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Tämä Sitran rahoittama ja Capfulin toteuttama skenaariotyö analysoi mahdollisen geopoliittisen epävakauden lisääntymisen ja puolustusmenojen merkittävän kasvun vaikutuksia Suomen talouteen ja yhteiskuntaan.

Hankkeessa kehitettiin neljä vaihtoehtoista tulevaisuusskenaariota, joissa Suomen puolustusmenot vaihtelevat 5-35 prosentin välillä BKT:sta erilaisissa toimintaympäristöissä. Skenaariot tuotettiin tulevaisuudentutkimuksen menetelmillä ja ne pohjautuvat mm. verrokkimaiden tarkasteluun, tutkimuskirjallisuuteen, asiantuntijahaastatteluihin ja sidosryhmien osallistamiseen.

Tuloksena syntyneet skenaariot – ”Vakaat jännitteet ja uusi kylmä sota”, ”Kiina-johtoinen uusglobalismi”, ”Suomi osana Baltian sotaa” ja ”Suomi avoimessa kulutussodassa” – osoittavat, että sotatalouteen siirtyminen edellyttäisi merkittäviä muutoksia julkisen talouden rakenteisiin, huoltovarmuuteen ja kriisinsietokykyyn. Hankkeen tuloksia voidaan hyödyntää mm. toimiala- ja sektorikohtaisissa jatkoselvityksissä sekä varautumissuunnittelun tukena.

Voit tutustua skenaariohankkeen loppuraporttiin alla olevasta linkistä:

Capful raportti_Sotatalouden_skenaariot_10.2.2026_julkinenLataa

Haluatko kuulla lisää? Ota yhteyttä!

Justus Jokela kuva
Justus Joenaalto
Managing Consultant, Head of International Security and Crisis Readiness, VTM
+358 50 917 0076
justus.joenaalto@capful.fi
Kimmo Kivinen kuva
Kimmo Kivinen
Senior Partner, MMM
+358 50 540 9446
kimmo.kivinen@capful.fi
alt
Shiyu Miao
Managing Consultant, VTM, KTK
+358 44 552 4477
shiyu.miao@capful.fi

Capful

Suomen talouden tulevaisuus sotataloudessa

Tämä Sitran rahoittama ja Capfulin toteuttama skenaariotyö analysoi mahdollisen geopoliittisen epävakauden lisääntymisen ja puolustusmenojen merkittävän kasvun vaikutuksia Suomen talouteen ja yhteiskuntaan.

Hankkeessa kehitettiin neljä vaihtoehtoista tulevaisuusskenaariota, joissa Suomen puolustusmenot vaihtelevat 5-35 prosentin välillä BKT:sta erilaisissa toimintaympäristöissä. Skenaariot tuotettiin tulevaisuudentutkimuksen menetelmillä ja ne pohjautuvat mm. verrokkimaiden tarkasteluun, tutkimuskirjallisuuteen, asiantuntijahaastatteluihin ja sidosryhmien osallistamiseen.

Tuloksena syntyneet skenaariot – ”Vakaat jännitteet ja uusi kylmä sota”, ”Kiina-johtoinen uusglobalismi”, ”Suomi osana Baltian sotaa” ja ”Suomi avoimessa kulutussodassa” – osoittavat, että sotatalouteen siirtyminen edellyttäisi merkittäviä muutoksia julkisen talouden rakenteisiin, huoltovarmuuteen ja kriisinsietokykyyn. Hankkeen tuloksia voidaan hyödyntää mm. toimiala- ja sektorikohtaisissa jatkoselvityksissä sekä varautumissuunnittelun tukena.

Voit tutustua skenaariohankkeen loppuraporttiin alla olevasta linkistä:

Capful raportti_Sotatalouden_skenaariot_10.2.2026_julkinenLataa

Haluatko kuulla lisää? Ota yhteyttä!

Justus Jokela kuva
Justus Joenaalto
Managing Consultant, Head of International Security and Crisis Readiness, VTM
+358 50 917 0076
justus.joenaalto@capful.fi
Kimmo Kivinen kuva
Kimmo Kivinen
Senior Partner, MMM
+358 50 540 9446
kimmo.kivinen@capful.fi
alt
Shiyu Miao
Managing Consultant, VTM, KTK
+358 44 552 4477
shiyu.miao@capful.fi

Arto Kaunonen

When uncertainty becomes a strategy: Why scenario planning matters more than ever

Weaponised uncertainty

In a world already shaped by volatility, the idea that uncertainty itself might be useful feels unsettling. Yet that is exactly the argument made by U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in an interview with The Economist. Greer suggested that there is value in uncertainty. Others go further, arguing that during the current U.S. presidency, unpredictability is not a flaw of policy but one of its most powerful tools – keeping allies, rivals, and markets perpetually guessing.

This raises an uncomfortable question for leaders and strategists: What happens when uncertainty is no longer an external condition to manage, but a deliberate strategy – one that pushes previously unthinkable outcomes onto the table?

Traditional planning struggles here. But scenario planning – often misunderstood as a way of predicting multiple futures – may be uniquely suited to an age of weaponised uncertainty.

From risk to strategy: How uncertainty became weaponised

Most organisations are used to dealing with uncertainty as a background condition. Markets fluctuate. Technologies evolve. Political cycles turn. These are familiar, if uncomfortable, features of the landscape.

Weaponised uncertainty is different. Here, ambiguity is produced on purpose, not merely to confuse, but to expand the range of outcomes others feel compelled to consider. What was once treated as unthinkable is no longer ruled out. Signals are mixed. Commitments are reversible. Intentions are obscured. The goal is not clarity, but leverage, forcing others to delay decisions, hedge excessively, or make concessions simply to reduce their exposure to the unknown.

