Forecasting: Methodology and Our Track Record

Since Competitive Futures was established in 2002, we have made specific, dated forecasts in public and for private clients, and we keep the receipts. In 2002 we said the intelligence case for the Iraq War was lacking, an analysis we later set out in an hour-long video. In 2006 we forecast that the financial crisis would begin in early 2008 and hit in full that fall. In December 2016 we published an open-source analysis concluding that Russian intelligence was running an operation against the American electorate, weeks before the U.S. Intelligence Community reached the same conclusion. And in 2017 we told the Wall Street Journal CEO Council that the nation-state was coming back.

Most of our forecasts are made privately for clients, and those stay confidential. This page sets out how we forecast and the public record of what we called, misses included. We stand on our record.

Our track record at a glance

Year made	What we forecast	Later revelations
2002	The intelligence case for the Iraq War was lacking: the evidence did not support the claims being made for war. Watch our hour-long analysis (YouTube)	In July 2004 the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence unanimously concluded that most key judgments in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s weapons programs were overstated or not supported by the underlying intelligence. Senate Report 108-301
2006	The financial crisis would begin in early 2008 and arrive in full in the fall of 2008. This was calculated from quantitative and qualitative data, from published and non-published sources.	Bear Stearns collapsed in March 2008 and was sold to JPMorgan Chase with Federal Reserve support. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on September 15, 2008. Federal Reserve History
2016	On December 11, 2016: Russian intelligence services were running a systematic operation against the American people, and it would be revealed.	On January 6, 2017, the U.S. Intelligence Community’s assessment concluded that Russian intelligence had conducted an influence operation against the election. Read the record
2017	To the Wall Street Journal CEO Council: the nation-state would return as the main actor in geopolitics and global business.	Huawei went on the Entity List in 2019, Russia’s 2022 invasion pushed more than 1,000 companies to curtail Russian business, and in January 2025 the Supreme Court upheld the TikTok divest-or-ban law while the Treasury restricted outbound investment in Chinese technology. In April 2025 the EU’s top court ruled that Malta’s golden-passport program, which sold citizenship to investors, broke EU law, and Malta ended the program that July. CJEU, Case C-181/23 · Read the revisit
2018	Registrations and prosecutions under the Foreign Agents Registration Act would increase.	The Justice Department had brought only seven criminal FARA cases between 1966 and 2015. By 2019 it reported twice as many new registrants as in 2016, and in 2022 it charged a record number of criminal foreign-agent cases and filed its first civil FARA suit in more than 30 years. DOJ · Our FARA guide
2021	Investigations would reveal the connection between transnational organized crime and global child trafficking. Testimony was public before the Missouri Legislature.	The UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s 2024 global report found that detected child victims had risen 31 percent since 2019, that most traffickers in the court cases it analyzed operated within organized groups, and warned against the misconception that trafficking is a disorganized crime. UNODC

Why we publish the misses

Our 2011 book predicted that peak oil would drive prices sharply higher and that solar and wind would not change industry for decades. Both calls were wrong, and we say so on the scorecard. Grading every forecast is how we find out which methods work and which assumptions failed. It is also the only honest basis for asking a client to act on the next forecast.

A track record also has to be read correctly. No forecaster is right every time. What distinguishes a useful one is that the calls are specific enough to check, made early enough to act on, and right often enough on the questions that matter most.

Our methodology

Our forecasts follow the Future Intelligence Process, the method set out in our founder’s book Future, Inc. (AMACOM, 2007). It treats forecasting as disciplined analysis rather than inspiration, and every forecast we publish has the same parts.

A specific claim: what will happen, roughly when, and to whom.
The forces behind it: the trends, actors, and incentives that drive the outcome, mapped as a system rather than as a list.
Stated assumptions: what has to stay true for the forecast to hold.
Signposts: the early signs that would show the forecast coming true, or failing.
Alternatives: scenarios for what happens if the central forecast is wrong, so a client has a plan either way.
Review: every forecast is checked against what happened, and the method is corrected.

The detail of how we run this for clients stays with our clients. These guides explain the methods in general terms:

Why so many forecasts fail

Most forecasts fail for the same few reasons: they extend today’s trend, ignore what could break it, or are never specific enough to check. Cognitive bias makes all three worse, and the news media rewards confident predictions over accurate ones. Governments that run large forecasting programs have learned to study their own mistakes, and the best of them publish what they got wrong.

Garland’s Law of Foresight Journalism: why the news gets the future wrong
Global Trends 2030 Learns From Past Mistakes
The Evolution of Forecasting
Herman Kahn: the RAND strategist who invented scenario planning
Our View of History Guides Our View of the Future

In defense of forecasting

Forecasters are mocked for their misses and rarely credited for their hits. In 2009 we published a short series arguing that forecasting works, that the world is more predictable than television suggests, and that the people who say the future can’t be known are often the ones planning it for you.

How Competitive Futures helps

We build forecasts for leadership teams that need to commit before the picture is clear, and we evaluate the forecasts other people hand them. Our quarterly product, the Systemics Quarterly Brief, puts dated, checkable calls in front of subscribers every quarter, and each issue is held to the same public standard as the record above.

Call us to discuss the forecast your next decision depends on.

More guides from Competitive Futures

Frequently asked questions

Does Competitive Futures have a forecasting track record?

Yes. Since the firm was established in 2002, we have made dated forecasts in public and for private clients, including the weakness of the intelligence behind the Iraq War, the timing of the 2008 financial crisis, Russia’s 2016 intelligence operation against the United States, and the return of the nation-state. We grade our public forecasts in public, misses included.

How accurate are your forecasts?

Of the 15 forecasts in our 2011 book, seven were correct, three partly correct, and five wrong. Our calls on the biggest strategic questions, including the return of borders and economic nationalism, have held up best.

What is the difference between forecasting and strategic foresight?

Forecasting estimates what will happen. Strategic foresight explores several things that could happen and what each would mean. We use both, so a client knows what we expect and what to do if we are wrong.

How do you evaluate a forecast?

Check whether it is specific, whether its reasoning and assumptions are stated, whether it says what would prove it wrong, and what the forecaster’s record looks like.