The Pioneers of Strategy, Intelligence, and Foresight

Antique globe, sundial, and books on a wooden table, the Competitive Futures guide to the pioneers of strategy, intelligence, and foresight
Photo: Envato.

Every discipline has its founders, and the tools leaders use today to read competitors and the future were invented by a small number of remarkable people. A spymaster to Elizabeth I. A RAND physicist who thought about the unthinkable. A Harvard economist who told executives to build competitor intelligence systems. A French family that turned futures thinking into a European school. And a Washington futurist who trained a generation of practitioners, including the founder of Competitive Futures.

These profiles explain who each pioneer was, what they contributed, and what their work still teaches. Some of them we knew personally.

The pioneers at a glance

PioneerEraFieldBest known for
Francis Walsingham1500sIntelligenceElizabeth I’s spymaster
Evidenzbureau1850IntelligenceFirst permanent military intelligence service
Herman Kahn1950s–80sForesightScenario planning at RAND
Bertrand and Hugues de Jouvenel1960–todayForesightFuturibles and la prospective
Joe Coates1970s–2010sForesightApplied futures research for business and government
Michael Porter1980–todayStrategy and CIThe Five Forces and the case for competitor intelligence
Clayton Christensen1990s–2020StrategyDisruption theory

The intelligence founders

Modern intelligence did not begin with the CIA. Francis Walsingham ran networks of agents for Elizabeth I four centuries ago, and his methods for recruiting and handling sources would be recognizable to any case officer today. The Austrian Evidenzbureau, founded in 1850, was the first permanent military intelligence service. George Washington ran his own spy networks during the Revolution. In the twentieth century, J. Edgar Hoover built the FBI into America’s domestic counterintelligence service, from the Duquesne spy ring to the Venona cases. William J. Donovan built the Office of Strategic Services, America’s first central intelligence organization and the forerunner of the CIA. In Britain, two officers, Mansfield Cumming and Vernon Kell, opened the Secret Service Bureau in 1909, which split into MI5 and MI6. The Ottoman Empire relied on its pashas’ private networks for four centuries before founding a formal service in 1913; see our history of Ottoman intelligence. For the wartime committee that ran Germany’s spies in Britain, see the Twenty Committee.

The futurists

Strategic foresight as a discipline came out of the Cold War. Herman Kahn invented scenario planning at RAND to think through outcomes nobody wanted to imagine. In France, Bertrand de Jouvenel founded Futuribles and the school of la prospective, carried forward by his son Hugues. In Washington, Joseph F. Coates built a practice that applied futures research to business and government, and trained many of the people who practice it today.

The strategists

Competitive intelligence became a business profession because strategists made the case for it. Michael Porter’s 1980 book Competitive Strategy argued that companies needed a system for gathering intelligence on competitors, and a profession formed within a few years. Clayton Christensen’s research on disruption showed why the competitors that matter most are often the ones nobody is watching.

The analysts

Intelligence analysis has its own pioneers. Richards Heuer, a CIA veteran, wrote the field’s classic study of cognitive bias and created the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses. James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s counterintelligence chief from 1954 to 1974, is the field’s standing case study in deception and its limits. In competitive intelligence, the Fellows of the Council of Competitive Intelligence Fellows have shaped how companies pract

Where to read more

How Competitive Futures helps

Our methods descend directly from these traditions: Coates’s applied futures research, the scenario discipline Kahn invented, and the intelligence tradecraft of the analysts who followed. We put them to work on the decisions our clients face now.

Call us to discuss your next strategic question.

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Frequently asked questions

Who invented scenario planning?

Herman Kahn developed scenario planning at the RAND Corporation in the 1950s. Royal Dutch Shell later adapted it for business.

Who founded competitive intelligence as a business discipline?

No single person did, but Michael Porter’s 1980 book Competitive Strategy gave it its mandate, and a professional society followed within a few years.

Who is considered the father of human intelligence?

Many practitioners point to Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I’s principal secretary, who built one of the first systematic networks of agents.

What is la prospective?

It is the French school of strategic foresight associated with Bertrand de Jouvenel, Futuribles, and Michel Godet, which treats the future as something to be shaped rather than predicted.