Trade policy is an especially fertile arena for this approach. Tariffs can be announced, withdrawn, threatened again, or selectively enforced. Rules can be treated as negotiable. Outcomes depend less on formal frameworks than on personal leverage and timing.

The effect is chilling. Investment slows. Alliances strain. Long-term planning becomes risky. And those most committed to predictability often suffer the most.

Why forecasting fails when the guessing is the point

Forecasting models that aim to identify the most likely outcome based on trends and historical patterns are particularly vulnerable when the unthinkable is no longer excluded. Forecasting struggles in this environment because its core assumptions no longer hold:

  • Intent is assumed to be stable: When actors signal a willingness to cross previously unthinkable lines, intent becomes an unreliable anchor.
  • Signals are assumed to be informative: Sometimes they are sent to confuse, not to inform.
  • Consistency is assumed over time: When restraint is no longer guaranteed, past behaviour loses its predictive value.

In this environment, asking “What is most likely to happen?” becomes less useful than asking “What range of things could plausibly happen, and what would we do then?” This is where scenario planning enters the frame.

Scenario planning is not about prediction

Scenario planning is often mistaken for sophisticated forecasting. In reality, it does something far more radical: it decouples preparation from prediction. Instead of trying to guess the future, scenario planning outlines several distinct, plausible worlds each shaped by different assumptions about power, rules, behaviour, and intent. The focus is not on which future is “right,” but on whether current strategies are robust across multiple futures.

In an era of weaponised uncertainty, this distinction matters enormously. If unpredictability is being used as leverage, then the goal is to make others reactive. Scenario planning undermines that by creating preparedness in advance.

Scenario planning as a counter-weapon

When uncertainty is deliberate, scenario planning becomes more than a planning tool. It becomes a form of strategic defence. It helps in four critical ways:

  1. It reduces paralysis
    Weaponised uncertainty aims to make actors wait for clarity that never comes. Scenarios allow leaders to act without certainty, because responses have already been rehearsed.
  2. It exposes asymmetries
    Scenarios reveal where uncertainty hurts you most (and where it hurts your counterpart more). Not all ambiguity is equally damaging.
  3. It shifts the strategic question
    From “What will they do?” to “What kind of world are we in if they do this, and can we live with it?”
  4. It builds institutional confidence
    Teams that have imagined disruption are less likely to overreact when it arrives.

In short, scenario planning turns ambiguity from a threat into a manageable condition.

The psychological dimension of scenario planning

There is a further, often overlooked benefit to scenario planning: it improves the quality of decision-making under pressure. Uncertainty is not just economic or political: it is also psychological. Constant ambiguity breeds anxiety, encourages short time horizons, and amplifies reactions to the latest signal.

Scenario planning changes this dynamic. It works by expanding mental space. It makes uncertainty visible, discussable, and therefore manageable. Futures that might otherwise provoke fear are encountered first as thought experiments.

Beyond guessing games

If uncertainty has become a strategy, then seeking perfect clarity is a losing game. When uncertainty is weaponised, the strategic advantage shifts to those who have already done the uncomfortable work of thinking the unthinkable and decided in advance how they would respond.

Scenario planning does not make the world more predictable. But it does make organisations more resilient, more deliberate, and less vulnerable to coercion through ambiguity. In an age where keeping the world guessing is a form of power, the most strategic response may be simple: Stop guessing and start preparing.

Arto Kaunonen
Founder, Senior Partner, KM, MBA
+358 50 356 0717
arto.kaunonen@capful.fi

Arto Kaunonen kuva
Arto Kaunonen

Kun skenaariotyö ymmärretään väärin

Miksi juuri nyt, kun epävarmuus on suurinta, joku neuvoo meitä unohtamaan skenaariotyön? 

Bain & Companyn makrotaloustrendien johtaja Karen Harris kehottaa unohtamaan skenaariotyön, koska hänen mukaansa nykyinen toimintaympäristö on liian epävarma. Väite on yllättävä ja hämmentävä, sillä juuri epävarmuus on se syy, miksi skenaariotyötä tarvitaan. Skenaariotyötä kannattaa hyödyntää nimenomaan tilanteissa, joissa epävarmuus on suurta ja tulevaisuus on sumun peitossa – eli juuri nyt. 

Ennuste ei ole skenaario


Kun katsoo tarkemmin Bainin lähestymistapaa, käy ilmi, että he eivät oikeastaan tee skenaariotyötä. Harris kuvaa menetelmää, jossa rakennetaan yksi perusskenaario ja testataan sen herkkyyksiä. Kyseessä on ennuste. Kun epävarmuus kasvaa liikaa, Bainin malli ei enää toimi, koska se perustuu todennäköisyyksiin. Näin he päätyvät virheellisesti julistamaan, että skenaariotyö ei toimi, vaikka todellisuudessa he eivät ole sitä tehneetkään. 

Aito skenaariotyö ajattelee toisin 


Aito skenaariotyö syntyi aikoinaan tarpeesta irtautua ennustamisen paradigmasta, juuri sellaisesta lähestymistavasta, jota Bain edustaa. Sen sijaan, että keskitytään ”ruutujen rastittamiseen” huoneessa, jossa on huono valaistus, kyseenalaiset menetelmät ja keskinkertainen ajattelu, skenaariotyö kehitettiin tekemään jotakin aivan muuta: avaamaan uusia näkökulmia ja haastamaan vallitsevia oletuksia. Skenaariotyön pioneerit – kuten Herman Kahn, Pierre Wack, Shell, SRI International ja GBN – ottivat alusta alkaen selkeän linjan: skenaarioissa ei käytetä todennäköisyyksiä, ja kaikki skenaariot määritellään mahdollisiksi maailmoiksi. Mitä tämä tarkoittaa tänään? 

