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# Futures Strategy Group: be ready now

## Sitemaps
[XML Sitemap](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/sitemap_index.xml): Includes all crawlable and indexable pages.

## Blog
- [Strategic Planning in Health Care: Clarifying the AI Challenge](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/strategic-planning-in-health-care-3/): AI in medicine can be a powerful tool for good – or a serious challenge to the all-important element of trust. Which will it be?
- [Strategic Planning in Health Care: Making Sense of the Blurring Boundaries](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/strategic-planning-in-health-care-2/): How do we get out ahead of the changes and see past the fog?
- [Strategic Planning in Health Care: Penetrating the Impenetrable](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/strategic-planning-in-health-care/): The status quo in US health care is not sustainable.
- [Why prediction markets are not strategy](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/prediction-markets-are-not-strategy/): ...and why you need to trust the collective wisdom of the organization
- [Seven Impacts of Baby Bust Scenarios](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/seven-impacts-of-baby-bust-scenarios/): What happens when there are fewer children?
- [AI in Scenario Planning: Promise and Challenges](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/ai-in-scenario-planning/): AI in scenario planning was an inevitable development. Does it help or hinder the effectiveness of scenario use in strategy development and execution?
- [The post-Covid future was hostile to prediction](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/the-post-covid-future/): A backward look at post-COVID scenarios demonstrates how susceptible we can be to the fascinations of the moment.
- [Valuing ‘Rigorous Imagination’ in Scenario Planning](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/scenario-planning-5/): Scenario planning success requires disciplined, deliberate efforts to imagine the widest range of plausible future operating environments...
- [Should emerging population scenarios frighten us?](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/population-scenarios/): Population growth creates challenges, so does population decline. We’ll likely see both, at the same time.
- [FSG Signals: What are we missing?](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/fsg-signals-what-are-we-missing/): Some big, some small, some existential in their implications...
- [Is strategic foresight in the US government dead?](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/strategic-foresight-2/): And if so, who is left to rigorously imagine the future?
- [Hollywood, Girl Scouts and Cross-Impact Analysis](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/cross-impact-analysis/): Why your current success may be your biggest future liability.
- [Roots of Cross-Impact Analysis in Strategic Foresight](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/strategic-foresight/): This is the start of a series of FSG strategic foresight blogs on what we call cross-impact analysis. More than a single, discrete methodology, it’s a way of thinking about the future that looks beyond the trends that in the present moment appear all-defining and permanent. In this initial entry FSG senior advisor (and founding principal) Charles Thomas discusses the origins and value of a specific cross-impact tool.  
- [Remembering Charles Perrottet, 1944-2025](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/remembering-charles-perrottet/): 2025 begins for us on a very sad note, since we will have to carry on without a great and useful colleague, friend, and human being, Charles Perrottet, who passed away January 3. 
- [Are we on the cusp of an “inflection point” ?](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/on-the-cusp-of-an-inflection-point/): What does that mean? And how would we know?
- [Book Review: Nate Silver’s “On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything”](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/nate-silver-on-the-edge/): Just in time for the coming US presidential election, FSG's Patrick Marren warns about prediction in situations of strategic consequence in his review of Nate Silver's On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything.
- [The complex puzzle of US population scenarios](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/us-population-scenarios/): Uncertainty around immigration, birthrates, the economy and even the environment challenge us to think about not one but multiple US population scenarios.
- [Examining the Matriarchy Scenario](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/examining-the-matriarchy-scenario/): Gains for women, but more evolution than revolution
- [What Won’t Change in Our Uncertain Future?](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-uncertain-future/): Human nature, for one...
- [Everything is predictable. Not.](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/everything-is-predictable/): Bayesian analysis has its place – but not in real strategy development
- [Anticipating the Human Factors in a Scenario Planning Experience](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/scenario-planning-experience/): At the end of the day, it's about having the right people committed to the project.
- [The Teleporting Value of Scenario Planning](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/value-of-scenario-planning/): Imagining alternative futures
- [Remembering Ted Gordon, 1930-2024](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/ted-gordon/): Rocket scientist, pioneer in futures studies, humanitarian, colleague and friend
- [Planning for the future is hard, and whose problem is it anyway?](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/planning-for-the-future/): Why it's difficult to imagine the future – for ourselves and for our organizations
- [Pondering the Uncertain Future of Investment ](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/future-of-investment/): Much uncertainty, yes. But there always is.
- [Strategic Surprise: When systems stop working](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/strategic-surprise/): ...and there's no plan.
- [Seven Lessons for Scenario Planning](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/scenario-planning-4/): Take it from our deep experience.
- [AI Scenarios:               Getting Beyond Our Reflex to Imagine the Worst](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/ai-scenarios/): The complex AI future requires it...
- [Texas, Tennessee and a Tipping Point on Guns?](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/tipping-point-on-guns-in-texas-and-tennessee/): Some early signs of change.
- [Signals: Is the future of Texas the US’ future?](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/the-future-of-texas/): It's a complicated question.
- [Signals: Homeowner’s Insurance, China and Hyperbole](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/homeowners-insurance/): Shorter reflections on some things in the news, from a distinctly FSG perspective.
- [<strong>Hopeful 2023 Scenario Bits</strong>](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/2023-scenario/): Happy Holidays!
- [The Continuity Trap](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/continuity-trap/): Eluding it requires rigorous imagination...
