Insights
Strategic Thinking for a Shifting World
This Insights section offers guidance on strategic planning and the role of AI in decision-making.
Each article shares practical tools and perspectives to help leadership teams develop resilient strategies.
Featured Articles
What is Strategic Foresight and How Did I Learn It?
Why Strategic Foresight Requires Expert Guidance
Applying the Rigor of the Past to Gain Insight on the Future
Discuss Strategic Thinking
AI-Powered Strategic Foresight: Precision Without Hallucinations
Strategic Foresight: The Next Generation of Risk Management
Schedule a Conversation
Want to explore how structured foresight could help your leadership team think further ahead?
What is Strategic Foresight and How Did I Learn It?
Early in my investment banking career, I saw firsthand that strong strategy goes beyond analyzing a company’s current position. It requires understanding where the industry is heading and how the company should position itself for what comes next.
As an associate in Schroders’ Investment Banking Department, I worked in the Generalist Pool, where Managing Directors from any industry group could walk in and say:
"I have a meeting with a CEO in a few weeks. I need a presentation on strategic options for their company."
The challenge? The company could be in an industry I had never worked in, like air brakes.
How Do You Analyze an Unfamiliar Industry?
Providing high-level strategic insights without prior knowledge of an industry requires a methodical approach. Fortunately, my background in investment research prepared me for this.
Before Schroders, I worked in Equity Research at Goldman Sachs, where I learned how to break down industries, assess company fundamentals, and analyze economic forces that shape corporate performance and valuations.
At Goldman, I analyzed financial statements within a broader context, examining industry evolution, economic cycles, and the early indicators that signal market shifts before they become obvious.
An Immersive Education in Investment Research and Economics at Goldman
My degrees from Wharton and Chicago Booth gave me a strong foundation in economics and finance, but my real-world education in understanding the mechanics of the economy began at Goldman, where I sat next to the Economics team.
Their daily discussions offered a front-row seat to their conversations about
📉 GDP and business cycles
📊 Interest rate fluctuations, the yield curve, and impact on investments
🔍 The meaning behind the Fed minutes: what was said, what wasn’t, and why it mattered
🌍 Global trade, industrial production, and structural shifts in the economy
I asked questions constantly and absorbed everything. Over time, I started to see the patterns behind market movements.
Some of the most valuable experiences came from informal conversations with Bill Dudley, then a VP Economist at Goldman. A few of us analysts often had lunch with him, where he explained complex economic data and patterns.
I remember a casual hallway conversation where someone asked, “If you could be anyone, real or fictional, who would you be?” People tossed out names like Spider-Man and other superheroes.
Bill’s answer? “Chairman of the Fed.”
Game over. Back to work.
Bill later became Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
From Industry Research to Strategic Vision
When analyzing the air brake company, I used the same approach I had developed at Goldman
- Research the Industry: Understand the key players, competitive dynamics, and market positioning.
- Analyze Economic and Market Forces: Identify macroeconomic trends affecting the sector.
- Develop Scenarios: Envision multiple possible futures.
- Identify Opportunities: Define strategies that would strengthen the company’s position.
The data provided the foundation to look ahead to envision multiple possible futures and evaluate how different choices would play out over time to assess how the company could succeed in each of them.
Without realizing it, I was already practicing Strategic Foresight.
My ability to anticipate change comes from a combination of experiences:
- 📖 Reading fiction from an early age developed my abilities to imagine and analyze complex scenarios.
- 🎨 Design training taught me how to envision possibilities and create practical steps to bring them to life.
- 💼 A background in finance gave me the tools to connect economic indicators to long-term business outcomes.
Discovering Strategic Foresight as a Field
Years later, I attended a talk at the SXSW conference by Amy Webb, who spoke about her book, The Signals Are Talking. She described a structured approach to anticipating change, assessing multiple futures, and building resilient strategies, and I realized she was discussing exactly what I had been doing in investment banking!
At SXSW 2024, I took this further by attending a masterclass in Strategic Foresight led by Amy Webb and her team at the Future Today Institute, whose clients include leading global corporations and government agencies.