  1. Skenaariot kuvaavat mahdollisia, eivät todennäköisiä maailmoja. 
  2. Kaikkia skenaarioita pidetään yhtä mahdollisina, jotta niiden vaikutuksia tarkastellaan tasapuolisesti. 
  3. Tavoitteena ei ole löytää uskottavinta tulevaisuutta, vaan ymmärtää, miten erilaiset tulevaisuudet voivat vaikuttaa toimintaan. 

Skenaariotyö vapauttaa ajattelun todennäköisyyksien kahleista ja auttaa käsittelemään aito­ja epävarmuuksia, rakenteellisia muutoksia ja yllättäviä käänteitä. Ennusteet taas nojaavat trendeihin, menneeseen tietoon ja jatkuvuuden oletukseen. Ne eivät näe niitä murroksia, jotka todella muuttavat peliä. 

Kysymykset ennen vastauksia 


Tie skenaarioajattelusta ennustamisen maailmaan on kivetty todennäköisyyksillä: kun aletaan puhua tulevan kehityksen todennäköisyydestä, siirrytään skenaarioista ennusteisiin. Kun skenaariot auttavat esittämään oikeita kysymyksiä, ennusteet etsivät oikeita vastauksia. Monet strategiset virheet syntyvät siitä, että vastauksia etsitään ennen kuin on ymmärretty, mitä pitäisi kysyä. 

Harris on oikeassa siinä, että skenaariotyössä on huomioitava ulkoinen toimintaympäristö. Mutta strategisen skenaariotyön lähtökohta on aina yrityksen sisällä: ensin määritellään tarkastelun fokus – esimerkiksi investointi, liiketoimintastrategia tai teknologiaportfolio – ja vasta sen jälkeen tunnistetaan ulkoisen maailman epävarmuudet, jotka vaikuttavat juuri tähän fokukseen. Näin varmistetaan, että skenaariot palvelevat päätöksentekoa. 

Skenaariotyössä tarvitaan oikeat työkalut 


Skenaariotyö edellyttää ajattelun lisäksi toimivia työkaluja.Ilman oikeita välineitä työ typistyy helposti ennustamiseksi tai johtaa siihen, että koko homma julistetaan hyödyttömäksi. Capfulin oma Scenario Builder™ auttaa rakentamaan loogisia, perusteltuja ja keskenään erilaisia skenaarioita ja ryhmittelee ne havainnolliselle skenaariokartalle. Omat CapfulAI-tekoälytyökalumme tukevat mm. tiedon analysointia, ilmiöiden tunnistamista ja vaihtoehtoisten kehityspolkujen hahmottamista. 

Skenaariotyö on elävän strategian polttoainetta 


Ennuste ja skenaario palvelevat eri tarkoituksia. Skenaariotyön ydin on hyödyntää epävarmuutta, ei paeta sitä. Bainin tapa käsitellä skenaarioita irrallisina ennusteina johtaa helposti menneisyyteen katsovaan ajatteluun, kun taas aito skenaariotyö on väline tulevaisuuden mahdollisuuksien näkemiseen ja hyödyntämiseen. Juuri nyt, kun tulevaisuus on mm. geopoliittisista syistä poikkeuksellisen epävarma, skenaariotyö tarjoaa keinon jäsentää monimutkaisuutta, nähdä mahdollisuuksia ja riskejä ennen muita ja rakentaa strategista etumatkaa. 

Capfulin konsultointityössä skenaariot kytketään myös tiiviisti toimintaympäristön jatkuvaan seurantaan. Tarkkailemme merkkejä skenaarioiden toteutumisesta ja arvioimme lyhyemmän tähtäimen strategian taustaoletusten voimassaoloa. Näin strategia pysyy elävänä ja sitä voidaan päivittää ennakoiden ja hallitusti, ei kriisien ohjaamana. 

Arto Kaunonen
Founder, Senior Partner, KM, MBA
+358 50 356 0717
arto.kaunonen@capful.fi

Arto Kaunonen kuva
Arto Kaunonen

Trade wars as signals from the future – rethinking conflict

The headlines speak of tit-for-tat tariffs, supply chain woes, faltering alliances, and a retreat from globalisation. We tend to frame trade wars in the language of crisis – conflict, disruption, escalation, retaliation. But from a foresight perspective, trade wars can also offer a window into what’s next. Beneath the turbulence, we may see signals of economic redesign: shifts from just-in-time efficiency to supply resilience, from liberal openness to sovereignty-driven autonomy, or from globalisation to value-aligned economic blocs. The question isn’t whether trade wars are good or bad, but what they can reveal about new systems that may be emerging.

Reframing trade wars – conflict as signal

Conflict – whether geopolitical, economic, social, or environmental – is traditionally framed as a problem to be solved or a crisis to be managed. But in the discipline of foresight, conflict can be reframed as a meaningful signal – offering clues of deeper systemic shifts, hidden tensions, or the potential birth of new structures. Rather than being interpreted as noise or anomalies, conflicts can be treated as rich inputs into scenario construction.

From a foresight perspective, trade wars can also be viewed differently – less like economic blunders, political weapons, or miscalculations and more like “messy field tests” for alternative global futures. Rather than despair, we can ask: What values are clashing? What systems are no longer working? What is struggling to emerge through this turbulence? What future systems are being stress-tested through these confrontations?