- [The Futility of Expert Prediction](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/expert-prediction/): We need less certainty, wider imaginations.
- [Scanning the Horizon: How to Upset Your Settled Opinions](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/scanning-the-horizon/): ...and manage future risk and uncertainty
- [We Need a Positive Economic Scenario Right About Now](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/we-need-a-positive-economic-scenario-right-about-now/): FSG economist Robert Avila considers what could go right.
- [Confessions of an Engineer](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/confessions-of-an-engineer/): ...in a complex, non-linear world
- [Thriving in the Uncertainty Space](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/uncertainty-space/): It's seldom prudent to wait until the skies clear. They rarely do.
- [Fifty Shades of Green](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/climate-scenario-planning-2/): There's climate change. And there's the equally messy social-political-economic contexts in which it will all play out.
- [Don’t Expect the Future to be Rational](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/scenario-planning-workshops/): Even supposedly stable systems can be unpredictable — often because human behavior makes them that way.
- [Some Hopeful 2022 Foresight](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/some-hopeful-2022-foresight/): We need this now. Happy Holidays!
- [Harari’s Stumble on the Future](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/hararis-future-perspective/): Even brilliant authors tend to underestimate the complexity of the future.
- [What is Horizon Scanning? And what does it really tell us about the future?](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/horizon-scanning-process/): To do over the horizon scanning, you need to start by seeing what is on the horizon.
- [Burnout – How Exploring Futures Can Help](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/scenario-planning-burnout/): A counterintuitive approach to workplace stress and weariness - aka burnout
- [Lessons from Afghanistan: Contingency Planning for “Unlikely” Scenarios](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/contingency-planning/): Being prepared for all high-impact surprises
- [Life, Death and Adaptation: How to think about the future](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/business-ecosystem/): A narrow understanding of a business ecosystem is a constraint on imagination—and growth.
- [Strategic foresight requires imagination, rigor and (often) courage](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/strategic-foresight-courage/): Think hard before taking thorny issues off the table. 
- [Five Future Paths for Bitcoin and Digital Currencies](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/future-of-digital-currencies/): Watch for hazards and detours...
- [Have we given up on the future?](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/declining-birth-rate/): Is the declining birth rate evidence of a broader, more worrisome trend?
- [So where’s my prize for thinking long term?](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/thinking-long-term/): ...and why does the short term so often win out? 
- [Strategic Choice: The Efficiency vs. Resilience Dilemma](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/efficiency-vs-resilience/): The enduring lessons of the Ever Given crisis in the Suez
- [Foresight, Disaster, and Texas](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/texas-and-scenario-planning/): When it comes to disaster preparedness, no one comes out looking all that good.
- [Biden, Fauci, FDR and Decision Making Under Uncertainty](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/decision-making-under-uncertainty/): "It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something."
- [2020: An Extraordinary Year. FSG takes stock](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/2020-an-extraordinary-year/): May all our futures be brighter in 2021
- [The post-COVID future is hostile to prediction](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/post-covid-future/): It's about foresight -- being ready for whatever the future brings. 
- [Is the Republican Party Doomed by Demographics?](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/republican-demographic/): In short, no. Here's why...
- [Scenario Planning to Guide the Digital Journey](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/scenarios-and-digitalization/): Because the strategic context matters.
- [Making the Most of Our Punctuated  Equilibrium](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/punctuated-equilibrium/): Leaders should be readying their strategic reflexes for a post-Covid future that will arrive uninvited but arrive just the same.
- [2023 scenario capsules– Will you be ready?](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/2023-scenario-capsules/): Clients are using FSG's capsule scenarios to jumpstart planning for a post-COVID world.  Gerard Smith explains. 
- [HBR Profiles Our Scenario-Planning Work for the US Coast Guard](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/hbr-scenarios-us-coast-guard/): https://eventhorizonstrategies.com/peter-scoblic/It’s nice to be noticed. And even nicer to be associated with a world-class organization like the Coast Guard. 
- [When this is behind us, how will we think about privacy?](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/privacy-and-health-care/): And it may not matter. 
- [Getting Ahead of the Incident](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/manage-today-plan-tomorrow/): Managing today’s incident while also planning for tomorrow is not easy, but we leave ourselves vulnerable to being consumed by the crisis if we don’t.
- [Scenario Planning in the Time of Coronavirus](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/scenario-planning-coronavirus/): Suddenly, the future is here. 
- [Coronavirus, Carl Jung and Scenario Planning](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/paradox-of-uncertainty/): Strategy at a time of great uncertainty
- [Scenarios for the 2020 Presidential Election – and Its Aftermath](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/2020-election-scenarios/): What's ahead for the US after the 2020 election and beyond? Prediction is perilous. But FSG has collaborated on a set of short-term scenarios that suggest several plausible paths ahead for US politics, policy and the economy.
- [When to Do Scenario Planning – and When Not to](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/when-to-do-scenario-planning/): Scenario planning is a powerful tool, but it's not the right remedy for all organizations worried about the future. 
- [People – Too Many, Not Enough, or Just Right?](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/demographic-change/): There is too much at stake to rely on old assumptions. Only by forcing ourselves to imagine previously un-thought-of futures are we really starting to take future uncertainty seriously.
