Interim management · Advisory · Investment
Do you want to increase your resilience and maximize your opportunities in the next 5 to 10 years? We can't predict what is going to happen. We can make sure your team stays committed, keeps learning and keeps investing forward.
Foresight Transitions is an interim management, advisory and investment platform for organizations and teams that must choose a way forward in a volatile period. Our own innovation, transition, collaboration and investment methods help you, your team and your organization evolve.
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Adaptive pathways Illustrative
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Who we work with
The strategy runs on an annual cycle. The changes around you don't.
You need an experienced leader now, for a defined period, with a clear mandate.
Meanwhile the team is fully stretched by this year's targets.
Several options look promising. None of them is certain.
Our approach
Markets, technology and regulation now move faster than most strategic plans. Futurist Jamais Cascio describes this as a BANI world: brittle, anxious, nonlinear and incomprehensible. We help you build the opposite qualities into your team and your organization.
Spare capacity and flexible structures, so a shock bends the organization without breaking it.
Clear communication of the bigger picture, and the psychological safety people need to stay engaged.
Small experiments, short feedback loops and several options kept open at the same time.
Diverse perspectives and outside networks that help you read problems no single expert can explain.
BANI framework: Jamais Cascio (2020). The positive counterparts guide how we design teams and decisions.
Principles
They come from research on foresight, transitions and decision-making under deep uncertainty, and from our own work with ministries, universities and companies.
We don't bet your organization on one forecast. We map pathways and agree in advance when to switch between them.
People learn and change once today's operations are secure. In a crisis, steady the ship first.
Spotting change is the easy part. We turn signals into small experiments and real decisions within weeks.
Funding is released in stages, as signposts confirm the direction. Options stay open for longer.
Everything we build stays with your team. We plan our own exit from the start.
Partners, investors and communities often decide whether a plan succeeds. We work on the whole ecosystem.
Transitions we're watching
No one can say how fast each one will move. Mark the ones that affect your organization, and we'll take them into account when you contact us.
What we do
Advice, interim leadership and investment usually come from three different places. With us they come from one team, so the people who design the way forward also help carry it out and finance it.
Interim management
Advisory
Investment
Why interim works
An interim leader works inside your organization without being part of its history. Research on interim management describes four advantages of that in-between position.
Decisions are judged on their merits, and difficult choices become easier to make.
A clear mandate with agreed outcomes keeps attention on what the transition needs.
A known end date creates urgency and a natural moment to hand over.
An outsider notices habits and assumptions that insiders no longer see.
Proprietary methods
We developed our methods on established research in foresight, sustainability transitions and decision-making under deep uncertainty. Together they cover how you innovate, how you change, how you work together and how you invest.
How we see change
Every organization lives in three futures at once. Mapping them shows what to keep, what to change and what to start.
Three Horizons framework: Bill Sharpe and Anthony Hodgson.
Innovation
We map what to keep, what to change and what to start using the Three Horizons. Then we test the most promising ideas with small, safe-to-fail probes. Most organizations see the signals. Far fewer act on them, and this method closes that gap.
Builds on: Three Horizons (Sharpe, Hodgson) · corporate foresight research (Rohrbeck)
Transition
A protected space where frontrunners from inside and outside your organization shape the new way of working, away from the routines and interests that keep the old one in place.
Builds on: transition management (Rotmans, Loorbach) · the multi-level perspective (Geels)
Collaboration
Review cycles matched to how uncertain each problem is: daily in a crisis, weekly for complex work, monthly for the rest. People see progress, raise concerns early and stay committed to the way forward.
Builds on: Cynefin (Snowden) · the OODA loop (Boyd) · Positive BANI
Investment
Capital is split into tranches. Each tranche is released when an agreed signpost crosses its trigger, so you keep options open without betting everything on one forecast.
Builds on: dynamic adaptive policy pathways (Haasnoot, Kwakkel) · real options analysis
How an engagement runs
Each phase ends with concrete results that stay with your team. We adapt the mix of interim leadership, advice and investment to what you need at each stage.
Phase 1 · Diagnose
We measure how well your organization spots change and acts on it. Then we sort your challenges into clear, complicated, complex and chaotic, because each type needs a different way of working.
You leave withA shared picture of your preparedness and a workstream for each challenge.
Phase 2 · Stabilize
Where needed, an interim leader steps in with a clear mandate and stabilizes current operations first. In parallel, a transition arena starts work on what comes next.
You leave withStable operations, a Three Horizons map and a team focused on the future.
Phase 3 · Invest forward
We turn the agenda into an adaptive pathways map, stress-test it against many scenarios and fund the first probes. Learning reviews run every week or two.
You leave withA pathways map, a register of signposts and triggers, and a staged funding plan.
Phase 4 · Scale and hand over
Probes that work scale up with partners from our network. Skills move to your team throughout, so nothing depends on us when the mandate ends.
You leave withAn organization that keeps adapting on its own.
Many clients run the cycle again as their horizon moves forward.
Track record
We have worked with ministries, universities and public-service innovators on transitions in security, public innovation and digital services.
Dutch applied universities working on security came together around one shared national research agenda, with themes such as cybersecurity, adaptive networks, physical security, and data and intelligence.
A month-long national program of showcases, learning and exchange, organized with more than ten Dutch ministries.
We helped shape programs in justice, freedom and security for the Dutch National Growth Fund, where programs range from €30 million to €2 billion.
A three-month experiment that helped SEMA build a new digital offering and enter a new market in Kenya, covering both product and business development.
Why it matters
A seven-year study followed large companies from 2008 to 2015. Firms that were well prepared for the future went on to outperform the average.
33%
higher profitability
Firms rated future-prepared in 2008 were more profitable than the sample average by 2015.
200%
higher market-cap growth
The same firms grew their market capitalization far faster than the average over the same period.
51%
chance a partner-dependent plan works
If your plan needs three partners who each have an 80% chance of delivering, the odds that all three deliver are about 51%. That is why we work on the whole ecosystem.
Sources: René Rohrbeck and Menes Etingue Kum (2018), Corporate foresight and its impact on firm performance: A longitudinal analysis, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, vol. 129. The study shows an association between preparedness and performance; it does not prove cause. Partner example: 0.8 × 0.8 × 0.8 ≈ 0.51, after Ron Adner, The Wide Lens (2012).
Readiness check
Eight statements, about two minutes. Many organizations are better at spotting change than at acting on it, so the check looks at both. Your answers stay in your browser.
Network
If you wish, we connect your transition to a network of supporting, interrelated initiatives. Plans often fail because a partner they depend on isn't ready. We look at the whole ecosystem around your plan and line up the partners it needs.
Contact
Tell us what is changing around you and which decision you are facing. In a first conversation we explore whether interim leadership, advice, investment or a combination fits your situation.