What can conflicts reveal to a foresight practioner?

  • Many systemic conflicts, like trade wars, can reveal friction between old and emerging systems. For example, the US-China trade dispute may be less about tariffs and more about the end of an era where openness reigned over national sovereignty and strategic control.
  • Conflicts can expose the fragility of assumed “normals” – like just-in-time supply chains and liberalised trade – highlighting potential design flaws we’ve normalised. For example, war-induced global fertiliser shortages have revealed the dependency risks in industrial agriculture, prompting questions about food sovereignty.
  • Conflicts can act as accelerators of futures, catalysing innovation or adaptation. New alliances, business models, governance tools, and technologies often emerge under pressure. For example, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered massive European investment in clean energy, faster than years of climate negotiation had achieved.
  • Conflicts can surface latent values and cultural shifts regarding justice, sovereignty, safety, sustainability etc. By mapping which values are being contested, foresight practitioners can anticipate where shifts in public mood and policy may be headed. For example, debates around AI regulation are not just technical – underlying are cultural conflicts about agency, transparency, and human dignity.

Trade wars – what futures are being prototyped?

Trade wars are not just about goods and tariffs; they are “high-intensity” signals of multiple larger forces at play. These signals point toward deeper reconfigurations in how economies will be built and governed. For example, the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is not just an environmental policy – it could be viewed as a proto-framework for climate-aligned trade blocs, where more green tariffs, resource-based disputes, and carbon accountability will shape future alliances. Or the semiconductor battles between the US and China are an indication of emerging techno-nationalism, showing how deeply technology is now a terrain of national power. Sanctions on chip manufacturing, rare earth elements, and AI components indicate that digital infrastructure is no longer neutral – it’s a strategic asset.

Putting on our scenarist’s hat, we could interpret current trade tensions as early-stage models of competing futures, such as:

Future A: The great decoupling
A fragmented world of competing techno-blocs, with parallel internets (think of splinternet), supply chains, and currencies. Economic sovereignty becomes the organising principle.

Future B: The polycentric regenerative economy
Trade begins to reorganise around robust, regionally anchored systems that prioritise circular economies, ecological stewardship, and collaborative governance. What emerges is a post-global economy shaped more by place-based resilience than global efficiency.

Future C: The coordinated digital commonwealth
An intriguing vision of supranational cooperation via AI governance and blockchain-based compliance systems. Trade as a programmable, traceable, trustable mesh – no longer reliant on treaties alone.

Each scenario carries its own opportunities and maladies. Our role is not to pick one, but to explore the possibility space they illuminate.

Implications for foresight and strategy

What could all this mean for those of us working in futures thinking, strategic planning, or policy design? As foresight practitioners, we serve as interpreters of trade wars and other conflicts, extracting insights not just from what is happening, but from what it hints might come next. Specifically, we can

  • Rethink baselines. What we often reference as “normal”, such as the relatively frictionless trade environment of 2015, may itself be an anomaly: a brief convergence of geopolitics, technology, and economic ideology. To use it as a benchmark is to mistake a moment for a model. The task isn’t to restore a past equilibrium, but to make sense of the transition and help shape what comes next.
  • Mine the noise for signals. Trade wars and related disruptions can be read as weak signals of deeper design debates: Who controls data? What defines a critical resource? What supply chains are too critical to fail – and who decides? What is fair trade in a warming world? What new trade disputes might arise over water, carbon, food, or biodiversity?
  • Stress-test strategies. Use conflict scenarios, like trade wars, to stress-test strategies or value chains under turbulent, divergent futures to uncover hidden vulnerabilities and potential redesign alternatives.
  • Watch for wildcard catalysts. Unexpected developments– like an AI-generated trade agreement bypassing traditional diplomacy, a climate-triggered embargo on water-intensive exports, or a citizen-led boycott movement – could rapidly challenge assumptions. In foresight, staying attuned to such outliers is essential.

Reframing mindset – conflict not as breakdown, but as transition

The “conflict-as-signal” mindset challenges the reactive, linear thinking often found in our response to crises like trade wars. It invites leaders and strategists to:

  • Stay curious during disruption
  • Resist premature conclusions
  • Ask what is being made possible – even amidst collapse. What adjacent possibilities can trade wars unlock?

Instead of analysing trade wars through the typical geopolitical or economic lens, we could examine them as “living prototypes” of emerging systems in global governance, technology sovereignty, or climate-aligned economics – revealing how nations are reimagining power, autonomy, interdependency, and values in a multipolar world.

So – what if we understood tariffs, sanctions, and decoupling not as breakdowns of global order, but as crude blueprints for the next phase of economic design? We could then also explore how trade wars may be unintentionally accelerating innovation in localised manufacturing, green technology independence, digital trade ecosystems and more. By shifting our perspective, we open up space to ask not just what’s breaking, but what’s being built.

Jaakko Huttunen

Ennakoimaton maankäytön suunnittelu tulee kunnalle kalliiksi

Tämä blogiteksti käsittelee kunnan maankäytön ennakoivaa ja strategista suunnittelua. Ennakoiva suunnittelu lähtee nykyisen toimintaympäristön tunnistamisesta, siihen liittyvien epävarmuuksien ja trendien tunnistamisesta sekä asteittain kokonaiskuvan selkiyttämisestä. Ennakoiva suunnitteluajattelu pyrkii tunnistamaan suunnittelun vaihtoehtoja sekä erilaisten tavoitteiden ja toimijoiden intressejä. Kunnissa, seutukunnissa ja maakunnissa aihe on erityisen ajankohtainen nyt, sillä juuri tällä hetkellä alueilla kilpailu on kovaa erilaisten tilaa vievien hankkeiden, kuten tuuli- ja aurinkovoimaloiden, akkumateriaalitehtaiden ja datakeskusten osalta. Alueilla näihin hankkeisiin liittyy mittavia mahdollisuuksia, mutta myös merkittäviä riskitekijöitä esimerkiksi geopolitiikan, energian saatavuuden, infrakysymysten, vihreän siirtymän rahoituksen ja työvoiman saatavuuden muodoissa.

