Direct-to-avatar (D2A) is a new business model that allows companies to sell their goods directly to avatars or digital twins of customers in the virtual world. Could it become a reality?

A leased standard of living could exist where people pay one monthly subscription to receive all the goods and services they need - housing, food, entertainment and transport. Could this work appear?

Social ranking systems - part of our futures, or unlikely to happen? Have we already made the decisions that pre-empt a social ranking system?

Participatory budgeting - reality or fantasy? How could citizen lead decision making change the way you operate your for-purpose organisation?

You should read this if… you are a CEO or board member grappling with change that cannot be solved through incremental fixes or existing expertise alone. This article explains why strategic foresight is a robust approach for addressing adaptive problems—challenges that require shifts in thinking, behaviour, and business models as the world changes. It shows how foresight helps leaders anticipate emerging change, distinguish adaptive from technical problems, and create the conditions for meaningful, long‑term adaptation rather than short‑term solutions. By applying strategic foresight, organisations can become more agile, better aligned with future operating contexts, and more capable of delivering sustained impact and growth amid ongoing uncertainty.

You should read this if… you believe your current business model is no longer delivering the growth or resilience it once did. This article explores why business model transformation is often necessary as markets, technologies, funding models, and customer expectations evolve, and explains how futures intelligence can help leaders rethink how value is created and delivered. It shows how stepping back from “business as usual” and using foresight to explore emerging change enables organisations to identify new opportunities, challenge entrenched assumptions, and intentionally design the next phase of their business model—before external pressures force change on their terms

Futures scenario planning is using future intelligence to inform alternative visions of possible, probable, and preferred futures, and interpreting how those futures might impact your organisation.

You should read this if… you are a leader who has a clear vision of where you want your organisation to be but are unsure how to translate that future ambition into concrete action today. This article introduces backcasting as a foresight tool that starts with a desired future and works backward to identify the decisions, milestones, and actions needed to get there, rather than extrapolating forward from current conditions. It explains how backcasting helps leaders manage uncertainty, align strategy with long‑term goals, and design more intentional pathways through complexity by focusing on what must change to achieve a preferred future.

You should read this if… you are building the case for investing time and resources in futures thinking rather than relying solely on historical data and short‑term forecasts. This article sets out the business case for foresight, explaining why traditional data‑driven planning becomes unreliable in fast‑changing, uncertain environments. It shows how foresight complements existing analytics by exploring multiple possible, probable, and preferable futures, helping leaders make decisions with greater confidence, creativity, and reliability. By strengthening strategic agility, alignment, and the ability to shape rather than simply react to change, foresight becomes a practical capability for navigating uncertainty and supporting better long‑term outcomes.

You should read this if… you are interested in an evidence-based view of whether Australia’s charity sector is building balance sheets or converting revenue into service delivery. This post uses publicly available ACNC data (covering over 49,000 charities, with annual datasets available back to 2013) to examine sector “wealth” and balance‑sheet health, and finds that most Australian charities raising revenue from the public in 2019 appeared financially healthy, with assets and liabilities broadly proportionate to sector revenue. It notes that charities holding land and property tend to have larger balance sheets and that property value increases—particularly in metropolitan areas—have supported balance‑sheet strength, while revenue growth did not appear to be disproportionately used to inflate balance sheets; it also argues that adding cashflow data to ACNC reporting would enable a more complete assessment

Innovation is a tricky beast. It's not always clear that the risks outweigh the rewards. For those of us in for-purpose organisations, getting the business case right to fund innovation is critical; uncertainty can be a roadblock, but it doesn't have to be.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to using strategic foresight in your business. The key is to experiment, find what works for you, and adapt as needed.

You should read this if… you are struggling with unclear briefs, misaligned expectations, or work that becomes more complicated than it needs to be. This article introduces the CPQQRT framework—Context, Purpose, Quality, Quantity, Resources, and Time—as a practical way to manage complexity by dramatically improving clarity in how work is defined and delegated. It explains how using CPQQRT helps leaders articulate what needs to be done, why it matters, what “good” looks like, and the constraints involved, reducing confusion, rework, and frustration while enabling teams to deliver stronger outcomes in complex organisational environments.

A good way to create alternative views of futures is by building scenarios. This involves bringing together different trends, phenomena, and uncertainties to understand their interdependence and joint implications.

One way that long-range planning is enhanced is through the creation of various alternative futures, which are significantly different from one another. The scenarios that planners create can be based on different assumptions about technology, demography, economics, politics, and other factors.

You should watch this video if… you are interested in better ways to plan in the face of uncertainty, complexity, and uncomfortable realities. This article explores the concepts of Black Elephants, Black Swans, and Black Jellyfish as practical lenses for future‑informed planning—helping leaders distinguish between risks they see but avoid, shocks they don’t expect, and issues that appear manageable but can escalate unexpectedly. It shows how deliberately identifying and exploring all three concepts expands strategic thinking, supports more resilient and diversified plans, and strengthens an organisation’s ability to respond thoughtfully to disruption rather than being surprised by it.

Forward thinking leaders need to develop the ability to scan for signals, issues and trends that are developing now and create a view on how they might play across a range of futures.

It can be easy to believe that tomorrow will be like today—that customers will have the same demands, that businesses will operate in the same way, or that Governments will make similar decisions. These beliefs are comforting, in part because they suggest that nothing fundamental will change in our futures. But if we believe these things about futures, then we are limiting those who come after us to live in a world that is less than what it could be.

Forward-thinking CEOs and Boards are using foresight to plan for tomorrow. They're looking 5,10,20 years into the future to see what might happen. By doing this, they're able to make today's decisions with more confidence and greater reliability.

Which futures will appear? There are many different variations of futures emerging. It may sound far fetched… but robots may dance.