive in myindustry and if yes, how?
What will happen?
And they suddenly discoveredsort of our work as being a
proxy for answering exactly thatquestion, and later on we also
fine-tuned then what we produceda little bit more for this

(55:26):
purpose.
But there was a real pain point.
So there were 800 million euros, and now it's close to 2
billion, which are regularlylooking for places to get
invested into, which will help abig corporate to be ready for
the future.
And that's, for example, onebig pain point which I dropped

(55:47):
on more by accident but whichthen was a huge value for the
organization.
And that's actually somethingwhich is also in a way, tying to
my practice now.
I mean, you know that I createdsome 10 years ago a boutique
consultancy company to helporganizations to set up

(56:09):
foresight capabilities.
And some two years ago probablyalso in this moment where I
felt a bit impatient and saying,well, yes, we find great value
opportunities, but you don'ttake them we integrated actually
into a venture builder withthis foresight unit, which is

(56:29):
called Creative Dock and whichis Europe's biggest independent
venture builder, so that we canactually, if we find an
opportunity, we can also say wecan build it for you.
And this is, I think, this typeof capability which more and
more companies will need goingforward in this fast-moving
world that they can not onlyfind opportunities but they can

(56:53):
act on them very fast.

Steve (56:56):
I mean doing new venture creation and venture building,
venture studio work.
That's definitely thatinnovation function of leading
foresight into action.
Right, it's taking that visionand leading it into the actual
creation of it.
You know, earlier we talkedabout, you know, strategy group

(57:18):
like in bringing it into.
That seems to be squarely ahuge opportunity for companies
if they're not taking it.
Especially like, how do you pickthe things that are in your
portfolio?
How do you make the place thosebets?
Because most people when theythink of innovation, it's doing
innovation challenges orinnovation sprints where you're

(57:39):
creating new things.
But how do you get to thatthing?
Right, how do you get to whatyou should do?
Because most innovationfunctions in a corporation are
run like venture firms.
They have a portfolio ofinvestment, they have to make
bets and they go throughdifferent levels and do they
make it through to the finalright To get productized, right,
to get fully launched and spunoff.

(58:00):
Right, and you increase youropportunity of, I think, the
range of choice, the range andit's also the things that good
corporate venture firms andventure capital invest in,
things that are completelyoutside of the band of what you
would normally think is in theirspace, right, but it some way
it could be tangentiallyconnected.

(58:21):
Otherwise it just could be anopportunity like that they see
that people need to takeadvantage of, right yeah?

Rene (58:28):
I think also big companies need just to wake up to the
speed at which things arehappening today.
Right, I mean, I'm also comingfrom a corporate world, um, and
if you just look at the averagetime it took a company to become
a $1 billion company, um, orbecome a unicorn, as we like to

(58:49):
refer to it, with such privatecompanies, you know, 50 years
ago this this was kind of 80years become a unicorn, as we
like to refer to such privatecompanies.
50 years ago, this was kind of80 years.
And the case in point is, forinstance, harley-davidson.
This is a company which took 86years to become a 1 billion
company in market valuation.
And if you look at Instagram,this was two and a half years.

(59:10):
You look at instagram, this wastwo and a half years.
And today, the average time ittook a company which became
recently a unicorn, it's twoyears.
Wow, it's just incredible atwhich speed you can venture
something which becomes a globalcompany, a global brand, a, et

(59:30):
cetera.
And that's kind of turning alittle bit this corporate
strategic and innovationplanning upside down, because
you need to be basically outthere directly and experiment
and get market feedback, asopposed to taking it slow,
making your strategic work andthen starting with small

(59:52):
experiments and 10 years lateryou're there on the market in a
dominant position.
That's just not going to happenanymore.

Steve (59:59):
And I know recently you had an interview with our friend
, christian Mulroff, who were atItonics and you both talked
about their platform is doingkind of an innovation operating
system and how it looks attrends, and I'm very much doing
a lot of work on artificialintelligence and generative AI
with Foresight, and there'saspects where he's doing

(01:00:21):
research as well into that andwe talked a lot about where the
human versus the machine comesin and what ratio of that Do you
see it?
How do you see that type ofwork like impacting, because
we've talked about organizationsbeing able to use it as a tool
set, being able to wield it inways that help you make to cheer
point decisions faster versusthe long that that kind of

(01:00:45):
previous long game.
What do you?
What are your thoughts on it?
Like, where do you see it?
You know its benefit.