Kirjoitan aiheesta pitkäaikaisena mielenkiinnon kohteenani, ja myös siitä syystä, että usein kuntien kohdalla maankäyttö ja siihen liittyvä päätöksenteko ei ole aina ennakoivaa, vaan valitettavan usein reaktiivista tai jopa jälkijättöistä. Monesti myös päätöksenteon perustelut ontuvat, kun otetaan huomioon maankäytön sitovuus ajassa ja paikassa. Syitä tälle on luultavasti useita, mutta ehkä yksi syy liittyy puhtaasti menetelmäosaamiseen – alueilla ei välttämättä tunneta ennakoinnin menetelmiä ja oikeita soveltamistapoja.

Ulkoisille riskitekijöille kunnat tai maakunnat eivät välttämättä voi mitään, mutta oman alueensa maankäyttöön ja päätöksentekoon ne voivat vaikuttaa. Näin ollen on erityisen tärkeää tehdä maankäyttöä vuosikymmeniksi sitovat ratkaisut riittävään tietopohjaan ja tilannekuvaan tukeutuen haastaen nykyisiä, aika ajoin lukkiintuvia ajattelutapoja. Epäonnisia aluekehityshankkeita, joihin liittyy todennäköisesti riittämättömän tilanne- ja tulevaisuuskuvan hahmottaminen, on taannoinen Mänttä-Vilppulan kuntaan suunniteltu asumisen konsepti, joka olisi yhdistänyt asumista ja pienilmailua. Tai Orimattilan Hennaan suunniteltu puutarhakaupunginosa, joka on kunnan mittavista ponnisteluista huolimatta lähtökuopissa. Edellä mainittuja hankkeita tai kuntia ei ole tarkoitus mollata niiden vastoinkäymisten takia, mutta käyttää niitä esimerkkeinä tapauksista, joita olisi voitu suunnata paremmin konseptointivaiheessa tunnistamalla asumispreferenssien, asuntokysynnän ja liikkumisen muutoksia.

Tulevaisuusvisiot ja -skenaariot ennakoivan suunnittelun välineenä

Yksi tapa tehdä ennakoivaa suunnittelua on hyödyntää tulevaisuudentutkimuksessa kehiteltyjä ennakointimetodeja, kuten tulevaisuusskenaarioita tai visioita. Skenaarioiden ja visioiden avulla voidaan rakentaa uskottavia maankäyttöä koskevia kehityskulkuja, joilla voidaan hahmottaa suunnittelun päämääriä, mahdollisuuksia sekä pahimpia sudenkuoppia. Ne tuovat esille uusia näkökantoja, hahmottavat suunnittelun riskejä ja auttavat keskittymään suunnittelussa merkityksellisiin asioihin, kun suunnittelun aikajänne on useasti kymmeniä vuosia. Parhaimmillaan skenaariot ja visiot ovatkin ennen oikeusvaikutteisen kaavan laatimista, kun suunnittelulle kaivataan vaihtoehtoja, perusteltuja näkemyksiä, reunaehtoja tai toimintojen ja suunnitelmien yhteensovittamista sekä toimijoiden yhteen saattamista. 

Skenaariot ja visiot ovat antoisinta muodostaa joko ydintoimijoiden kesken tai laajemmalla osanottajakunnalla, jolloin näkemyksiä ja tavoitetilaa rakennetaan yhteisesti. Näin tavoitteisiin sitoudutaan helpommin yhdessä, ja näin ollen poliittinen päätöksenteko on myös helpompaa. 

Mitä ennakoiva suunnittelu vaatii asiakkaalta? 

Asiakkaan kannalta strategisen suunnittelun tulevaisuusorientoituneet yhteiskehittämisprosessit vaativat työtä, mutta lopputulos on palkitseva, kun oman organisaation ja alueen tulevaisuutta mietitään yhdessä virkahenkilöstön, päättäjien ja keskeisten sidosryhmien kanssa. Osallisuuden kautta ennakointiprosessi antaa takuulla eväitä nykytilan tunnistamiseen ja tulevaisuuden hahmottamiseen, jota voidaan konkreettisesti hyödyntää myöhemmin esimerkiksi osana organisaation strategiaprosessia.

Capfulin rooli ennakointityössä on luoda puitteet onnistuneelle tulevaisuusorientoituneelle prosessille toimimalla aihepiirin ulkopuolisena erityisasiantuntijana, auttaa asiakasta hahmottamaan nykyistä ja tulevaa toimintaympäristöä, muotoilla asiakkaan kanssa keskeisiä tavoitteita, toimia tilaisuuksien fasililitaattorina sekä auttaa päätöksentekoprosessin loppuunsaattamisessa. Capfulilla on kokemusta ennakoivasta maankäytön suunnittelusta esimerkiksi Kotka-Haminan strategisen yleiskaavan laadinnasta, ja Jaakko Huttunen on ollut laatimassa useita maankäytön ennakointi-, skenaario- ja visiotöitä muun muassa Helsingin, Rovaniemen ja Vaasan kaupungeille. Capfulin ennakointityötä voidaan hyödyntää myös millä tahansa muulla toimialalla, jolla tarvitaan nykytilan kartoitusta ja tulevaisuuden kehityskulkujen tunnistamista. Esimerkiksi huhtikuussa valittavat uudet kunnanvaltuustot voivat kaivata kunnan kokonaistilanteesta ja suunnasta uusia ajatuksia ennen kuntastrategian laadintaa.