I then pursued a certification in Strategic Foresight from the University of Houston, one of the leading programs in the field, which advises organizations like NASA.
Strategic Foresight and the Future of Decision-Making
The method I developed in investment banking evolved into a systematic approach to decision-making, one I now use to help executives gain clarity, cut through complexity, and prepare for what’s ahead.
Rapid shifts in technology, regulation, and market dynamics demand a more sophisticated approach to strategy.
Leadership teams can’t rely solely on historical data. They need a structured way to assess uncertainty, anticipate risks, and evaluate multiple strategic pathways.
Because the future isn’t something you wait for. It’s something you prepare for.
Strategic Foresight: Applying the Rigor of the Past to Gain Insight on the Future
How could this approach reshape how you see your options?
Let's Explore What's Possible
Many business leaders concentrate on immediate challenges: market shifts, quarterly earnings, and today’s headlines. The leaders who consistently create long-term value focus on what’s ahead.
Strategic Foresight provides a structured way to analyze potential futures and prepare for them. It's not about predicting what will happen, but about recognizing patterns, understanding signals of change, and evaluating how different paths could unfold. With this approach, executives move beyond reactionary decisions and instead develop strategies that account for a range of possibilities.
Though the concept has gained visibility in recent years, it’s not new. One of the most insightful frameworks for foresight comes from an unexpected place: economic history.
What Is Strategic Foresight?
Strategic Foresight applies structured analysis to anticipate change.
Instead of relying on past performance or intuition, it incorporates data-driven modeling, counterfactual thinking, and scenario analysis to help organizations
🔹 Recognize shifts before they become disruptions
🔹 Challenge assumptions to surface new risks and opportunities
🔹 Develop flexible strategies that account for multiple outcomes
🔹 Gain a long-term advantage by preparing for multiple possible futures
Organizations such as Google, NASA, and the U.S. military have long applied foresight methodologies to navigate uncertainty. Increasingly, business leaders and investors are using the same principles to strengthen competitive positioning.
The Fogel Connection: What Economic History Teaches Us About the Future
One of the most influential minds in this space is Robert W. Fogel, the Nobel Prize-winning economic historian.
Fogel pioneered the use of data-driven modeling, counterfactual analysis, and statistical methods to challenge widely held beliefs about economic transformation. His work extended beyond documenting history; he examined how change happens and what it means for the future.
His insights provide a blueprint for a modern, rigorous approach to Strategic Foresight.
A Shift in Thinking
As an MBA student at the University of Chicago, I had the opportunity to learn directly from Fogel, and his approach fundamentally reshaped how I think.
In his lectures, he spoke with a quiet intensity, sometimes pausing mid-sentence as if carefully weighing each word. Other times, his insights arrived so quickly it was hard to keep up. It felt like sections of my brain were rearranging themselves as he spoke. It was the first time I understood the expression “mind-blowing”. Every class felt like a mental reset, forcing me to reconsider ideas I had taken for granted.
At Wharton undergrad, many of the subjects I studied presented knowledge in a structured way:
📊 Accounting had definitive rules.
⚖️ Contracts followed legal frameworks.
📉 Finance relied on formulas.
📈 Strategy applied established models.
These structures suggested a sense of certainty.
Fogel’s approach dismantled that notion. His thinking felt completely different and non-linear. As he envisioned multiple potential timelines, he illustrated how a wide range of forces from throughout culture and society shaped the economy and the business world.
He mapped out alternative historical scenarios, revealing how industries, economies, and entire societies could have developed along entirely different trajectories. He demonstrated how social, political, and technological factors intertwined to shape business environments in ways that traditional economic models often missed.
This framework added another dimension to my earlier experience in investment research at Goldman Sachs, where I had learned how economic forces interact and influence business outcomes.
How Fogel’s Work Connects to Foresight-Driven Strategy
1. Challenging Assumptions: What If the Core Premises Are Wrong?
Before Fogel, many economists believed railroads were the single biggest driver of U.S. economic growth in the 19th century. It was widely accepted as fact.
