In the ever changing global landscape, organizations need to anticipate and adapt to shifting circumstances to survive. AJ Artemel spoke to Dr. Gereon Uerz of the Arup Foresight + Innovation team to discuss how this can be realized.
Getting companies to make decisions based on possible futures seems like a daunting task. What are the challenges involved?
They are huge, and they have not grown smaller, for a couple of reasons.
One of the most important might be that most huge multinational organizations and corporations are shareholder driven. They need to deliver every three months; they need to do complex financial reporting; they depend on stock markets; they are only interested in growing revenue, in conquering new markets. This is very short term, and if you don’t deliver in management, especially as the CEO, you’re gone. So there’s no incentive to look beyond your current business model.
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