- [Scenario Planning for a Wicked Problem – Climate Change](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/climate-scenario-planning/): Wicked problems resist resolution, but as guest contributor Mark Trexler argues, the uncertainties surrounding climate change should not prevent organizations considering the implications and planning accordingly. 
- [Capitalism and the Long Term](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/capitalism-the-long-term/): The stability of capitalism is threatened by an excessive focus on the short-term. The long term must be a part of decision making, and scenario planning can help.
- [Intelligent Technology and the Coming Liability Crisis](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/intelligent-technology/): Intelligent technologies are so woven into our lives that we no longer see them.  They are not us.  Yet we permit them to decide for us...
- [Alternative Crispr Futures](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/alternative-crispr-futures/): We're not yet to designer babies or Gattica, but those futures are no longer science fiction. 
- [Capturing Scenario Planning Value](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/scenario-planning-value/): With any strategic planning exercise, maintaining momentum through the implemention phase can be a challenge.  Here are some important insights we've picked up along the way. 
- [23 and Me, You, Everything](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/genomics-revolution/): Biology is not destiny, but the field of genomics is chock full of powerful implications -- for science, medicine, commerce, society and just about anything we can think of.
- [Scenario Planning for Big Tech and Big Media](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/scenario-planning-big-tech/): Are we nearing a tipping point?  
- [Scenario Planning for Sustainability](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/sustainability-scenario-planning/): Scenario planning and alternative futures are powerful tools for building corporate consensus around sustainability policies. 
- [40 million people go missing in the future](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/future-us-population/): Demographics, unlike many other scenario-planning factors, is not prone to serious uncertainty, right?  Hang on...
- [Older and Wiser?](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/population-structure/): This is the second of two pieces about demography, focusing on another aspect, less to do with the population’s overall size than with its structure - specifically the changing composition by age group.
- [The Wrong Way to Use History](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/wrong-way-to-use-history/): There have been a lot of historical analogies being thrown around lately. The presidency of Donald Trump has caused a lot of smart people (and a lot of less-well-educated ones) to dig up stuff from the past that they see as relevant to our current situation - and to where we may be headed in the near future.
- [FSG Scenario Planning Workshop with Rhode Island Fisheries](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/fsg-scenario-planning-workshop/): Scenario planning is an enjoyable and stimulating endeavor, endlessly interesting and always rewarding —to a large extent because its usefulness is in decision making under uncertainty.
- [Designing the Office of Strategic Need](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/office-of-strategic-need/): Organizations are managed by people who acquired expertise from experience in an existing operating environment. But operating environments change unrelentingly.  How does one get out ahead of this change?
- [Hate to Say We Told You So…](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/scenarios/): But we told you so.
- [Nate Silver Is A Rigged System](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/nate-silver-rigged-system/): It's not that he's wrong. It's that Presidential elections are not baseball.
- [Undecideds have decided. Game over?](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/election-polls/): There’s actually less volatility in the polls than you might think. 
- [Brexit scenarios, and the surprises still lurking](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/brexit-scenarios/): Assessing the risks of massive global disruption
- [Don’t fight the future, whatever it turns out to be](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/dont-fight-the-future/): The highest barrier to managing strategic change is often the very success of today’s business model.
- [Two FSG Clients – One Lesson](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/nasa-and-the-panama-canal/): Going in two directions at once in the Panama Canal
- [It’s Getting Hard to Write Free Trade Scenarios](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/free-trade-scenarios/): We may have already seen the high-water mark of globalization. 
- [The Future of Media, Marketing, Brands, and the American Two-party System](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/future-of-media-and-politics/): Wait, what?
- [Trump Scenarios](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/trump-scenarios/): First off, the Brookings Institution has three Trump scenarios, written by Philip A. Wallach, Senior Fellow in Governance Studies. They are entitled "America Made Great Again: Trump as Figurehead and Negotiator;" "Congress Made Great Again: Trump's Failure and the Return of America's First Branch;" and "Just Sad: How Trump Exploited American Democracy's Weaknesses."

## Pages
- [Search](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/search/)
- [Book Announcement](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/fatal-certainty/): For over 40 years, the Futures Strategy Group and its predecessor organizations have provided clients with a way to deal with future uncertainty, a method that gives them the best possible chance to anticipate significant future eventualities and think deeply about their ramifications.
- [What is Scenario Planning?](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/about-fsg/what-is-scenario-planning/): FSG scenario planning is a way to think, plan and act in the face of future change and uncertainty.
- [Coming Soon](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/coming-soon/): I'm working on something amazing!But don't worry, I'll be back soon.
- [Blog](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/about-fsg/blog/)
- [Contact](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/contact-fsg/): We’d like to hear from you.
- [Leaders In Scenario Planning](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/): Scenario Planning, also known as Alternative Futures Planning, is a collaborative way of thinking, planning – and acting – that explicitly factors in a range of plausible ways in which your operating environment could change in the future. For nearly two decades, FSG has helped leading organizations integrate foresight into their strategy and operations.
- [Virtual Scenario Planning](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-services/virtual-scenario-planning/): What is virtual scenario planning?  It is essentially traditional scenario planning with FSG consultants facilitating the project remotely. The process is identical to FSG’s traditional scenario planning process, but without FSG consultants being onsite for planning, stakeholder interviews, scenario work sessions and strategy workshops.