Jos alueesi kaipaa uusia ajatuksia ennakointiin tai strategian laatimiseen, niin laita viestiä ja sovitaan tapaaminen!

Kirjoittaja toimi julkisen hallinnon ennakoinnin asiantuntijana Capfulilla

Jaakko Huttunen

Senior Consultant, FM
+358 44 747 7007
jaakko.huttunen@capful.fi

Tomi Heikkinen

Utilizing foresight in continuous strategizing & building the capability for it – Part 2

This is the second part of a two-part article series where I discuss three topics:

  1. Defining, measuring and developing a strategic foresight capability
  2. Continuous strategic foresight: what & how
  3. Integrating continuous strategic foresight into continuous strategizing, i.e. strategic conversations and management

I had the privilege of presenting these ideas to a to a large audience of interested executives and experts at Capful’s breakfast seminar in Helsinki on the 8th of March 2023.

Continuous strategic foresight: what & how

Adopting strategic foresight as a continuous activity is an increasingly popular issue. Like when eating the metaphorical elephant, it is better to start with small bites. If the following, I will focus on a specific application area: developing the means to do strategic foresight for continuous strategic decision-making. Here, you apply the capability I talked about in my previous article.

Methods for continuous foresight are manifold, but the two main ways to generate futures knowledge are horizon scanning and environment monitoring. To many, monitoring and scanning sound like two sides of the same coin, but they have a distinct and meaningful differences. Monitoring takes the inside-out perspective to foresight: it is based on the strategic assumptions you’ve made about the future(s) of your environment that make or break your strategy. The idea is to monitor whether these assumptions are becoming true or not, and the drivers impacting their fate. In monitoring, the foresight work is scoped, whereas in horizon scanning, the purpose is much more about exploration and outside-in thinking – discovering and analyzing weak signals and emerging trends that might impact your organization’s performance. High-quality strategic foresight applies both methods.    

Along with methods, continuous foresight requires a clear enough scope to ensure it does not become too open-ended. In addition, you need a process or a defined way of working with timed deliverables, assigned resources and roles with tasks and systems and tools to facilitate collaborative data gathering, analysis and results dissemination. There might be industry-specific data sources that provide information of sufficient depth, but foresighters increasingly rely on AI, advanced search methods, personal networks and their research – including real and virtual experiences. Ultimately, what is generated are signals, signal collections and initial what-if questions.

Whether the foresight “content” or futures knowledge is generated by a consultant, an in-house researcher, or the top management team themselves, it is useless without proper integration into the strategizing processes and forums in the organization. It is here where sensemaking – understanding the implications of futures knowledge to us – ultimately happens. These “Aha!” moments are notoriously difficult to disseminate since people must have them on their own. Foresight must become a part of strategic decision-making.   

Integrating continuous strategic foresight into continuous strategizing

Continuous strategic decision-making requires vision and facts, including customer or stakeholder feedback, financial performance figures, performance KPI outcomes and so on. Truly integrating strategic foresight with continuous strategizing in your organization is not only about adding one “new” type of information into your decision-making. While foresight can be defined as a type of knowledge about the potential futures of phenomena or whole systems, successfully applying it in decision-making requires fundamental changes in your entire way and structure of management. Without these changes, getting the full – or even necessary – benefits of strategic foresight is impossible. What do you need to reconsider and reconfigure in your management model to take full advantage of strategic foresight?

First, using strategic foresight requires you to adjust the context in which you have strategic conversations and “do” continuous strategizing. By context we mean the vision of the organization, organizational objectives, plans and assumptions about the future of the external environment that affects the success of the organization. The last bit of the context is too often not made explicit: the assumptions live in the minds of a select few and might not be scrutinized but only taken as granted or as obvious “truths”. Strategic foresight necessitates making the assumptions explicit and shared in the organization, because they form a major part of the foundation for successful continuous foresight. As I discussed earlier, monitoring the assumptions we have and how they become real or not is a fundamental part of strategic foresight.   

Second, benefiting from strategic foresight requires rethinking what you need to do and achieve in strategizing. In other words, you have to reconfigure how you have strategic conversations in the organization. The party responsible for strategizing, often a CEO or a director, must prepare and set an agenda for shared sensemaking, where foresight is discussed and conclusions about foresight are made. The party must have futures thinking capabilities and be able to facilitate the shared foresighting, sensemaking and options assessment.

Third and final, the management structures and processes must be addressed to take full advantage of strategic foresight. Integrating foresighting as an activity and the results of foresight from other parties to strategic conversations often lead to changes in existing strategizing forums, i.e., their timing, length, agenda and participants. The organization’s management model – when and where critical decisions are made throughout the year – might need to be adjusted, in addition to different processes and interfaces where strategic decisions are turned into action.

In summary, treating foresight as just one type of information to be fed into strategic conversations undercuts its total value to strategic management.

