Intelligence agency insights from an independent, private contractor
Competitive Futures offers five lines of work, each grounded in a distinct analytical discipline and each producing a named deliverable. Engagements can be scoped individually — a single competitive intelligence brief, a scenario analysis for a specific decision, a keynote for a leadership offsite — or combined into integrated strategic engagements that draw on all five.
We do not typically sell hourly consulting, retainer-for-access arrangements, or open-ended advisory relationships. Most engagements are structured as fixed-scope, fixed-fee deliverables; exceptional client needs are accommodated case by case. Every engagement has a defined scope, a defined deliverable, and a defined analytical product. That discipline is what makes our work procurable, auditable, and genuinely useful to the leaders who commission it.
Competitive Intelligence
A formal discipline with a governing professional body, of which our principal is a Fellow. We study named competitors — their strategic moves, their incentives, their likely next actions, and the conditions under which they would deviate from expected behavior.
Deliverable: quarterly or on-demand competitive intelligence briefs, 15–30 pages with primary sourcing, delivered in person or via secure channel.
Scenario Analysis
A foresight discipline developed at RAND and Shell in the 1960s and refined continuously since. We build multiple plausible futures for a client’s decision environment, stress-test strategies against each, and identify the early indicators that would tell a leader which future is materializing.
Deliverable: scenario reports with indicators and decision triggers, typically 20–40 pages, with optional follow-on briefings as the operating environment evolves.
Geopolitical Risk Analysis
The open-source analytical tradition that has repeatedly outperformed institutional consensus on the events that mattered most — Soviet collapse, the Arab Spring, and the 2016 Russian information operations. We assess geopolitical developments for their specific impact on a client’s operations, markets, or policy environment.
Deliverable: targeted risk assessments and recurring monitoring briefs, with optional war-game or tabletop exercises for leadership teams.
Strategy Consulting
Grounded in the foresight methods developed across thirty years of practice and two published books. We work with leadership teams to translate analytical intelligence into strategic decisions — product, market, positioning, and investment choices that account for competitive and geopolitical realities most consultancies don’t see in time.
Deliverable: scoped engagements with written strategic recommendations and executive briefings.
Keynotes and Executive Education
The applied output of thirty years of advising Fortune-scale leaders, delivered as custom keynotes and executive education ranging from one hour to three days. Our principal has briefed audiences on four continents, including the Wall Street Journal CEO Summit and H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco.
Deliverable: custom speaking engagements and multi-day executive programs, tailored to the client’s strategic context.
Engagement
Most Competitive Futures engagements begin with a scoping conversation in which we work with the client’s leadership to identify the decision the analysis is meant to support, the timeframe in which the analysis is needed, and the form of deliverable that will be most useful to the decision-makers who will receive it.
We then produce a written scope of work with a fixed deliverable schedule and a fixed fee. Engagements range from single deliverables — completed in two to six weeks — to multi-quarter analytical programs with recurring briefs and embedded advisory relationships.
We work under NDA as a matter of course. We are accustomed to the confidentiality and procurement requirements of Fortune-scale corporations and national governments, and we can accommodate most standard client-side contracting frameworks.
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The best way to understand whether Competitive Futures is the right analytical partner for your organization is a direct conversation