- [FSG’s Covid-19 Scenario Initiative](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-services/fsgs-covid-19-scenario-initiative/): FSG is committed to helping our clients explore what the world could look like when the immediate Covid-19 crisis has passed – 2022-23. We have created a set of post-virus scenario foundations that describe a range of plausible, alternative.  coronavirus impacts on the economy, business, politics, global relations, health care, work, lifestyle and more. 
- [Scenario Planning for Climate Change](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-services/scenario-planning-climate-change/): Scenario Planning for climate change has become a hot topic as companies are being increasingly pressured by investors and other stakeholders to assess and disclose their climate related risks.  The Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) has developed its own scenario planning methodology that it is advocating that companies follow. But the TCFD methodology is just one way to use scenario planning. A lot depends on whether management is focused on climate change in isolation of other strategic issues, and whether it sees scenario planning primarily as a way to fulfilling stakeholder calls for climate risk disclosure.  
- [Our Mission](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/about-fsg/fsg/): FSG engagements are staffed primarily with firm principals, supported by experienced scenario planning consultants.  The philosophy underlying our processes is that strategic planning must be expansive, rigorous and tied to concrete actions that can be acted upon immediately.  We also believe that this work should be stimulating – and even fun.
- [Publications](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/about-fsg/scenario-planning-publications/): We’ve had a lot to say over the years about the future. Here is a continuously growing and evolving archive of many of our commentaries, analyses, and discussions of best practices for staying ahead of change and disruption. We hope to provide students and practitioners of strategic foresight and scenario planning with both food for expansive thinking and practical tips on strategy, scenario development and strategy execution. 
- [Our Team](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-team/): The Futures Strategy Group’s people have a wide variety of backgrounds, skill sets and training, and two decades’ experience combining them for creative outcomes for our clients. We bring deep analytical rigor and business acumen, broad political, financial, marketing and strategy expertise, and an organizational culture of innovation to bear on our clients’ most pressing issues.
- [Executive Presentations & Speeches](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-services/strategic-foresight/): Strategic foresight is our mission, and we are happy to share what we have learned from more than a quarter century serving leading organizations around the globe.  
- [Scenario Training](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-services/scenario-training/): Few, if any, scenario planning consultancies in the world today can boast the breadth and depth of experience and the tremendous client list of the Futures Strategy Group, LLC. FSG has taught hundreds of professionals the basics of scenario-based strategic planning, from one-day introductory sessions to more advanced and in-depth workshop-based training.
- [Strategic Options](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-services/strategic-options/): There are moves you can make now to gain future competitive advantage. But these moves – the strategic real estate that could offer the greatest returns in the future – are by their nature not obvious. They must be imagined, from a systematic review of the plausible futures you could face. FSG’s decades of dealing with future uncertainty on behalf of world-leading clients can help you lock in future opportunities before your competitors.
- [Strategic Innovation Workshops](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-services/strategic-innovation-workshops/): FSG has developed structured workshops to help clients take leave of “the tyranny of the present” and to start thinking expansively about future challenges and opportunities. These workshops fuse FSG’s futures expertise with the client’s business knowledge. Collectively, we explore emerging forces for change and their implications for consumers, markets and operations.
- [Futures Decision Panel](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-services/futures-decision-panel/): Strategic uncertainty about the future is always there. But when important decisions arise in an atmosphere of crisis, few organizations are in position to take the full range of future threats and opportunities into account. FSG can help you cover your bases with its Futures Decision Panel. A panel approach recognizes that such contingency planning decisions must often be addressed with limited time and resources. FSG consultants, experienced in scenarios and strategy development, help participants explore and evaluate the full impact of the unknown on your operating environment, often turning uncertainty from a liability into a strategic asset.
- [Scenario-Based Analysis & Modeling](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-services/scenario-based-analysis-modeling/): Scenarios are not simply a set of nice stories; nor can they be used only within the context of a large-scale enterprise strategy engagement. Our sets of scenarios can be used to stress-test or analyze the implications of any critical decision facing you. And a set can be used to gauge the full plausible variability of any quantity of interest, as well as the interactions between various quantities.
- [Enterprise Scenario Planning](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-services/enterprise-scenario-planning/): Enterprise Scenario Planning is how we got our start.
- [403](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/403-2/): 403 Page
- [404](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/404-2/): 404 page
- [Homepage](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/homepage/): Paste homepage markup here.
- [Sitemap](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/sitemap/)
- [Our Approach](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/about-fsg/scenario-planning-consultants/): As scenario planning consultants, FSG helps clients build robust strategies in the face of uncertainty and change. We work with them to develop a sophisticated understanding of how critical aspects of their business environment could be different in the future.  And most important, we help them understand what to do about it.
- [Our Services](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-services/): Our full portfolio of services helps you anticipate the future, from comprehensive scenario planning for enterprise strategy to single-issue-focused workshops built around specific decisions that require a futures perspective. 
- [FSG – Our Experience](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/fsg-our-experience/): The Futures Strategy Group has roots that go back to some of the earliest applications of foresight and scenario-based strategic planning. We’ve been privileged to work with clients ranging from banks and brokerages, to airlines, to retail chains, to auto and aircraft manufacturers, to the pharmaceutical industry, to utilities, to high-technology companies, to more than 15 federal departments and agencies, to… you get the idea. Chances are we’ve worked on problems a lot like yours.