Rene (01:00:51):
It's kind of cautious, uh advisory on it as well yeah, I
mean it's uh, it's great thatyou bring this up.
I mean it's a huge paradoxcoming our way here actually.
Um, on the one hand, um, alsoin our foresight consulting

(01:01:11):
practice, you're just amazed bythe power you suddenly wield.
I mean, earlier we would belimited by the number of reports
we can read, the number ofinterns we could sort of work
with to go into all kinds ofinterviews asking experts, et
cetera, et cetera, and it wouldtake a lot of energy, it would

(01:01:35):
take a lot of time, and now youcan instantaneously crunch huge
amounts of data and you can alsoget help in pattern discovery
and so on.
So for us, you could almost sayand it's difficult to put a
number on it, you know, but myguess, my best guess would be

(01:01:57):
you're probably 20 times moreproductive nowadays with the use
of various artificialintelligence tools if you do the
type of work we do.
And now comes the but and but,you're not supposed to use, but

(01:02:21):
and you need to be well trainedto wield this type of thing
because you're suddenly creatinghuge traps for yourself.
You're not creating huge trapsfor yourself.
You're not anchored necessarilyin trustworthy data anymore.
Your research is prone tohallucination.

Steve (01:02:43):
I mean.

Rene (01:02:44):
I've seen quotes in my research of a particular Gardner
report, mckinsey report and soon, and this was made up.
I was then trying toartnerreport, mckinsey report and so
on, and this was made up.
I was then trying to find thisreport and it was, you know,
black and white or what is it?
Gray on black or whatever.
I get back from my prompt, frommy AI tools, and it was saying,

(01:03:04):
yes, this is as McKinsey foundout in 2022, you know this and
the other.
And it was not there.
It doesn't exist.
I called McKinsey.
They don't have a report likethis.
So that's part of it.
The other part is this kind ofhow do we get to radical
insights, more, you know, sortof outlier views?

(01:03:27):
Artificial intelligence bringsyou back to the center.
There's also things you can dowith agent-based systems.
Yes, here we get a bit moreinto technicalities, but it's
it's amazing how you can havedifferent ai agents basically
challenging one another andgetting them to do then

(01:03:49):
reformulations of what you need,etc.
Et cetera.
So it's really powerful.
The same thing.
You set this up wrongly.
You don't control this anymoreand you can be completely wrong,
and I think the biggest fear Ihave is for people who are not

(01:04:09):
even discussing what we arediscussing, but which are kind
of so untrained or so fresheither to the field or to
business in general, just freshout of grad school, and they
think look at this eloquentanswer I'm getting here and that
must be an eloquent analysisbehind it.

(01:04:29):
And the opposite is true.
There is almost nothing behind,but it sounds great.
And they think, okay, I foundnow, finally, the button which
has the answer to all thequestions out there and, as
opposed to the novel, where theanswer to all questions is 42,
you know, know, here in theworld, the answer to everything

(01:04:56):
you know is right there andseemingly available to everyone.
And that's the big paradoxSimply also not true.
It's not there.
But for somebody who is acritical thinker, who
understands the strengths andthe weaknesses of tools they
operate, it's.
It's amazing, and that'sanother end that that I'm

(01:05:16):
feeling very much as an educatoris is what we experience with
the digital divide.
We will now also experiencewith the ai divide people who
use it to great effect, yes, andpeople who become less and less
capable to think for themselvesbecause they're just pressing
the button and hope for the best.

Steve (01:05:36):
Yeah, there's a few things to unpack in this.
Uh, one is let's just start thelast thing first is, yes, there
will be, I think, threecategories of people, uh,
non-users, who will fall behind.
I just think about changes intechnology from, you know,
pc-based LAN to local networks,to internet, just evolution,

(01:05:59):
right, the evolution of tools.
If you are a marketer, if youdon't use social media like you
have to, you could be a laggard,absolutely.
But eventually your career andyour, you know, job options will
probably be limited.
So there's that kind ofnon-user don't like it.
Then there's I would call thelazy user.

(01:06:20):
I'm trying to turn that.
This is completely, I'm justtaking off what you're saying,
and that person is just takingwhatever's in there, not
checking sources, notunderstanding, not doing any
synthesis, not using it in theway that could make them a
better, a bit more efficient asa worker, just kind of help them

(01:06:44):
with things so that they couldfocus on heart problems.
And then to me there's thepower user, there's the
effective user, or the effectiveuser, the lazy user, the
effective user, the people thatunderstand prompting, they've
taken the time to understand thesystems, they understand how to
use agents or wield the certaintools, but in the end they
still are the human right.
They still have to do that workand I absolutely see that

(01:07:07):
happening with futures work.
It's one thing to just put in,tell me about the future of work
or the future of food insideinto a GPT right, but it's
another thing to feed it datareports, have it do some heavy
analysis, to bring things outand ask it harder questions.
That would have taken you hours.
I'm very excited by agentsbecause I think that it's like

