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A CEO I recently worked with had become obsessed with speed and staying ahead of disruption. He launched an internal rapid response tiger teama small group of leaders and managers from a cross-section of departmentsto accelerate innovation. Within a quarter, they launched pilots, restructured teams, and redesigned workflows with promising early results. The dashboard lit up green. But beneath the surface, things were cracking. Departments were misaligned. Innovative pilots clashed with long-term strategic goals. Employees were burning out. Customers noticed. Were doing everything right, he said. Why isnt it working? It reminded me of something systems thinker Donella Meadows once wrote: Its almost certainly an example of cranking the system in the wrong direction. In this case, the issue wasnt strategy, talent, or commitment. It was the frame of thinking itself. Many organizations rely on forecasting as their primary tool for future thinking. Forecasts extend whats already knowntrends, data, and market behavior. Thats useful for near-term planning. But when youre trying to get ahead of disruption or be transformative, its not enough. Leading with foresight The path to the future isnt a straight line. Thats where strategic foresight comes in. Foresight isnt prediction. Its a discipline for understanding complexity, scanning for emerging change, exploring multiple possible futures, and using those insights to make better decisions today. It helps organizations shift from fragile to adaptable, from reactive to resilientand from watching the future unfold to actively shaping it. Foresight isnt theoryits practice. Heres how to put it to work. 1. Shift from linear forecasts to alternative futures Traditional planning assumes the future will look like todayjust more intense. More powerful technologies. More complex regulations. More global complexity. More demanding customers. Strategic foresight challenges the assumption of sameness. Rather than relying on a single, extrapolated future, foresight helps leaders explore a range of plausible alternativesincluding disruptive or counterintuitive ones. By doing so, organizations can stress test strategies, build adaptive capacity, and prepare for a broader set of outcomes. The futures that matter most arent necessarily the most likelytheyre the ones your organization is least prepared for. That requires taking off your organizational blinders. Historical data, internal benchmarks, and even industry norms can constrain your view. Leaders need to look outward across adjacent sectors, cultural shifts, and global forces that will shape tomorrows operating environment. Is the world you live in today what you expected ten years ago? Likely not. The straight-line future is the least likely one. Without broadening your perspective, you risk designing strategies for a world that no longer exists. Try this: Pick a strategic question. For example: What will it mean to lead in an AI-shaped economy? Then, build distinct scenarios that reflect recurring patterns of how the future unfolds: Collapse (no rules): a future shaped by systems failure or falter due to disruption Realignment (shifting rules): a future shaped by changing values, limits, or intentional constraints Transformation (new rules): a future shaped by fundamental emerging change driven via tech, culture, or new models Ground each scenario in early signals of social, technological, economic, environmental, and political change. Then ask: What would it take to succeed in each? What can you start doing now? In practice: A regional bank used this approach to explore the future of trust in financial services. By examining how decentralization, AI governance, and generational values might evolve in different directions, they identified core investmentslike transparency and human-centered designthat would position them well across multiple alternative futures. 2. Look for signals on the margins Most leaders wait for trends to become visible and validated before they act. But by the time something shows up in your dashboards, it’s already well underwayand likely already influencing the competition. Strategic foresight trains leaders to seek out weak signals: early signs of change that emerge at the fringes of industries, cultures, and geographies. These signals tend to look small, strange, or unrelateduntil they dont. When the same unexpected idea starts appearing in unrelated places, or niche behaviors spread across sectors, youre no longer looking at noise. Youre seeing early indicators of what could scale. Weak signals are the raw material for scenario development, and let you act before others do. Try this: Set aside 30 minutes a week to explore beyond your core market. Scan youth culture, subreddits, startup ecosystems, art, policy, or new language emerging online. Ask your team: Whats something strange, sticky, or unexpected youve noticed? Track them. Patterns will emerge, and youll spot change earlier. Common pitfall: Dont confuse noise with significance. Virality isnt viability. Look for persistence and spread across time and context. If an idea keeps resurfacingespecially in unexpected placesit may be a sign of deeper change. 3. Understand the systemnot just the symptom One of the foundational mindsets in foresight is learning to think in systems. Most leaders are taught to break problems down: analyze parts, isolate variables, and find the root cause. That works well in science and engineering. But in businessand in lifeit can be limiting. To lead effectively in complexity, we need to think holistically. Its not linear cause and effectits loops, interdependencies, and emergence. Without this lens, leaders risk solving the wrong problem, or worse, reinforcing the dynamics that created it. Systems thinking reveals the deeper structures shaping outcomesand where leverage really lies. Try this: Take a persistent challengesay, employee burnoutand map it. Place the issue at the center. Ask: What contributes to this? and What does this affect? Draw lines and arrows to show how elements interact. Look for loops and unintended effects. Better yet, build the map with colleagues from across the organization. Youll surface blind spots you didnt know you had. Counterintuitive insight: Effective solutions often feel unnatural. The best move might be to slow growth, loosen control, or redefine success. If your instinct is to push harder, try asking: What if the opposite is true? In practice: A global nonprofit used this mapping technique to explore volunteer attrition. Instead of ramping up recruitment, they found that increasing flexibility and reducing performance tracking led to better retention. 