- [About](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/about-fsg/): To learn more about FSG, please fill out a contact form. We'd be happy to chat.

## Biographies
- [Mark Trexler](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-team/dr-mark-trexler/): Mark C. Trexler is an FSG Associate, specializing in climate change scenario planning. Mark has advised companies on climate strategies and risk management for more than 20 years, and launched the first business climate risk consultancy in the U.S. in 1991. Most recently he was Director of Climate Risk for the global risk firm of DNV GL.  Mark holds Masters and PhD  degrees from the University of California at Berkeley
- [Joseph Dufresne](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-team/joseph-dufresne/): Joe Dufresne is an FSG Principal — and former FSG client with the US Coast Guard.  A recently retired USCG Captain, Joe specializes in strategic foresight, with broad corporate application, including budgeting, operations, human capital and acquisitions.
- [Jonathan Jeter](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-team/jonathan-jeter/): Jonathan Jeter is an FSG associate consultant with a considerable background in innovation and training. As an independent strategy, innovation and culture consultant, Jonathan works with organizations to unlock their potential through more inspired insights, ideas, and people.
- [Patrick Kelly](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-team/patrick-kelly/): Patrick Kelly is an FSG Associate, specializing in strategy and decision support in Financial Services.  Prior to joining us, he was a Partner in Deloitte Consulting’s Strategy & Operation’s practice. He was deeply involved in building Deloitte’s Financial Services practice in China and Hong Kong.
- [Jack Clarke](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-team/jack-clarke/): Dr. John L. Clarke (Jack) is an Associate of the Futures Strategy Group and a contributor to FSG strategy and security engagements. He is also Professor of Defense Management and Strategic Studies and Director of the Program on Civil Security at the Marshall Center in Garmisch, Germany. Jack is recognized as a leading expert on civil and homeland security issues. He has developed and taught numerous courses on civil security, crisis management, and stability operations, as well as developing scenario-based exercises and simulations. He recently led a major research project on European Approaches to Homeland Security and performed European research for Project Horizon, a unique interagency engagement that FSG facilitated in 2005-06. From 1999 to 2002, Jack was a director in the Strategy practice of Deloitte Consulting in Europe. In this capacity he conducted projects for companies such as Airbus and Mercedes-Benz.
- [Kevin McDermott](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-team/kevin-mcdermott/): Kevin McDermott is a principal with the Futures Strategy Group. In addition to his scenario-planning work for corporate and government clients Kevin is also the founder of Collective Intelligence, a boutique strategic-communications firm in New York.
- [Cathy Johnson](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-team/cathy-johnson/): Cathy Johnson is a freelance researcher and editor who provides research, administrative, and production support to the Futures Strategy Group. Cathy has worked with the founding principals of FSG since the mid-1980s, when they were at The Futures Group, Inc., and later at Deloitte and FSG.
- [Gerard Smith](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-team/gerard-smith/): Gerard Smith is a Managing Principal of the Futures Strategy Group, following more than 30 years as a brand and marketing strategist with experience in advertising, branding and global marketing. He has an extensive background in creating solutions to strategic marketing challenges for many of the world’s best known companies.
- [Robert Avila](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-team/robert-avila/): Robert Avila is an economist working with the Futures Strategy Group on scenario planning for corporate and government clients. Robert has advised companies on strategy and market environment issues for well over twenty years. He is an authority on market modeling, business forecasting and scenario-based planning. He has helped companies to identify opportunities in troubled markets, to evaluate growth opportunities and to prepare for competitive challenges.
- [Patrick Marren](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-team/patrick-marren/): Patrick Marren is a principal of the Futures Strategy Group, specializing in strategy and scenario planning. He has 30 years' experience in business strategy consulting, corporate finance, strategic planning, business intelligence, sales and marketing strategy, financial forecasting and budgeting, and insurance underwriting for four international companies.
- [Peter Kennedy](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-team/peter-kennedy/): Peter Kennedy is a founding principal of the Futures Strategy Group who specializes in long-term market assessment and scenario-based strategic planning. 
- [Charles W. Thomas](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/our-team/charles-w-thomas/): Charles (“Tom”) Thomas, a founding principal of the Futures Strategy Group, retired from the partnership in December 2017. He is now a senior advisor to the firm.

## Case Studies
- [Strategic Foresight for M&A Success](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/strategic-foresight/): The scenario planning project had three goals: First, use insights into future market demand to create a burning platform for innovation and growth. Second, apply scenario learning to inform decisions on specific acquisition and divestment options. Third, institutionalize strategic foresight to anticipate and respond to shifts in the marketplace.
- [Scenario-Based Strategic Planning for Medical Specialty Boards](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/medical-specialty-boards/): FSG has developed and applied a powerful and dynamic strategic-planning process for medical specialty boards.
- [Scenario Planning for Educational Leadership](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/scenario-planning-leadership/): Alternative futures (scenario) planning has traditionally been the tool of choice for leaders concerned about potentially disruptive long-term challenges in their future operating environment. Alternative futures has always been about building robust strategies and plans that would work no matter how the future turned out. That’s still the case, but in recent years increasing numbers of organizations have adopted alternative futures to meet more short-term challenges and to build a positive, resilient spirit among leaders and personnel dealing with a wide range of workplace and homelife challenges, including most recently the coronavirus pandemic.