(01:07:29):
the four site team of one.
If it can do live scanning, ifyou can build it to do a lot
more of that work.
It would take the arduous butyou know, still you have to
analyze.
You can create like yourvirtual futures team right, you
can do things that I think wouldbe effective.
I'm, I'm, I've used it insprints for innovation, sprints

(01:07:51):
where I think as an ideation orscenario, if you feed it the
right scenario model and you askit the right questions, it's
not about giving you the answer,but I think it gives you what I
love about it, even if it'slike even sometimes
hallucination.
It could be like you go, hmm,that's, I never would have
thought of that, or the team,kind of sparks other
conversation.

(01:08:11):
I think that's fantastic, likethat is wild, so if you see it
as that in that way.
But what it serves it to andkind of coming back to the
beginning is ethics.
Right, is what is we neverreally talked about?
You know, people in thesedecades never really talked
about the ethics, how ethicsplay a role in corporate

(01:08:33):
foresight, but I think withgenerative AI, it's going to be,
it needs to be a larger part ofthe conversation.
We don't have to, you know, butthey're going to have to
address it.
I don't know how you feel aboutthat, but it's definitely, I
think, a conversation thathasn't been had yet, but it's
going to have to be.

Rene (01:08:54):
Absolutely.
I mean I think we have.
I mean, I have also anothervantage point, which is that I'm
also I have a UNESCO chair, soat Context there's a wider
network of UNESCO's FuturesLiteracy Directorate.

(01:09:15):
So this is really all aboutasking these kind of questions
Are people capable of thinkingabout their own future?
Are they able to build agencyaround?
How can I get to this future?
And there you often see thatsomething is happening which we

(01:09:36):
call the future is being alreadycolonized by old ideas.
So this is really somethingwhich you see very strongly
today.
And this is something which yousee very strongly today and

(01:09:57):
this is something which here,when we talk about the power of
narratives to bring us to abetter place, well, power of
narratives is there to bring usto any place.
So this power which you wieldgives you also a lot of
responsibility, and whether thatresponsibility is then being
taken up at all times in theright way.

(01:10:19):
This is something which we needto safeguard also to an extent,
and so, while I'm very much forinnovation and experimentation,
this is definitely somethingwhere we need also to take it at
the pace where we still havesome level of control.

Steve (01:10:34):
So what's next for you?
What's next for Roebuck Hager?
What's the next step for youall, because you've had such a
wonderful career so far andyou're like what's next?

Rene (01:10:49):
So for us it's really about helping organizations on
two fronts.
I mean, one is really to go andconquer new places in their
value chain.
So it's really about going allthe way from foresight to
building new markets, buildingnew ventures, new markets,
building new ventures.

(01:11:09):
And the second element is whatwe also work in practice, but
also in my academic context, isto say what are these
opportunities which are bothgood business and which are
helping to create a positivefuture.
So safeguard the planet,safeguard the people, bring more

(01:11:33):
equality onto this planet.
And we feel a certain urgency.
So I told you that my center iscalled the Center for Net
Positive Business and you willsee me present often with a
slide where I put in handwritingthis is the Center for the race
to net positive business andit's it's not just because I'm

(01:11:58):
looking right now a lot atsailing at the Vendee Globe.
I don't know if it's a bigthing in the US, but it's a big
thing here in France people soloracing once around the globe on
sailboats.
But you know it's, there isurgency.
What we look at in our work atthe World Economic Forum is

(01:12:19):
positive and negative tippingpoints.
So you can see that we also, ashumanity.
We will breach and we havealready breached six out of nine
global boundaries or boundariesin our life support system on

(01:12:41):
our planet, and there is acouple of negative tipping
points which could happen withthe ice shield in the Arctic,
with the tundra which is thepermafrost in Siberia, et cetera
, and all of this can accelerateglobal warming to an extent
which we cannot even imaginetoday.

(01:13:02):
So there is a lot of urgency inthere and we feel that, as a
business school, we have boththe obligation but also the
capacity to help organizationsto accelerate these profitable
business models which, at thesame time, also help us to
safeguard people and planet.

Steve (01:13:20):
Fantastic.
I mean, you and I have talkedabout the.
We're kind of impatient in theadoption of this field of study.
What do you think the next year?
Let's just take possiblefutures.
We're not going to dopredictions, we don't do
predictions, but let's look atthe possible future, the next

(01:13:41):
year, couple of years, for thefield itself, because the work
that we both do, the work thatour colleagues do, and, I think,
the growing evangelism andunderstanding of this, what are
your, what are your, what areyour hopes, what do you, what do
you think is, uh, kind of itholds for the, for the, for the
field, this these next few yearsand this morning I just saw

(01:14:05):
something on LinkedIn coming andcoming through from from a
Swedish colleague of ours whojust looked at the trend in
search results of the term likeforesight or using foresight for
future prediction or somethinglike that, and it's increasing
nicely.