Let’s connect if you want to talk more

Tomi Heikkinen kuva

Tomi Heikkinen
Director

tomi.heikkinen@capful.fi

+358 40 709 9530

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Tomi Heikkinen

Utilizing foresight in continuous strategizing & building the capability for it – Part 1

This is the first part of a two-part article series where I discuss three topics:

  1. Defining, measuring and developing a strategic foresight capability
  2. Continuous strategic foresight: what & how
  3. Integrating continuous strategic foresight into continuous strategizing, i.e., strategic conversations and management

I had the privilege of presenting these ideas to a large audience of interested executives and experts at Capful’s breakfast seminar in Helsinki on the 8th of March, 2023.

As operating environments face more and more radical uncertainties, organizations across industries and sectors are looking for ways to cope and flourish. A key instrument is building their foresight capabilities. But what exactly constitutes a foresight capability, and what should one consider when developing it? Given our experience, we at Capful can provide helpful insights to these questions.

What do you need to develop your strategic foresight capability?

The basis of any strategic foresight practices, processes or functions in organizations is a clear understanding of the organizational needs, objectives and desired outcomes for strategic foresight. Consider the use cases for foresight that are critical to your organization’s short, mid- and long-term performance. What decisions or processes require regular support by foresight?

Answering the above questions can lead to utopian dreams about where and how foresight should be utilized, which is good – being ambitious is only useful here. However, temper your plans with realistic expectations about how well your organization can utilize the results of strategic foresight currently and in the near term. Eat the foresight elephant one bite at a time.

With an understanding of what is expected from strategic foresight, it is time to build the model for it. The model comprises five major areas:

  • Chosen scope and focus, themes and questions in consideration: i.e., what topics are you exploring
  • The available and assigned know-how, networks, resources and responsibilities for performing strategic foresight
  • Methods, tools, analytics and data sources for strategic foresight
  • Way of organizing, processes and measurement of strategic foresight
  • Interfaces and integration with the rest of the organization and its other processes

If you already have a working model, fixed to support one or few use-cases in your organization, you need to assess the effectiveness and ability to create value of strategic foresight. How suitable and adequate are the elements of the model in relation to the desired outcomes and the needs and objectives of the organization? How does the model work and perform? Consider also does foresight decrease uncertainty among your stakeholders. Does it trigger strategic decision-making, and does it influence and support foresight-led action?

We have developed more detailed and rigorous assessment methods for pinpointing development needs for organizations’ strategic foresight capabilities, but examinations already at this level can uncover key insights. Gaps in performance should then be used – along with exciting possibilities in model development and changing needs from the organization – to drive the creation of your desired state for strategic foresight capability. Ultimately, this view provides you with a living plan for further developing your foresight capability.

However, a capability is nothing without application. How, then to build processes for continuous foresight and integrate it with continuous strategizing? I will discuss this in the second part of the article – coming soon.

Let’s connect if you want to talk more

Tomi Heikkinen kuva

Tomi Heikkinen
Director

tomi.heikkinen@capful.fi

+358 40 709 9530

Linkedin

Mikael Paltschik

Avoid resignation – engage and empower your talent by proper foresight processes!

This short blog text is NOT about how we could have anticipated ”the great resignation”. Foresight could have opened the eyes to the possibility of this fundamental change in work life. But now that we have realized that employees have other ways of appreciating things than the generations mostly in charge in the organizations, we must find ways to cope with the challenges and keep talent. We propose that a proper foresight process that includes and empowers people is crucial to avoid ”the great resignation”.

Originally leaders made the voyage into the future. They perceived what the organization could be in the future, defined strategy, etc. Then they returned to here and now to inform the organization of the journey ahead. But this is a less helpful way. It is more beneficial to engage a significant part of the organization in exploring future possibilities, formulating ideas of how to be successful, and thus sharing the understanding of the future endeavour. Let us highlight some aspects of such an approach.

Millennials have already, and generation Z is starting to form the basis for organizational success. We know that their views of the role of work in life differ from those of the generations that now have the bulk of leadership positions. From a focus on work, we shifted towards balancing work and private life, and now we are moving to a situation where life comes first and then one looks at how work can contribute to life. Meaningfulness of our work is increasingly important among many employees, especially in developed economies. Work must contribute to your life. Otherwise, you allocate your time to other opportunities. Meaning emerges when you are involved in the conversation about where and how to navigate future uncharted waters. This calls on leadership to both design and engage people in the processes. Proper foresight processes create an understanding of the dynamics in the contextual environment. They highlight opportunities and risks, put strategy formulation and chosen strategies into context. In addition, they enable identification of needs to adjust strategy, and form the basis for an ongoing strategic conversation and certify that the brand is built from inside the organization. A good design enables people to participate in the conversation and enhances motivation. It does neither outsource managerial responsibilities nor minimize the role of leadership [2].

Organizational success can be attributed to the fit, and consonance, between the elements forming its business idea; i.e. the external environment, the offering and internal factors. The fit forms the dominating ideas of the organization [3]. In line with the evolution of the contextual environment, the organization should renew its set of dominating ideas. Unfortunately, the existing dominating ideas stick very hard with management, partly because management is enacting current strategy. A proper foresight process might help overcome this, and it especially empowers the organization to raise critical voices without criticizing management. The process should, if appropriately designed, be the natural forum for highlighting signals of emerging changes in the context and the potential impact on the organization. The foresight process should be the arena for ”making disagreement an asset”. To quote Richard Norman (2001) ”no other process in an organization is more fundamental in the long term than this renewal of the dominating ideas, the reappreciation of an organization’s identity and way of manifesting it, in the face of environmental change”. Foresight fuels this process. The organization will own the outcome as long as it has been empowered by leadership and good process design to participate in the strategic conversation. By feeling that one shares the dominating ideas of the organization, one is probably less likely to be part of the great resignation.