Fogel examined the data and found a different story. Railroads were important, but economic growth would have continued at nearly the same pace through other means, such as canals and roads.
This introduced the concept of counterfactual analysis: testing alternative scenarios to assess whether assumptions hold up under scrutiny.
🚀 The Foresight Connection:
Many companies assume their industry will follow a predictable trajectory. In reality, underlying drivers often shift. Strategic Foresight pushes leaders to ask:
"What if the forces shaping our industry take a different course? What possibilities should we prepare for?"
2. Identifying the Hidden Forces Driving Change
Later in his career, Fogel explored long-term economic growth. While many economists focused on capital and labor productivity, he looked deeper and found that improvements in nutrition, health, and longevity had far greater effects than most economists had recognized.
He argued that healthier, longer-lived populations would reshape labor markets, retirement systems, and economic productivity in ways that few had considered.
🚀 The Foresight Connection:
Many businesses concentrate on technology as the primary driver of change. But shifts in demographics, sustainability, AI ethics, or geopolitical realignment could be just as transformative. The companies that identify and act on these forces early will have an advantage over those that wait for them to become mainstream discussions.
3. Using Data to Model the Future Instead of Relying on Intuition
Fogel’s work was groundbreaking because he built data-driven models that quantified past economic patterns and tested different historical and future scenarios to see what actually drove economic transformation, enabling him to assess future trajectories.
🚀 The Foresight Connection:
Companies cannot rely solely on past trends to inform future strategy. AI-driven modeling now allows leaders to simulate different strategic choices and test their viability under various conditions. The ability to explore multiple possible outcomes strengthens decision-making in uncertain environments.
Why Strategic Foresight Matters Now More Than Ever
We are living in an era of accelerated disruption:
🔹 AI and automation are reshaping industries.
🔹 Geopolitical realignments are altering global markets.
🔹 Demographic changes are creating new business dynamics.
🔹 Emerging business models are developing faster than many organizations can react.
Executives who prepare for these changes before they fully materialize will shape their industries. Those who wait may find themselves reacting instead of leading.
Applying Strategic Foresight in Business
Leaders who integrate foresight into their strategy can
✔ Detect early signals of change and move ahead of the competition.
✔ Develop multiple strategic options instead of relying on a single path.
✔ Use AI-driven insights to recognize emerging patterns.
✔ Strengthen confidence among investors, boards, and teams by proactively managing uncertainty.
The companies that apply these principles today will define the next decade.
Final Thought: The Future Belongs to Those Who Prepare for It
Robert Fogel didn’t claim to predict the future, but he developed a methodology for understanding transformation. I learned from him that
🔹 Past patterns reveal valuable insights about what comes next, but only through rigorous analysis.
🔹 Many widely accepted beliefs turn out to be flawed, making it critical to challenge assumptions.
🔹 The most powerful forces shaping the future are often not the most obvious ones.
That's the essence of Strategic Foresight.
Success comes from preparing for multiple possibilities with clarity, precision, and strategic intent, not from trying to guess what comes next.
Those who recognize emerging shifts have the power to shape the future.
AI-Powered Strategic Foresight: Precision Without Hallucinations
Skepticism makes sense. Reports of AI generating false information, citing non-existent sources, or drawing flawed correlations raise valid concerns. In high-stakes decision-making, unreliable foresight creates more risk than uncertainty itself.
Yet, when applied with rigor, AI strengthens Strategic Foresight rather than undermining it. With the right design, oversight, and methodology, AI enhances clarity, sharpens scenario analysis, and increases decision-making precision and speed.
Why AI Can Misfire
When AI produces inaccurate or misleading insights, the root causes often include
- Flawed or incomplete training data. AI can only analyze what it has absorbed. If the source material contains errors or biases, the output reflects them.
- Lack of verification mechanisms. Many models prioritize generating responses over confirming accuracy.