Rene (01:14:25):
And that is not coming as a surprise because people are
interested in understanding whatcan I do to understand this
complexity around me, get readyfor the future, etc.
So that's great news.
What we need to now be capableof is scaling also the type of
education in the same way andobviously I love people to join

(01:14:49):
our executive education courseand we have a really nice
program where in six weeks, youknow you can come from knowing
nothing to the field tounderstanding hey, what are the
core techniques and what are theway you apply foresight to
strategy and innovation in anonline program.

(01:15:10):
That's great.
But at the same time, we said,look, I mean not everyone will
come to our executive educationactivities and we're also going
to put something in the publicdomain out there, together with
UNESCO.
So we have also a UNESCO MOOCout there and I'm more than
happy to share the link alsowith you listeners.
Yes, because for me this is abig need which we feel right now

(01:15:34):
, that that we need to betrained.
We need to have the same typeof language.
We need to be able to connectwith one another in thinking and
acting on on the future we want.
So this democratization issomething which is urgently
needed.
We're trying to do what we cando, so we're also scaling it

(01:15:55):
across our programs at the EdEckBusiness School.
We're opening this type ofcontent to many other business
schools, we're putting it intothe public domain and with that
I think we will have more andmore people who have the
capacity to drive their own andtheir organization's futures in
much more of an agency-drivenway.

(01:16:18):
We cannot afford that peoplefeel the future is already made.
We kind of need to now justlive our fate, and we don't have
to.
We can create our own future.
Don't have to.
We can create our own future.
And we have to and we need totake as humanity, we need to
take it back into our own handsjust like Gandhi, imagine the

(01:16:42):
future you want to have and makeit.

Steve (01:16:45):
You just can't let the future happen because there will
be bad actors at play and therewill be other forces that you,
if you knew about them, youcould work with it or prevent it
, and you know it's veryappropriate that you bring that.
You bring it up in that way.
Yeah, I'm as a communicator inthis and a teacher in this.

(01:17:10):
An educator is my goal is amillion people Like I want to
teach a million people in 10years.

Rene (01:17:18):
That's my yeah, you're doing a great job with your
podcast because already that youknow is bringing all the facets
also out of our field, so thatwill definitely be also helping
us as a community, but also atlarge Thank you.

Steve (01:17:33):
Thank you.
I think that the opportunityfor us collectively to spread
that is there.
I think about the evolution ofthe field.
The institutionalizing of it orthe incorporation of it maybe
is a better term.
It allows us to define a commonlanguage, get people using it.

(01:17:55):
I think one thing Joe Leporesaid a lot of people talk about
futures or they say they'refutures, but they actually know
that there's actual.
This is a field of study.
You have to learn the tools andthe methods.
Actually, it's not just sayingthat's where maybe the future's
friendly or the future's fluentthat group that I named but

(01:18:18):
actually the practitioner.
That's where we have to getpeople to.
How do you wield it indifferent ways, in new, creative
ways?
We haven't even thought ofLooking back, how do you want
the perspective of your careerto be remembered and to be
looked at?
How do you want this kind ofthe perspective of your career
to be remembered and be lookedat?

Rene (01:18:36):
Like how do you want this kind of the long story of Rene?
Well, I think for me it'sreally about having helped to
make it so productive that we,on all levels individual level,
organizational level, nationallevel and planetary level take
our destiny into our own hands.
I think that's a very big thingand I will only be able to

(01:18:56):
contribute to it, but I'm tryingto do that through our teaching
, through our practice, throughour studies, through our
benchmarking, and if we can worktogether on that, I think
that's really what we need alsoto move together in the
direction we choose together.

Steve (01:19:11):
Thank you so much for the time.

Rene (01:19:13):
Yeah, you're welcome.

Steve (01:19:14):
It's been great.
Thanks a lot, take care.

Rene (01:19:16):
Thanks, bye-bye.
Thanks for listening to theThink Forward podcast.
You can find us on all themajor podcast platforms and at
wwwthinkforwardshowcom, as wellas on YouTube under Think
Forward Show.

Steve (01:19:30):
See you next time.

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Think Forward EP 126 - Art of Future Preparedness with Dr. Rene Rohrbeck

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Think Forward EP 126 - Art of Future Preparedness with Dr. Rene Rohrbeck