Competitive Futures has a unique approach to strategic management. We are likely the only consultancy in the world to combine the disciplines of short-term competitive analysis with future trend forecasting. We call this methodology future intelligence.
Organizations need time to restructure in order to react properly to threats and opportunity. Market analysts must then constantly be scanning the horizon for large strategic trends that will unfold in the coming 5 – 20 years. These insights imply potential operational changes in the coming 1 – 5 years, which must be acted on today in order to result in profit in the coming years.
The key underpinning our work is the notion of superconnection. The recent financial crisis has shown that industries and events do not exist in isolation, but are connected in a complex global web. Leaders at all levels must look beyond their industry and into the future to understand the shifts that are occuring, and to act today.
Through the systematic analysis of trends in society, technology, economics, ecology and politics, we put current decisions in the context of broader changes. Though our clients may be engaged in very specialized enterprises, we bring them a variety of trends and their implications in subjects as diverse as finance, ecology, the family, telecommunications, agriculture, politics, and much more.
The result is managerial decisions that are smarter, more sustainable, and more profitable.
Competitive Futures has a unique approach to competitive analysis we call future intelligence. We are the only consultancy in the world to combine long-term strategic forecasts with competitive intelligence to tell leaders about to turn foresight into profitable opportunities.
The backstory to this development is unique. CompFutures' Managing Partner Eric Garland was hard at work in the competitive intelligence field, providing analysis to Fortune 100 companies with a more tactical bent when he was invited to join the Washington DC think tank of Joseph Coates, a futurist who worked with Congress, government agencies and businesses the world over. That firm was one of the most venerable consultancies dedicated exclusively to analysis of longer-term trends, normally with a timeframe of five to twenty years into the future. There, Garland focused on strategic implications of trends in agriculture, information technology, construction, retail and basic scientific research.
It was there that Garland made a discovery that changed his view of the information that leaders need in order to guide a company successfully in a rapidly changing world. Competitive intelligence tends to be focused uniquely on existing competitors, on firms already cutting into the marketshare of a given company. Since the 1980s, CI had been developing into a recognizable profession, and many companies had discrete department dedicated to examining what was happening at the moment with - maybe - a view that went a couple quarters into the future.
Professonal futurists had also made their debut in the 1960s and 70s through the extraordinarily popular work of Alvin Toffler and legitimized through the scenario planning work of Peter Schwartz and company at Royal Dutch Shell. Their work tended to focus on broader strategic trends, ones that would look out years into the future, but rarely at existing competitive dynamics.
Garland, having spent time in both camps, noticed that not only were the companies sponsoring both kinds of studies the same companies, very often it was the same person at the client who was responsible for both types of information. Moreover, he noted that the individuals who achieved the most notoriety and success in their organizations were those who integrated the future and competitive present together. The departments least likely to have budget cut in the hard times were the strategic planning groups who constantly reminded senior management about what their work meant in dollars and cents. It also tended to mean survival for competitive intelligence groups that studied current competition while providing a sense of what their work meant for the larger goals of the organization.
Today, it has never been more important to combine future trends with an understanding of tactical competitive dynamics. To study individual competitors without understand the trends outside of those immediately apparent is to follow in the footsteps of the music industry, which stood by and watched while the MP3 was created, while Napster conflagrated its business model, while iTunes replaced brick-and-mortar stores, and while sales began to plummet.
On the other hand, to study the bigger picture while ignoring the competitive dynamics of short term is follow in the footsteps of every startup that understood the future while failing to put money in the cash register.
This is why Competitive Futures offers an unusual set of professional services, provided by world experts with an unusual set of skills and bona fides. We imbue every competitive study with a sense of the future, and every study of long-trends with intelligence about the reality of the short term.
Here is a quick view of how a Future Intelligence system should serve the modern leader:

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