Developing a transformative business strategy through the combination of design thinking and futures literacy

The paper describes a systematic methodology that combines futures literacy and design thinking to enable the collective discovery of new and disruptive business niches. It is a participatory approach centred on design know-how, which promotes innovative forms of engagement and articulation. The proposed methodology balances experience in designing and applying foresight approaches and futures literacy knowledge labs together with a multidisciplinary understanding of institutional context.

The methodology fosters decision making processes that embrace complexity and treat uncertainty as a resource, thus improving an organisations’ capacity to use the future to expand its understanding of the present. It has been applied at the Center for Strategic Studies and Management (CGEE), an organisation where institutionalised foresight and technology assessment takes place in Brazil, especially in support of Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) policy design and implementation, as well as evaluation. However, its clients also include different ministries within government and industries alike.

The article outlines the ways in which the organisation involved all its collaborators in jointly rethinking its future, building upon collective intelligence, narrative building, sense making, framing and reframing. The design principles called for these experiments to follow a collective learning curve that enable a renewed focus on systemic and transformative innovation. The crafting of new strategic questions was inspired by jointly expanding the understanding of the imaginary futures of the interrelated systems in which the organisation might play a role. As a consequence, new and disruptive possible roles for the institution were identified. These insights then informed the assessment and choices for the redesign of the business strategy.

This paper presents the methodology for combining design thinking and futures literacy, the application of this methodology to CGEE, and the major findings of the overall exercise. Readers will find out about the impact of this exercise on the organisation’s approach to both its own strategic positioning and to the design and implementation of foresight and strategic studies. The paper concludes by outlining the implications of the proposed methodology for foresight practice.