Name
Thriving in a “Right Now” World: Integrating Sustainability and Strategic Foresight into The Mainstream of Strategy
Date
Thursday, May 19, 2022
Time
11:05 AM - 12:05 PM
Speakers
Description
The first and second Industrial Revolution brought progress and contribution to the world; however, a focus on production efficiency to maximize stakeholder profit did not come without unintended consequences (e.g., climate change, unethical labor practices, and waste generation). These issues continue to grow more complex and detrimental to humanity. But rather than tackling these wicked problems systematically, Strategic Foresight allows us to rethink every strategic decision to be holistically interconnected and future empowered. This practice acts at the bedrock level, creating a network of sustainability across time and sectors. We need strategies that enable us to thrive. Strategic Foresight can act as the operating system for energy, agriculture, education, government, and more to achieve true sustainability now and into the future.
How does this session align with the conference theme "Strategy in a 'Right Now' World" and topic areas
“Right-Now” is equivalent to “Taking Action Today In View of The Future or Tomorrow”, which is called “Sustainability.” Specifically, strategy is the ability to create a link between where we are going (future state) from where we are (current state) taking into cognizance our organization’s competitive positioning and environmental assessment. The beginning journey of strategy is the future state (where are we going). Thus, strategy is a link between our future state (thinking tomorrow) and current state (acting today). Sustainability is the ability of acting today in view of the future or tomorrow by having long-term perspectives toward issues, events, and things, hinged on three (3) Main Pillars of Sustainability called 3Ps (Profit, Planet, and People) casually linked to preserving Economic, Environmental, and Social values respectively. Thus, sustainability is about thinking toward the future and acting today. Strategic Foresight and futures Thinking is an approach that creates functional views of alternative futures and possibilities by discovering the future and creating it today. Thus, Strategic Foresight is about thinking toward the future and acting today. There exists a link between Strategy and Sustainability as well as between Strategic Foresight and Sustainability; thus, the underlying thread between strategy, sustainability, and strategic foresight is the ability of “acting today in view of the future or tomorrow”. Thus, Strategic Foresight is bedrock or foundation of Sustainability, while Sustainability is the Perspective (lens or worldview) through which Strategy is viewed, seen, and embraced. The underlying thread that runs through strategy, sustainability, and Strategic Foresight is “thinking tomorrow and acting today”.