You will also perceive the meaningfulness of your work if the organization is pursuing meaningful goals. The organization’s ESG agenda is important for many employees. They want their organization to do good, otherwise, they depart. Does foresight have anything to do with this? Yes indeed.

Traditionally, the scenario praxis saw changes coming from the contextual environment, and there was little you could do than to adapt. This limited the sphere for strategic options. Fortunately, our mental repertoire is not so limited anymore. Think e.g. about WBCSD’s normative scenarios to ensure that 9 billion people can live within planetary boundaries, Adam Kahane’s work with transformative scenarios to embrace collective action, or the ideas of Market Shaping by Nenonen & Storbacka [4]. Actors can shape the future. In an organization, creative interpretation of what could be possible can reframe the thinking. By traveling into the future, one can reperceive what the organization can do and draw a new map that will change the landscape, using Norman’s subtitle (2001). Scenarios are perfect tools for drawing new maps for landscapes that do not exist yet. Adopting this view in foresight and strategy work will engage individuals who want to create a better tomorrow for the world, the organization, and themself. Empowered by a well-designed and inclusive foresight process, the ties to the organization get stronger.

Blessed are the leaders who know that they do not know. They are geared towards calling on the power of the organization and mastering the art of strategic conversation. This is even more important when the organization’s operational environment is confronted with significant changes, such as the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Leadership is well advised to foster organizational capabilities to explore future possibilities for value creation. Engaging the organization in the journey into plausible futures and back requires good process design and leadership that empowers people. Getting this right lays a good foundation for strategies that create value for all stakeholders, including society, customers and colleagues. Leaders that enable the organization to connect the future with the present they understand that leadership is an art. You are a leader as long as those you lead give you the privilege to lead them. Having a common understanding of what the future might bring at you is key. Future oriented leadership, supported by scenarios from proper foresight processes, empowers the organization to join the journey into a meaningful future. The endeavour minimizes the risk of resignation and keeps the best talent onboard.

This note is an invitation to continue the discussion. We humbly accept that there is more to learn. Happy to do that together – let’s connect.

Contact us
Mikael Paltschik kuva
Mikael Paltschik
Senior Advisor, Ph.D., Associate professor
050 344 6953
mikael.paltschik@capful.fi

[1] Sincere thanks to my colleagues Risto Lätti and Nando Malmelin for constructive comments on an earlier version of this text

[2] I’m thankful to all my former colleagues at Sifo – Research International Sweden (now Kantar Sweden) for our co-creation of understanding of organizational development, manifested in the ”Management of Intangible Assets” concept.

[3] For an in-depth discussion, see e.g., Norman (1975) Management for Growth, or Norman (2001) Reframing Business – when the Map Changes the Landscape.

[4] https://www.wbcsd.org/Overview/About-us/Vision-2050-Time-to-Transform/Resources/Time-to-Transform;  Kahane (2012): Transformative Scenario Planning: Working Together to Change the Future or Kahane (2021): Facilitating Breakthrough: How to Remove Obstacles, Bridge Differences, and Move Forward Together;  Nenonen & Storbacka (2018): SMASH: Using Market Shaping to Design New Strategies for Innovation, Value Creation, and Growth.

Mikael Paltschik and Risto Lätti

The knowing-trap

The notion of Black swans has become an integral part of futurizing discussions, although few have read Nicholas Taleb’s original text. Black swans did exist all the time, but as we did not know of their existence, all swans were white. No need to look for alternatives, we knew! Right. So did we really know that nobody is so stupid that he starts a war in Europe? Or did we just not explore different possibilities that seemed undesirable or not probable to us? Ignorance, based on a false perception of knowing might have undesirable consequences.

One should not underestimate the complexity most organizations face, and the need to reduce complexity to create meaning and facilitate decision making. Strong leaders know, and they make decisions, if you allow some irony. In many cases this works, for incremental shorth term development of the organization, specially in stable environments. But what if the environment is turbulent? And if there is a particularly important universe of phenomena, relevant to the decision, that you have not explored because you think you know, although you know only a fraction of the relevant issues? Thinking that you know reduces the perceived risk, but de facto the actual risk you face is bigger although you do not recognize it.

Every organization is a system of power and political structures. This does impact every exploration into the not known. Strong cultures of “command and control” might foster single-loop learning processes, mainly achieving adaptation and correction goals. But what if you start to question the assumptions underlying many of your strategic beliefs, if you realize the boundaries in your mental models and start to up- and timeframe your thinking? In a double-loop learning process you might see something new coming at you in the future, not only another yesterday.

Is there a way to escape the knowing-trap and use a larger part of the universe to influence our way to think about futures, and options laying ahead for us? Our friend Christophe Kempkes from shiftN [1] in Belgium, helped to formulate a set of very helpful question:   

What if…..?

What if we knew less and learn more?

What if we knew less and imagine more?

What if we knew less and experience more?

These “what if” question can trigger a process leading to an expanded intellectual realm. Richard Normann in Reframing Business called the process “Knowing how to know”. Languaging, use of opening and catalysing artefacts, structural coupling etc. are key elements in such a process. The analytical and intellectual debate, “let disagreement be an asset”, were competing views of how futures might come at us is core to every successful futurizing, and scenario, endeavour. Turning this into an ongoing process, integrated in the organizational DNA, can create a platform for “knowing” less and learning more.

On our learning journey we might stumble upon black swans, which existence perhaps were clear and understandable to others. And we might have been able to understand that there are people stupid enough to start a war in Europe in 2020’s.

We invite you to join the escape from the knowing-trap.

[1] https://shiftn.com/team/christophe-kempkes