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Future Pull

Envisioning the Future and creating your plan to make it happen... your way!

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Purpose

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Process

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Payoff

If smart people understand that "Past performance is no guarantee of future results," why do so many companies form their strategic plans by extrapolating from it?  Innovative companies don't.  So our strategic process for envisioning the future is designed to imagine the future so you can make business and innovation decisions to set your company up for success in that changed world.
Future Pull is a multi-step scenario planning process that engages a senior strategic team through a multi-step process where they: first, review all existing trend and future assumptions that exist in the company, and as many published views from outside resources as possible.  A beginning Future View is developed based on insights from that review.  Then we bring in outside experts to fill in the gaps, challenge existing assumptions, uncover ermerging driving or disruptive forces that may affect that future view.  Alternative scenarios are evaluated.  The strategic team then, in an informed way, identifies the keys to, and a future view they have high confidence in.  From this, they create their unique "Future Vision" and identify the key initiatives that will be critical to a) making that future happen, and b) ensuring your company is uniquely positioned to win in that future.
Your company has a "shared vision" regarding your future competitive world and how you intend to win in that world.  With a clear vision, senior executives have strategic criteria for decision making regarding investments, asset and resource allocation and innovation that is all working toward the same goal.  Because they have immersed themselves in the learning and had a voice in envisioning this future, they have a passion to make it happen. 

A successful CEO of an innovative company in the fast moving world of Life Sciences, when challenged about using "imaginary numbers" of NPV and ROI as his criteria for investing in major innovation programs asked "If not those criteria, what criteria should I use"?  The answer was another question: "Do you have a vision for this company and how it will be successful 10 years from now"?  His answer was "No."  Our point, and his "Eureka!" was that making big investment decisions is easy if you have a clear vision and goal -- which ones further that goal?  Which ones must you succeed at to win?  NPV and ROI are always estimates in early innovation... extrapolations and assumptions -- "Imaginary numbers".  Are you still making strategic investments based on someone's financial assumptions?