Since the mid-1900s, large corporations have been using scenarios, strategic planning, and long term action plans to anticipate and prepare for their futures. Large businesses pioneered the methods of foresight for their own use, and those methods have worked very well for them. But... small business is different. The traditional methods for planning for the future didn't fit small business. Small Business Foresight is designed for small businesses. Written by a professional futurist with over 50 years' experience in small business, the tools and methods described and detailed in this book work. They are designed specifically for small business. Whether your business consists of just you, or includes dozens or even hundreds employees, these methods work! In this book, you will learn about the stages of business growth, the forces of change that impact your business, trends that guide the forces, the importance of scenarios (stories about the future and how to build them), the value of strategic thinking and planning, how to create a long term plan for your business based on the strategies you develop, and more. Much more. Small Business Foresight will help you build a plan for the future of your business.

The world changes like the patterns in a kaleidoscope: trends expand, contract, break up, melt, disintegrate and disappear, while others are formed. Change – as opposed to stasis – is our normal condition, the only certainty in our lives, hence the need to create tools that provide organizations with the means to tackle change and navigate complexity. We must accept the reality of constant change and be prepared for a heavy shift in perspective: interconnection versus separation, acceleration versus linearity and discontinuity versus continuity. Anticipating the future requires more than the traditional predictive models (forecasting) based on the forward projection of past experiences. Advanced methods use anticipation logic (foresight) and build probable scenarios taking into account weak signals, emerging trends, coexisting presents and potential paths of evolution. Corporate foresight is fundamental to interpret and lead change. The two cornerstones of foresight are organization and management. As concerns organization, the authors advocate the separation of research (oriented to the market of tomorrow) from development (oriented to the market of today), the establishment of a foresight unit and the concentration of research activities mainly on the acquisition and recombination of external know-how. As regards management, after an overview of state-of-the-art literature on forecasting methods, the authors propose the implementation of a "future coverage" methodology, which enables companies to measure and verify the consistency between trends, strategic vision and offered products. These organizational and managing tools are then tested in a case study: the Italian company Eurotech SpA, a leader in the ICT sector.

Why should you be interested in learning about methods to explore small business foresight? The answer is pretty simple. The methods employed by futurists and large organizations worldwide are successful. They work. Unfortunately, what works well in a large organization may not scale down directly to a small business. Some adjustments or changes are necessary. This workbook offers you the same methods used by businesses and governments all over the world to explore, choose and prepare for the future. The methods are scaled down and adjustments made to make the methods more effective for small Managements. What should you be able to expect from studying about the future? The approach you will take with this workbook consists of three steps: 1.Build a framework of information about your organization. 2.Based on the framework information, explore potential futures with scenarios. 3.From the scenarios, develop a vision, strategies and action plans for your future. You will use the same methods that have been practiced by futurists for decades all over the world. At the end of this process you should have a vision for the future of your business, specific plans for the next ten years, and contingency plans to deal with unexpected changes and events.

The forces transforming tomorrow are profound, powerful and accelerating. The Internet, social networks, crowd-sourcing, gaming dynamics, new information and communication technologies, robotics, biotechnology and nanotechnology are all converging to transform everything from agriculture, energy, education and law enforcement to healthcare, manufacturing, banking and finance, retail and transportation. In Foresight 20/20, professional futurists and business forecasters Jack Uldrich and Simon Anderson have developed thirteen scenarios designed to aid the reader in understanding how a variety of technological trends are transforming the world of tomorrow. The trends are exciting and scary, positive or negative, prosaic and profound, and will impact both one's personal or professional life. As Cervantes said centuries ago, "Forewarned, forearmed; to be prepared is half the victory" Foresight 20/20 goes one step further and not only prepares the reader for victory but also instills in th

This is a practical (field) guide to foresight and foresight tools for leaders in business, the public sector and NGOs, to aid their practice in strategy, decision making and change.