Page 203 - The Design Thinking Playbook

EXPERT TIP

“Playbook for Strategic Foresight and Innovation”

Peter really likes the advanced mindset and sees in strategic foresight Ultimately, a clear vision is the only ingredient that determines success. What spoils success are pre-
an ideal complement to his current activities. vailing mindsets and management paradigms based on fear. Fear is easy to stir up, such as with
negative financial forecasts about missed targets, cost savings, and the announcements of staff layoffs.
But he also knows that, in the minds of many business leaders, the
belief prevails that a sort of secret recipe must exist that enables The good news is: There are other ways!
companies to launch radical innovations on the market. There is a
plethora of rumors of various kinds: Over the last 50 years, a culture was created at Stanford and in Silicon Valley that allows for a team to
• Success is due to the genius of the company founder and serial act in a forward-looking manner and thus develop new products and even industry standards. New models
entrepreneur (Apple & Tesla) from design and engineering research, and the lecture halls and labs in the Valley, became effective tools
• Unlimited resources are the decisive factor (Google & Facebook) for global innovation leaders. Many of these tools were documented in the “Playbook for Strategic Fore-
• It’s just pure luck (Twitter & Snapchat) sight and Innovation,” which is available free of charge to all innovation fans at www.innovation.io. The
foresight mindset is disseminated virally in organizations when effective tools are applied accordingly and
the long-term mindset is backed by all. Companies such as Deutsche Bank, Volvo Construction Equipment,
Samsung Electronics, and many other global businesses have established a new mindset in their organi-
zations with the aid of these tools. The Foresight Framework was developed to protect teams from a “dis-
It’s me aha! ruption dread”: the growing fear that others might overtake you. The distinguishing feature of the Foresight
Framework is a positive vision of the future, the products, the services, and the vision of a company.

Countless books have been written on the gloomy future of companies
that don’t succeed in deciphering the secret recipe. Often companies
have no clear idea as to where the journey should lead. Their excuse
is that other companies don’t have a clear strategy and vision either
and that it is still too early to formulate a clear digitization strategy
anyway.

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