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Building Strategic Foresight Capabilities
  • Level Professional
  • Duration 10 hours
  • Course by EDHEC Business School
  • Offered by

About

Today, organizations find themselves dealing with an increasing amount of uncertainty. They are often ill-equipped at responding to disruptive change and find themselves blindsided by ‘unexpected’ landslides in their ecosystems. In order to hold their ground, they need to upgrade their capabilities, become more agile in adapting to change and drive firm-level, society-level and industry-level change proactively. This course introduces you to strategic foresight, its main methods and tools and their application in public and private organisations. Foresight allows organisations to get ahead of the curve, pre-emptively catch trends, define more effective and robust policies and drive positive futures. You will also learn how foresight is an inclusive way of preparing for the future, how to involve a wide set of stakeholders, overcome silo thinking and leverage collective intelligence to advance the status quo. The course is built on over 15 years of benchmarking among leading organisations and leverages on the collective experience of three lecturers, who introduced foresight, strategy, innovation and design thinking to public organisation and in leading private sector companies. After completing this course, you will understand the need for strategic foresight, as well as how and where it is used, which benefits it yields and why leading organisations systematically invest in staying on top of the future.

Modules

Introduction and Overview

    • 1 Videos
    • 4 Readings
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1 Videos

  • Meet your hosts for this course

4 Readings

  • Course Overview
  • Syllabus
  • Welcome! Introduction to Week 1
  • Get to know your Classmates

Foresight and how it drives success

    • 3 Videos
    • 1 Readings
    • 1 Discussion
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1 Discussions

  • A foresight exercise

3 Videos

  • Foresight versus Forecasting
  • Power of foresight: organization
  • Power of foresight: A personal story

1 Readings

  • Events versus patterns

The Future-back approach to thinking

    • 3 Videos
    • 2 Readings
    • 1 Discussion
    • 1 Assignment
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1 Assignment

  • Reflective activity - Signals for your shareholders/stakeholders

1 Discussions

  • Waves or Tides?

3 Videos

  • Principles for thinking in the future
  • What is a signal?
  • Examples of signals

2 Readings

  • Inflection points
  • How to spot a signal

Understanding drivers of change

    • 2 Videos
    • 1 Readings
    • 1 Discussion
    • 1 Assignment
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1 Assignment

  • Reflective activity - PESTLE Analysis on Air Travel drivers

1 Discussions

  • Drivers of change for your personal career

2 Videos

  • From signals to drivers
  • Air Travel Scenarios 2040

1 Readings

  • Conducting a Trend Audit

Review

    • 1 Videos
    • 1 Assignment
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1 Assignment

  • Review of Week 1

1 Videos

  • Review of Week 1

Scenario thinking to manage complex systems

    • 3 Videos
    • 2 Readings
    • 1 Assignment
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1 Assignment

  • Reflective activity - From drivers of change to scenarios

3 Videos

  • Creating the future: New thinking styles
  • Casual loop diagram
  • Futures cone

2 Readings

  • Welcome to Week 2
  • Making Systems Thinking More Than a Slogan

Scenario planning approaches and quality criteria

    • 3 Videos
    • 2 Readings
    • 1 Discussion
    • 2 Assignment
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2 Assignment

  • Reflective activity - Impact Matrix
  • Reflective activity - Cross Impact Analysis

1 Discussions

  • Scenario planning versus traditional linear strategic planning

3 Videos

  • Scenario planning approaches
  • Uncertainty/Impact Matrix
  • Cross Impact Analysis

2 Readings

  • Scenario BUILDING process
  • Prioritizing uncertainties

Review

    • 1 Readings
    • 1 Assignment
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1 Assignment

  • Review of Week 2

1 Readings

  • Review of Week 2

Cognitive challenges that we need to overcome

    • 3 Readings
    • 1 Assignment
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1 Assignment

  • Understanding cognitive challenges to future-orientation

3 Readings

  • Welcome to Week 3
  • Scenarios, a powerful medium to fuel strategic conversations and inform decision making
  • The three cognitive challenges

Scenario Narratives and Visualization

    • 2 Videos
    • 3 Readings
    • 1 Discussion
    • 1 Assignment
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1 Assignment

  • Reflective activity - Scenarios: Team on a mission

1 Discussions

  • Engaging Stakeholders: Your personal career

2 Videos

  • Building Narratives
  • Winning hearts and minds

3 Readings

  • Scenario Cross
  • Scenario narratives
  • Engaging stakeholders

Review

    • 1 Videos
    • 1 Assignment
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1 Assignment

  • Review of Week 3

1 Videos

  • Review of Week 3

Introduction

    • 1 Videos
    • 1 Readings
Show info about module content

1 Videos

  • Introduction to Week 4

1 Readings

  • Welcome to Week 4

Strategy under uncertainty and developing a MTP

    • 2 Videos
    • 1 Readings
    • 1 Discussion
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1 Discussions

  • Alignment on Purpose

2 Videos

  • Winning practices for executing strategy
  • Massive Transformational Purpose (MTP)

1 Readings

  • Massive Transformational Purpose (MTP)

The art of developing distant strategies

    • 2 Videos
    • 1 Readings
    • 2 Discussion
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2 Discussions

  • Strategy Playbox
  • Portfolio of Actions: Your personal career

2 Videos

  • Building a Strategy Playbox
  • Portfolio of Actions

1 Readings

  • Developing distant strategies for a small restaurant (inspirational story)

Review

    • 1 Videos
    • 1 Assignment
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1 Assignment

  • Review of Week 4

1 Videos

  • Review of Week 4

Introduction

    • 4 Videos
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4 Videos

  • Introduction to Week 5
  • Why and when to invest in strategic foresight?
  • Value impact of future fitness
  • The six capabilities of future fitness

Future FITness in public organizations: National Innovation Agency Thailand

    • 4 Videos
    • 5 Readings
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4 Videos

  • Introduction Dr. Pun-Arj Chairatana
  • Kick-starting foresight in Thailand
  • Future Tales Lab by MQDC
  • Lessons learned

5 Readings

  • The challenge
  • Founding of the Innovation Foresight Institute
  • Deploying the foresight toolkit
  • Building a public-private foresight ecosystem
  • A growing foresight ecosystem to drive innovation

Embedding foresight capabilities

    • 2 Readings
    • 1 Discussion
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1 Discussions

  • Introducing Foresight to your organization

2 Readings

  • Leading a foresight unit
  • Building foresight capabilities at scale

Using foresight to support personal career planning

    • 1 Videos
    • 1 Discussion
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1 Discussions

  • Foresight applied to your personal career

1 Videos

  • Future fitness of your personal life - A personal story

Review

    • 1 Videos
    • 1 Assignment
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1 Assignment

  • Review of Week 5

1 Videos

  • Review of Week 5

Final exam

    • 1 Assignment
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1 Assignment

  • Final exam

Auto Summary

"Building Strategic Foresight Capabilities" is a professional-level course in Business & Management, instructed by experienced lecturers from Coursera. The course focuses on equipping organizations with the tools and methods of strategic foresight to navigate uncertainty, adapt to change, and drive proactive industry transformation. Spanning 600 minutes, it covers involving stakeholders, overcoming silo thinking, and leveraging collective intelligence. Subscription options include Starter and Professional, making it ideal for professionals seeking to enhance their foresight skills and drive positive futures.

René Rohrbeck
Instructors

René Rohrbeck

Remco Lenstra
Instructors

Remco Lenstra

Camelia Ram
Instructors

Camelia Ram