4. Plan from the future, not just for it Foresight isnt just about imagining what might happenits about deciding what should happen and aligning your strategy to make it real. Once youve explored possible futures, choose one youd be proud to help build. Thats your preferred future: not a prediction, but a direction. Then work backward to identify what must be true for that future to unfold. Backcasting reverses typical planning. Instead of projecting from today, it asks: If thats where were going, what decisions should we make now? Try this: Choose a future you want to help createsay, a climate-positive supply chain or radically inclusive service model. Ask: What needs to be true in five years? Three? One? Then identify the actions you can take today to start closing the gap. In practice: A health insurer used this method to envision a future where care is personalized, proactive, and home-based. By backcasting, they identified shifts in reimbursement, caregiver training, and diagnostics. Within months, they were piloting a solution tied to that long-term visionturning foresight into strategy and actively leading the way for an entire industry. From Forecasting to Foresight The most common reaction I hear from executive teams when I introduce foresight is, We already do that. What they usually mean is forecasting. And thats exactly the problem. Forecasting extends the present. Its helpful for budgeting and risk management, but not for transformation. It cant reimagine your business model, challenge outdated assumptions, or surface the early signals of change. Foresight can. More importantly, it gives leaders agencynot just to adapt, but to shape what comes next. This shift isnt just methodological. Its a mindset: one that calls for curiosity, humility, and the courage to act before the future is fully knowable. The future wont follow your roadmap, but that doesnt mean were powerless. Strategic foresight gives leaders the tools to act with purpose, even in uncertainty. Its not just about anticipating change. Its about becoming the kind of organization that helps shape it.
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E-Commerce
Americans love small businesses. We dedicate a week each year to applauding them, and spend Small Business Saturday shopping locally. Yet hiding in plain sight is an enormous challenge facing small-business owners as they age: retiring with dignity and foresight. The current economic climate is making this even more difficult. As a professor who studies aging and business, Ive long viewed small-business owners retirement challenges as a looming crisis. The issue is now front and center for millions of entrepreneurs approaching retirement. Small enterprises make up more than half of all privately held U.S. companies, and for many of their owners, the business is their retirement plan. But while owners often hope to finance their golden years by selling their companies, only 20% of small businesses are ready for sale even in good times, according to the Exit Planning Institute. And right now, conditions are far from ideal. An economic stew of inflation, supply chain instability, and high borrowing costs means that interest from potential buyers is cooling. For many business owners, retirement isnt a distant concern. In the U.S., baby boomerswho are currently 61 to 79 years oldown about 2.3 million businesses. Altogether, they generate about $5 billion in revenue and employ almost 25 million people. These entrepreneurs have spent decades building businesses that often are deeply rooted in their communities. They dont have time to ride out economic chaos, and their optimism is at a 50-year low. New policies, new challenges You cant blame them for being gloomy. Recent policy shifts have only made life harder for business owners nearing retirement. Trade instability, whipsawing tariff announcements and disrupted supply chains have eroded already thin margins. Some businessesgenerally larger ones with more negotiating powerare absorbing extra costs rather than passing them on to shoppers. Others have no choice but to raise prices, to customers dismay. Inflation has further squeezed profits. At the same time, with a few notable exceptions, buyers and capital have grown scarce. Acquirers and liquidity have dried up across many sectors. The secondary market, a barometer of broader investor appetite, now sees more sellers than buyers. These are textbook symptoms of a flight to safety, a market shift that drags out sale timelines and depresses valuationsall while Main Street business owners age out. These entrepreneurs typically have one shot at retirement, if any. Adding to these woes, many small businesses are part of what economists call regional clusters, providing services to nearby universities, hospitals, and local governments. When those anchor institutions face budget cutsas is happening nowsmall-business vendors are often the first to feel the impact. Research shows that many aging owners actually double down in weak economic times, sinking increasing amounts of time and money in a psychological pattern known as escalating commitment. The result is a troubling phenomenon scholars refer to as benign entrapment. Aging entrepreneurs can remain attached to their businesses not because they want to, but because they see no viable exit. This growing crisis isnt about bad personal planning; its a systemic failure. Rewriting the playbook on small-business policy A key mistake that policymakers make is to lump all small-business owners together into one group. That causes them to overlook important differences. After all, a 68-year-old carpenter trying to retire doesnt have much in common with a 28-year-old tech founder pitching a startup. Policymakers may cheer for high-growth unicorns, but they often overlook the cows and horses that keep local economies