- Confusion between correlation and causation. AI identifies patterns but lacks the contextual reasoning to determine underlying causes.
- Over-extrapolation. Some models attempt to “fill in the blanks” without sufficient supporting data, leading to overconfidence in weak conclusions.
These pitfalls explain why AI, when used carelessly, struggles with foresight. However, when paired with structured methodologies, economic reasoning, and expert oversight, AI strengthens strategic analysis rather than distorting it.
Applying AI to Strategic Foresight with Precision
AI enhances foresight when used within a structured framework that ensures:
✔ Analysis relies on verifiable, structured data rather than speculative content.
✔ Long-term economic and industry trends guide interpretation, filtering out short-term noise.
✔ Expert oversight validates conclusions before decisions.
This approach enables AI to serve as an augmentation tool rather than an unreliable predictor.
1. AI for Signal Detection: Recognizing Early Indicators
AI rapidly processes structured and unstructured data to detect weak signals, which are emerging patterns that may indicate market shifts before they become widely apparent.
How It Works:
AI scans
✔ Patent filings to track innovations before they reach commercialization.
✔ Scientific research to identify potential industry disruptions.
✔ Regulatory proposals to anticipate legal shifts before they take effect.
✔ Global supply chain data to highlight shifts in production and geopolitical risks.
Ensuring Accuracy
🔹 AI surfaces only verifiable signals, not speculative trends.
🔹 Cross-referencing with independent sources strengthens reliability.
🔹 Human analysts assess relevance, filtering out false positives.
Example: AI detects a surge in patent filings in a specific region. Rather than concluding that this region will dominate manufacturing, AI presents the data as a potential shift, prompting deeper analysis.
2. AI for Scenario Modeling: Testing Strategic Assumptions
Traditional forecasting projects a single outcome based on historical trends. Strategic Foresight instead explores multiple possible futures to prepare for uncertainty. AI strengthens this approach by modeling various scenarios, testing how key factors interact over time.
How It Works:
✔ AI builds probabilistic models incorporating economic data, market trends, and technological advancements.
✔ It stress-tests different variables, such as changes in interest rates or shifts in trade policy.
✔ Rather than generating a single forecast, it outlines multiple plausible outcomes.
Ensuring Accuracy:
🔹 AI structures scenarios using historical precedent and economic principles.
🔹 Models undergo validation against known market behaviors before being considered viable.
🔹 Human expertise refines interpretations to prevent overconfidence in projections.
Example: AI evaluates the market for a new product by modeling policy shifts, consumer behavior, and supply constraints. Rather than declaring a particular outcome, it presents multiple potential futures based on varying conditions.
3. AI for Decision Optimization: Evaluating Strategic Choices
AI strengthens decision-making by assessing the implications of different strategic moves, helping leaders determine which investments, partnerships, or operational changes create the best outcomes under varied conditions.
How It Works:
✔ AI processes information about the ecosystem to assess different strategies.
✔ It creates a cost-benefit analysis of different strategic options based on historical data and regulatory landscapes, among other factors.
Ensuring Accuracy:
🔹 AI provides data-backed insights rather than prescriptive recommendations.
🔹 Leadership teams use AI as a decision-support tool to speed analysis and facilitate their decisions.
🔹 All insights remain traceable to source data, allowing independent validation.
Example: A company considers expanding into a new market. AI evaluates different approaches, such as organic growth, joint ventures, or acquisitions, then presents risks and projected outcomes rather than advocating for a single path.
AI as an Amplifier, Not an Oracle
AI enhances Strategic Foresight when applied within a disciplined framework. It strengthens decision-making by:
✔ Processing data at a depth and speed beyond human capability.
✔ Recognizing early signals before they gain widespread attention.
✔ Structuring multiple future scenarios based on logic rather than speculation.
✔ Supporting executives with data-driven insights without replacing human judgment.
Long-term success belongs to those who recognize patterns early, prepare for multiple possibilities, and act with precision. AI serves as a force multiplier, not a replacement for strategic expertise.
