Individual Foresight
Strategic Foresight is not only relevant for organizations.
At the end of the day, every decision is made by individuals — leaders, managers, employees, or independent professionals. They are the ones who must sense weak signals, interpret uncertainty, and act upon foresight insights.
Individual Foresight is about building these personal capabilities: the ability to widen one’s horizon, to challenge assumptions, and to envision multiple possible futures. How can individuals train themselves to detect emerging trends, reduce cognitive bias, and develop scenarios that lead to better decisions?
Why Individual Foresight Matters
In today’s volatile and uncertain environment, foresight cannot remain an abstract process hidden within corporate strategy departments. Every individual — whether working in business, academia, or public service — needs the ability to interpret change and prepare for multiple possible futures.
Research shows that training in foresight skills improves a person’s ability to detect emerging trends, make better decisions under uncertainty, and reduce cognitive biases. This is not only a valuable leadership quality but also a crucial everyday competence in a world where disruption is the norm. Developing foresight on the individual level means:
Building peripheral vision to see beyond the obvious.
Practicing scenario thinking to explore alternatives.
Gaining confidence in decision-making under uncertainty.
Strengthening resilience and adaptability in shifting contexts.
Foresight as a Foundation for Dynamic Capabilities
In my article “Corporate foresight as a microfoundation of dynamic capabilities” (Futures & Foresight Science, 2020), co-authored with René Rohrbeck and Bernhard Wach, we explored the role of foresight at both organizational and individual levels. Our findings show that foresight practices — especially when combined with training for individual leaders — are strongly linked to dynamic managerial capabilities, such as perceiving weak signals, making strategic decisions under uncertainty, and adapting to changing environments.
In other words: Individual Foresight provides the microfoundations that enable organizations to stay future-ready. When individuals are trained to think in futures, organizations gain the agility to innovate, shift resources, and create long-term value.
You can find a summary of these insights in this video:
The Role of Individuals in Strategic Foresight
Exploring the Role of Futurists:
Insights from the Dubai Future Forum 2024
At the Dubai Future Forum 2024, I shared perspectives on the evolving role of futurists in the session “Foresight Insights | Today & Tomorrow: What Makes a Futurist?”. A key takeaway: being a futurist — whether formally trained or acting as an internal change agent — is not only about analyzing trends and producing reports. It is also about educating stakeholders, empowering decision-makers, and creating space for collective sense-making.
Individual Foresight thus goes beyond personal skill. It is also a responsibility: to help others engage with uncertainty, to make future narratives visible, and to translate foresight into action.
“The future is not only shaped by institutions, but by the people inside them.”
The Future starts with you
Individual Foresight reminds us that the future is not only shaped by institutions but also by the people inside them. By strengthening foresight skills on a personal level, we give ourselves the tools to navigate complexity, reduce uncertainty, and actively shape the futures we want to see. Whether you are a leader, innovator, or citizen — foresight begins with you.
I look forward to engaging with those who see the value of foresight and want to shape tomorrow with intention.