- [Hands-On Training in Scenario Planning](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/hands-training-scenarios-and-alternative-futures-planning/): FSG believes there’s only one way to properly learn how to do scenario planning, and that is to actually do it, in a real strategic context, and not as a generic business case from outside the organization.
- [Scenario Planning for Health Care and Medicine](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/scenario-planning-for-health-care-and-medicine/): Since 2012, Futures Strategy Group has been deeply involved in exploring the future of health care and medicine in the US. This work has evolved in partnership with the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), a relationship that continues to the present day.
- [The Future of Recreation and Sport](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/future-recreation-and-sport/): What will be the social-political-cultural-economic backdrop for sports and recreation in 2025? This was the big question facing planners at a global marketer of consumer products and services facing both competitive challenges and uncertainties in a rapidly changing marketplace.
- [Enterprise Strategy for Consumer Products](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/scenario-planning-consumer-products-enterprise-strategy/): Across diverse business sectors, many of FSG’s clients have effectively adopted scenario-based strategic planning as a tool to spur creative and innovative thinking. But equally impressive are the firms, often in mature sectors, which have embraced scenario planning primarily as a means of strategic prioritization and alignment, with break-out thinking a secondary priority. 
- [Guiding Strategic Direction in Financial Services](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/alternative-futures-stress-test-strategic-direction-financial-services/): In a pilot exercise, FSG helped a division of a major life insurance company both critically evaluate its current direction and identify some potential new business ideas in what is now a mature market segment.
- [Scenario Planning for Emergency and Disaster Management](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/scenario-planning-approach-emergency-and-disaster-management/): For the past several years, FSG has provided strategy and long-term planning support to a range of administrators, managers, and operators challenged with building preparedness in the face of increasingly complex and impactful emergency- and disaster-management situations.
- [The Future of Transportation Infrastructure and Development](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/imagining-future-transportation-technology-infrastructure-and/): NASA Aeronautics has the responsibility to provide high-risk, high-payoff technology capabilities and research infrastructure to support the nation’s aeronautics sector. This meant anticipating the needs of a huge and vital national economic sector – and further, anticipating the potential desires of the consumers, businesses, and government of the future.
- [USCG Scenario Reassessment Post 9/11](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/us-coast-guard-reassessing-long-view-post-911/): In 2002, the Chief of Staff of the Coast Guard invited us back to reassess “Long View” in light of the events of 9/11 and the imminent migration of the Coast Guard to the new Department of Homeland Security. FSG succeeded in reuniting most of the former Long View Core Team for this exercise.
- [Providing a Long-Range Look for the U.S. Coast Guard: Project Long View](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/providing-long-range-look-us-coast-guard-project-long-view/): In 1998, the U.S. Coast Guard hired us to develop a long-range strategy using our scenario planning methodology. The project became known as “Long View.” Five scenarios were developed to evaluate both current and potentially new missions and strategic options for the Coast Guard, across a range of plausible national security and maritime transportation environments.
- [Imagining the Air Transport System of the Future](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/imagining-air-transportation-system-future-and-how-get-there/): FSG facilitated a scenario-planning process for Next Gen – the Joint Planning and Development Office for the Next Generation Air Transportation System. This resulted in the development of long-term strategies for the US air transportation enterprise.
- [Evergreen I: Building Strategic Foresight at the Coast Guard](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/institutionalizing-futures-approach-us-coast-guard-and-project-evergreen/): The Chief of Staff of the U.S. Coast Guard launched “Project Evergreen” in the fall of 2003 to create a new set of strategies for the USCG in the post-9/11 operating environment, in which the Service was now part of the Department of Homeland Security.
- [Evergreen II: Instilling Strategic Intent in the US Coast Guard](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/instilling-strategic-intent-across-organization-us-coast-guard-and/): In 2006, we began work on the second cycle of Project Evergreen under Commandant Thad Allen. Evergreen II was a comprehensive four-year strategy and planning cycle, envisioned both as a tool for developing long-range enterprise strategies and as a process for instilling strategic intent throughout the Coast Guard.
- [Long-Term Scenario Planning for the Panama Canal](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/big-decisions-should-panama-canal-construct-another-set-locks-and-lanes/): We’ve been involved in some pretty big decisions, but one of the biggest was the one that had to be made by the Panamanian government about the future of its patrimonio nacional, the Panama Canal.
- [Project Horizon: Interagency Collaboration in Global Affairs](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/building-interagency-collaboration-and-teamwork-foreign-affairs-project/): In 2005, there was a growing realization that agency silos were not serving the United States government well. A number of incidents had dramatized the need for greater contact and more effective cooperation among the departments and agencies that had critical roles to play in foreign affairs.
- [Strategy and Contingency Planning in Agriculture](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/agricultural-products-strategy-and-contingency-planning/): A large chemical company had made a huge, multi-billion dollar bet on a new technology. Together, we identified some future conditions that could occur that would devalue that investment.
- [A New Strategic Direction for a Global Securities Firm](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/new-strategic-direction-financial-services-firm/): A financial services firm was facing major risks and challenges as a result of government regulations, technology change, globalization, cost pressures and non-traditional competition. We were contracted to help them develop a strategy that would work well no matter how the industry evolved over the next 5-10 years.  In conjunction with the top twenty people in the firm, we identified the drivers of change in the securities industry and constructed a number of scenarios covering the full range of plausible futures. Using the scenarios, we together created both a core set of strategies for the organization, and a number of contingency strategies to be enacted should conditions warrant.  And we helped them identify immediate actions to begin implementation of the strategies.