Final Thought: AI as an Augmented Intelligence Tool, Not a Crystal Ball
AI is not a replacement for human strategic thinking. It's a tool we use to process information.
When used correctly, AI enhances foresight by:
✔ Processing data at a scale and speed humans can’t.
✔ Surfacing early signals before they become obvious.
✔ Modeling multiple possible futures based on logic, not guesswork.
✔ Helping leaders make confident, informed decisions.
Book a 1:1 Conversation
The future doesn’t just happen. It’s shaped by those who see the signals, prepare for multiple outcomes, and make bold, strategic moves with clarity, and that’s what AI-powered Strategic Foresight enables us to do.
How is your company using AI? If you’re considering how to use AI in decision-making, let’s compare notes.
Why Strategic Foresight Requires Expert Guidance, and What Makes My Approach Unique
Strategic foresight is the discipline that makes this possible. It’s the structured process of identifying emerging trends, envisioning multiple possible futures, and positioning your business for long-term success.
Effective foresight builds on trend analysis by incorporating a nuanced understanding of economic forces, industry ecosystems, and high-level strategic decision-making. This approach produces insights that inform practical and impactful business strategies.
Done well, it enables leaders to turn uncertainty into a strategic advantage. That’s where expert guidance makes the difference.
Why Strategic Foresight is More Than Trend Watching
Many organizations try to anticipate the future with internal strategy teams, market research, or competitive benchmarking. While valuable, these approaches can fall short because they
- Focus too narrowly: Industry reports may track well-known trends but miss early signals of change from adjacent sectors and broader global forces.
- Rely on linear thinking: Many forecasts assume that the future will be an extension of the past, overlooking the nonlinear shifts and disruptions that often define market transformations.
- Lack ecosystem-level insight: Business decisions don’t happen in a vacuum. The most forward-looking companies analyze entire ecosystems, from competitors and regulators to emerging technologies and societal shifts.
- Are data-rich but insight-poor: Leaders today have access to more information than ever, yet discerning what truly matters requires an ability to synthesize, contextualize, and interpret with precision.
Great foresight involves recognizing what lies ahead and developing the insights to navigate future developments effectively.
Why My Approach to Strategic Foresight is Different
Many foresight practitioners come from policy, technology, or social sciences. While valuable, these backgrounds often lack direct experience in how strategic decisions are made at the highest levels of business, investment, and M&A.
My approach is different because it combines
- Investment Research and Economic Analysis: At Goldman Sachs, I developed expertise in fundamental industry research, economic modeling, and evaluating corporate growth strategies. This depth of analysis ensures that foresight is always rooted in real-world business drivers.
- Strategic Growth and M&A Experience: As an investment banker at Schroders and Citigroup, I worked directly with CEOs and boards on market positioning, acquisitions, divestitures, and competitive strategy. This hands-on experience allows me to see Strategic Foresight methods as tools for making high-stakes decisions with confidence.
- Ecosystem Thinking and Cross-Disciplinary Insight: Understanding the future of an industry requires looking beyond the industry itself. My experiences span finance, investments, AI, design, and business strategy, allowing me to integrate insights from multiple informed perspectives and uncover opportunities that others might miss.
ForesightIQ: A Rigorous, Actionable Approach to the Future
At ForesightIQ, I’ve built a strategic foresight method that is
- Data-Driven: Combining AI-powered signal detection, financial modeling, and qualitative analysis to separate signal from noise.
- Ecosystem-Focused: Mapping the interplay of industry shifts, regulatory dynamics, and adjacent sector innovations to give leaders a comprehensive view of their competitive landscape.
- Designed for Decision-Making: Transforming foresight into clear, actionable strategies that executives can use to drive long-term growth.
Rather than offering trend reports or abstract future scenarios, my approach delivers real-world strategic insights, the kind that shape investment decisions, competitive positioning, and market leadership.
The Power of Expert-Guided Foresight
In a time of rapid transformation, the ability to anticipate, adapt, and act decisively is what sets industry leaders apart.