running. Even among older business owners, circumstances vary based on local conditions. Two retiring carpenters in different towns may face vastly different prospects based on the strength of their local economies. No business, and no business owner, exists in a vacuum. Relatedly, when small businesses fail to transition, it can have consequences for the local economy. Without a buyer, many enterprises will simply shut down. And while closures can be long-planned and thoughtful, when a business closes suddenly, its not just the owner who loses. Employees are left scrambling for work. Suppliers lose contracts. Communities lose essential services. Four ways to help aging entrepreneurs Thats why I think policymakers should reimagine how they support small businesses, especially owners nearing the end of their careers. First, small-business policy should be tailored to age. A retirement-ready business shouldnt be judged solely by its growth potential. Rather, policies should recognize stability and community value as markers of success. The U.S. Small Business Administration and regional agencies can provide resources specifcally for retirement planning that starts early in a businesss life, to include how to increase the value of the business and a plan to attract acquirers in later stages. Second, exit infrastructure should be built into local entrepreneurial ecosystems. Entrepreneurial ecosystems are built to support business entry (think incubators and accelerators) but not for exit. In other words, just like there are accelerators for launching businesses, there should be programs to support winding them down. These could include confidential peer forums, retirement-readiness clinics, succession matchmaking platforms, and flexible financing options for acquisition. Third, chaos isnt good for anybody. Fluctuations in capital gains taxes, estate tax thresholds, and tariffs make planning difficult and reduce business value in the eyes of potential buyers. Stability encourages confidence on both sides of a transaction. And finally, policymakers should include ripple-effect analysis in budget decisions. When universities, hospitals or governments cut spending, small-business vendors often absorb much of the shock. Policymakers should account for these downstream impacts when shaping local and federal budgets. If we want to truly support small businesses and their owners, its important to honor the lifetime arc of entrepreneurshipnot just the launch and growth, but the retirement, too. Nancy Forster-Holt is a clinical associate professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Rhode Island. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
Breakthroughs happen all the time in the tech world, but only a select few manage to make a lasting impact. Predicting which innovations will shape the future is always a challenge. On Tuesday, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its list of the top 10 emerging technologies of 2025, highlighting those expected to influence global challenges within the next three to five years. The list, compiled with the help of Frontiers Media, a publisher of peer-reviewed scientific journals, avoids naming specific companies. Instead, the WEF focuses on concepts that are both novel and nearing maturity, with the potential to deliver meaningful benefits to society. Here’s what the WEF sees as being on the path to a breakthrough in 2025. Advanced nuclear tech Demand for nuclear energy is on the rise, with the Trump administration pledging to fast-track permits for nuclear projects. The WEF predicts that smaller nuclear designs and alternative cooling systems will offer safer, cleaner energy at a lower cost. These reactors, it says, “could play a key role in building reliable, zero-carbon power systems.” Structural battery composites The weight of batteries has been a pain point for things like cars and planes, impacting their efficiency. New materials that store energy and support weight can make these vehicles lighter, improving both their performance and their environmental impact. Collaborative sensing Speaking of vehicles, networking connected sensors can let vehicles share information in real time with each other, as well as with cities and emergency services. In the case of an incident, this can reduce traffic, increase response times, and improve safety, the WEF says. Generative watermarking As artificial intelligence becomes even more widespread, distinguishing original content from AI-generated material will be critical. Generative watermarking adds an invisible tag to AI content, helping combat misinformation and build consumer trust. Green nitrogen Producing fertilizer today requires fossil fuels, which leads to pollution and carbon emissions. Green nitrogen, which relies on electricity instead, could offer “a more sustainable way to grow food,” the WEF says. GLP-1 drugs for neurodegenerative diseases GLP-1 drugs are currently used to treat obesity and diabetes. The WEF notes they are also showing promise in treating other diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Autonomous biochemical sensing Smart sensors capable of continuously monitoring environmental changes or human health without wires could unlock numerous possibilities. The medical field may use them for early disease detection, while scientists can apply them to track pollution and atmospheric trends. Nanozymes Naturally occurring enzymes help clean pollution and are used in medical diagnostics. Lab-made versions, called nanozymes, are stronger and cheaper, which could expand their use in a variety of applications. Engineered living therapeutics Long-term medical care is expensive and often inconsistent in its results. Scientists, according to the WEF, are developing therapies that use beneficial bacteria to deliver treatments from within the body. This approach could lower costs and improve success rates. Osmotic power systems This renewable energy source, which uses the pressure difference that occurs when freshwater and saltwater mix, produces a cleaner form of electricity. That can be especially helpful in coastal areas where special care must be taken to protect both the environment and wildlife.
Category:
E-Commerce
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