- [Pursuing Globalization and Identifying Contingencies at a Professional Services Firm](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/pursuing-globalization-and-identifying-contingencies-professional/): When the leadership of a major professional services firm decided to globalize, we offered them a scenario-based planning approach to create a cohesive strategy while helping the new executive group to come together. Over the course of an intense three-day executive workshop, a range of future market conditions was considered and explored.
- [Regional Bank Strategy to Thrive Under Deregulation](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/regional-bank-strategy-thrive-under-deregulation/): The client was acclaimed as one of the most successful and best managed banks in the U.S. in the mid-1990s, but top management was concerned that their existing strategy had little room for sustained future growth. Using a scenario-based approach, we helped them formulate a new strategy for regional growth in banking and simultaneous national growth in non-banking sectors.
- [Scenarios to Estimate Future Motor Vehicle Demand in Latin America](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/modeling-latin-american-motor-vehicle-markets/): Market planning in Latin America is difficult in the best of circumstances. Markets historically have tended to undergo boom and bust cycles; this complicates the job of capital investment and financial planning.
- [Scenario Planning for Automative Product Strategy](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/using-scenarios-plan-motor-vehicle-industry/): The client was one of the world’s largest corporations and a full-range global manufacturer of automobiles and trucks. It was also one of the world’s largest financial services organizations. The firm’s mission was to provide vehicle transportation for businesses and consumers worldwide.
- [Using Scenarios to Build Robust Retail Drug Strategies](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/retail-strategy-offset-internet-competition/): A major regional drugstore chain with an excellent reputation for customer service was concerned about the threat arising from Internet-based competition. The company needed a long-range plan that would take into account the future retailing environment for general merchandise, OTC products, and regulated pharmaceuticals.
- [Alternative Futures for Enduring Business Continuity Solutions](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/alternative-futures-create-enduring-business-continuity-solutions/): A major investment bank hard hit by the September 11th terrorist attacks engaged us to apply the scenario planning methodology to help them develop business continuity plans.
- [Scenarios to Guide R&D in Global Pharma](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/rd-strategy-global-pharma-firm/): FSG developed a model and evaluation process for assessing the viability of yet-to-be developed products.
- [Scenarios for Product Introduction for a Medical Equipment Manufacturer](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/case_study/futures-decision-panel-test-case-study/): The client had two new products about to be introduced into the medical imaging market. The company anticipated needing its first modification/upgrade within a short timeframe. They wanted a scenario-based forecast of future customer needs and intervening competitor actions to identify the product characteristics necessary for a competitive advantage in the out-year market.

## Publications
- [2020 US Presidential Scenarios](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/us-presidential-scenarios/): There are few if any events as consequential for the future as a US presidential election. In early 2020 FSG principals created four short-term US presidential scenarios exploring a range of plausible political and policy outcomes for the next four years. These were not predictions or forecasts; rather they were alternative narratives about how events in the US (including the economy and the COVID-19 pandemic) could play out. The fundamental idea, as in all scenario planning activities, is to take every plausible future operating environment seriously, and consider all associated risks, challenges and opportunities.   
- [Health Care Scenarios:  Selected Insights from ACGME’s Strategic Planning](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/health-care-scenarios/): If any US industry begs for scenario planning, it is health care.  Demographics, technology, government finances, provider mega-mergers and changing public expectations are converging in complex and unpredictable ways. The only thing we know for certain is that the future health care environment will look very different than it does today. Executives need to think systematically about the range of plausible health care futures, taking all this complexity and uncertainty into account. FSG scenario planning is focused on managing that uncertainty.
- [The Future of Media & Marketing](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/future-media-marketing/): As media and marketing have evolved together, the future of one has to be considered alongside the other. 
- [Scenarios and Quantitative Modeling: An Automotive Case Study](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/scenarios-and-quantitative-modeling/): Scenario planning and quantitative modeling can often be clashing analytical tools. But two FSG consultants innovatively combined them for the benefit of a car company in South America. Along the way, they learned some important lessons.
- [Strategic Intent in the Coast Guard](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/coast-guard-evergreen/): The Coast Guard publication, Creating and Sustaining Strategic Intent in the US Coast Guard, is the culmination of a multi-year collaboration with FSG. You can download the 2013 edition here.    
- [Presidential Election Scenarios](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/presidential-election-scenarios/): So many of life's most crucial decisions have to be made by non-experts about things they cannot possibly understand to any degree of completeness.
- [Because It’s There](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/because-its-there/): Wade Davis, an anthropologist, recently published Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest. It holds lessons not only for mountaineers and other adventure travelers, but also for other realms of human endeavor, business and strategy in particular.  
- [The Devil’s Dictionary of Business Strategy, Vol. II](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/devils-dictionary-business-strategy-vol-ii/)
- [The Devil’s Dictionary of Business Strategy](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/devils-dictionary-business-strategy/)
- [Obsolete Habiliments](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/obsolete-habiliments/): Quick quiz.  See if you can identify the two people talking about each other in the following two sentences: "Morally and philosophically, I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it; and not only in agreement but deeply moved agreement.” " the one really great man I ever knew, and for whom I had unbounded admiration." 