Strategic foresight involves exploring multiple future scenarios and building the capabilities your organization needs to effectively respond to a range of potential futures.
Let’s Discuss Your Company's Future
By combining investment research, strategic analysis, and ecosystem thinking, I help leaders turn foresight into a practical advantage, one that strengthens decision-making, reveals new opportunities, and positions companies for long-term success.
How is your company navigating uncertainty? ForesightIQ works with leadership teams navigating complex growth, investment, or market shifts.
Strategic Foresight: The Next Generation of Risk Management
In an era where market disruptions, geopolitical shifts, and technological advancements happen at an unprecedented pace, traditional risk management frameworks are no longer enough. Leadership teams can benefit from a broader, future-focused approach, one that includes evaluating current risks while also preparing for what’s ahead.
This is where strategic foresight comes in.
Having spent my career in investment research at Goldman Sachs, M&A at Schroders, angel investing with Citrine Angels, and risk management reporting at Credit Agricole, I’ve seen firsthand how leaders who understand risk at a deeper level, beyond financial spreadsheets, are the ones who thrive. Strategic foresight is an evolution of risk management, one that aligns future possibilities with decision-making today.
The Problem With Traditional Risk Management
Traditional risk management tends to focus on what has already happened. It relies on historical data, statistical modeling, and stress testing against known variables. These methods can be highly effective, until they aren’t.
What happens when an entirely new risk emerges?
What if your business is operating under assumptions that no longer hold true?
What if the real risks aren’t the ones you see, but the ones you don’t see coming?
Financial institutions, corporations, and investors have sophisticated risk models, but many of them failed to anticipate
- The 2008 financial crisis
- Supply chain disruptions that crippled industries in 2020
- The acceleration of AI-driven automation reshaping entire job markets
- The shift in geopolitical power dynamics affecting global trade
These disruptions weren’t impossible to anticipate; they were just outside the scope of traditional risk models. Strategic foresight fills that gap.
What is Strategic Foresight?
Strategic foresight is a structured approach to understanding how different future scenarios could unfold and positioning your organization to succeed in any of them.
It doesn’t predict the future with certainty. It maps out possibilities, identifies weak signals of change, and develops adaptable strategies.
At ForesightIQ, we use a proprietary approach that integrates
- Scenario Planning: We develop multiple plausible futures, rather than relying on a single forecast.
- AI-Powered Signal Detection: AI scans for weak signals and emerging trends across industries, geopolitics, and consumer behavior.
- Ecosystem & Stakeholder Analysis: Understand how risks and opportunities are interconnected in a broader business environment.
- Scenario Thinking: Inspired by Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Fogel, we ask, “What if this assumption isn’t true?” and explore alternative pathways.
As we apply these techniques, we help leaders see around corners, spot risks before they materialize and turn uncertainty into a competitive edge.
The Unique Perspective I Bring to Risk and Foresight
My background uniquely positions me to guide companies through this process
- Investment Research at Goldman Sachs: I learned how to analyze industries, assess market trends, and evaluate long-term business risks from one of the best research teams in the world.
- M&A and Growth Strategy at Schroders: I advised executives on how to structure deals, anticipate competitive shifts, and assess business synergies, skills that are directly applicable to foresight.
- Risk Management Expertise: At Credit Agricole, I worked in risk assessment, gaining a deep understanding of financial and operational risk.
- Angel Investing: As an investor and leader of an angel investing group, I’ve seen how emerging trends evolve into industry-shaping forces.
- Influence of Nobel Laureate economist Robert Fogel: At Chicago Booth, I learned directly from Robert Fogel about his groundbreaking work on scenario thinking, which strongly influences how I approach foresight.
This combination of high-level financial risk analysis, investment strategy, and economic modeling is rare. Most foresight professionals come from policy, technology, or social sciences, but my background combines finance, business strategy, and investment decision-making.
Start the Conversation
My unique range of expertise enables me to help companies explore possible futures and turn those insights into strategic, practical, and achievable solutions.
Ready to look at risk through a different lens, and use it to your advantage?
