Is the Corporation at odds with the Future?

2014

It is common knowledge that the horizon beyond which the fundamentals of the context in which any entity, business or otherwise, operates is shrinking in an accelerated manner. The Future, the one that you did not design the organization for, comes closer every day. Note how I define the future here – it is just past the boundary of what you know with certainty.

To a large extent the pieces and fragments of what will be the future are public knowledge. The contextualization of those pieces to one’s own situation and filling in the few gaps that remain, is what corporations do not do well enough. The surprises are mostly always context-specific; such as the invalidation of a business model. The business model in fact is an excellent framework with which to understand and evaluate implication of developments.

The challenge then is firstly one of cognition, the well-known reluctance to override or get around the filters that define prevalent business models and prevent one from seeing the implications of an emerging future.

Secondly, there is the reluctance to take the specific steps required to contextualize the knowledge in one’s own domain of interest.

Finally, the real challenge is the lack of motivation to mobilize action that requires stepping into a reality of ongoing paradox.

I came across this article by Grant McCracken that exhorts organizations to become future-sensitive being as he says, at odds with the future. (The language quite borders on the poetic.)

In a nutshell, I recommend that organizations develop a systematic foresight practice. But that alone is not enough.

The enterprise must also develop a number of other capabilities that form the platform for living with accelerated change. Without some competence in that space, the enterprise is paralyzed into inaction. It tends to procrastinate and delays action till a point when the only course has to be drastic and radical.

There are a lot of developments happening today that would enable the increasingly fluid and liquid enterprise architectures that the future demands. These designs are on the horizon today.

With the focus on developing the required capabilities and competencies required the enterprise will give itself a better shot at longevity.

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