- [Overcoming Opportunity Blindness and Path Dependence:  How to Think Your Way to Multiple Futures](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/overcoming-opportunity-blindness-and-path-dependence-how-think-your-way-multiple/): Collective Intelligence’s Kevin McDermott and FSG principal Peter Kennedy make the case for adopting scenario analysis as a tool for fostering innovative thinking. In the May 2011 issue of InnovationManagement they point to “strategic confidence” as a critical success factor in a world of disruptive and unpredictable change. 
- [Lords of Huh?](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/lords-huh-0/): Review of Walter Kiechel III’s The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the Corporate World (Harvard Business Press).
- [Business Strategiastes](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/business-strategiastes/): To every thing there is a season, and to this season Patrick Marren has written this thing.  
- [Prediction Kills](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/prediction-kills/): “Hitting the bullseye” with a seemingly prescient prediction is kind of neat, we would all agree.  But when the stakes are high, depending upon hitting the bullseye can be fatal. 
- [Jeeves and the Dow Jones](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/jeeves-and-dow-jones/): With apologies to P.G. Wodehouse, it is time to re-examine a topic I first took up several years ago: which way will the stock market go next? 
- [Iceberg Ahead](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/iceberg-ahead/): “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” Variously attributed to Niels Bohr, Mark Twain, Robert Storm Peterson, Yogi Berra, Casey Stengel, Samuel Goldwyn, and others, this quote holds more truth now than ever. 
- [Enterprise Risk Management: Effective ERM Practices](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/enterprise-risk-management-effective-erm-practices/): The Enterprise Risk Management discipline is still new, and few companies have done it all and done it right.
- [Strategic Improvisation](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/strategic-improvisation/): Next time you are sitting in a corporate strategy meeting, try to imagine the people in charge on stage, thrown into improvisation – how well would they do?   How well would you do? 
- [The Great Game of Gotcha](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/great-game-gotcha/): Why experts are still forced to give pinpoint forecasts of the future, even though everyone involved should know that such point forecasts are dangerous nonsense. 
- [Questions, Questions](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/questions-questions/): The question “Are we in a recession?” is unanswerable until far too late – and almost always of no real use in decisionmaking in the real world.
- [Destructive Creation](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/destructive-creation/): The integrity and identity of any business is to some degree dependent on the external pressures exerted upon it by the competitive environment. Strategic success in eliminating that pressure may ironically be the greatest threat to continued success.
- [Invasion of the Kravarites](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/invasion-kravarites/): Many are the businesses have been trapped by systems of jargon into thinking that summer is going to go on forever.
- [High-functioning Business Strategy](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/high-functioning-business-strategy/): A rigorous step-by-step “left-brain” process is the best way to harness the talents of intensely competent “left-brain,” “autistic” managers to imagine entirely novel situations, challenges, opportunities – and strategies. 
- [We’ve Got to Stop Meeting Like This](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/weve-got-stop-meeting/): Many executives will use the same group of people to tackle all types of problems. But different problems will require different-sized groups, with different types of people. 
- [Losing the Bubble](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/losing-bubble/): The strategy process can often produce results that are the opposite of what the organization either expects or needs.
- [Shininess vs Usefulness](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/shininess-vs-usefulness/): Tradeoffs are the most inescapable aspect of business strategy, if not life itself; they are also perhaps the most resolutely ignored. Scratch a strategic disaster, and usually you will come across a juicy unrecognized tradeoff.
- [Fish or Starve](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/fish-or-starve/): Review of Jared Diamond's book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail, which has some interesting parallels to the world of business strategy.
- [Stick This in Your Stovepipe](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/stick-your-stovepipe/): When a business organization is in a state of imminent collapse, its vertical structures – its “stovepipes” – often remain in place, long after their usefulness has dissipated. 
- [The Little Prince Approach to the Future](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/little-prince-approach-future/): Conventional wisdom is often right, of course. But it is also often wrong. Unless planners bring their implicit assumptions to the surface and test them, their plans will be obsolete very quickly. 
- [Far from the Blinking Crowd](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/far-blinking-crowd/): Review of several recent books relevant to strategy issues, including Blink by Malcolm Gladwell and The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki.
- [Parables of Consulting](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/parables-consulting/): Purely humorous tales of Satan, the First Consultant. 
- [Right and Left Brain Strategies](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/left-brain-strategies/): One of the most intractable problems in business strategy is the fact that here are two basic types of people: left-brain people who are logical, mathematical, and precise, and right-brain people who are creative, expressive, and generalist. 
- [Who Is the Client?](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/scenario-planning-clients/): Scenario planning clients are a unique breed, as they tend to be committed as much to the long-term success of an organization as they are to short-term results. But the dilemma never seems to go away:  Should planners maximize the prospects of the current organization and its management, or plan for long-term organizational success?
- [Strategic Planning After 9/11: Planning for Disruptive Events](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/9-11-strategic-planning/): Much has been written about 9/11 strategic planning. The authors discuss the use of scenario planning in light of disruptive events.
- [Futurists’ Fallacies: Common Errors in Long-Range Planning](https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/publication/long-range-planning/): Fundamental long range planning errors are neither rare nor unavoidable. But why do respected planners so often fail to anticipate seismic events?  Here we explore solutions to the challenge of future uncertainty and the value of scenario planning.