The nature of the work done depends very much on the culture of the organization. It can be handed to an outside organization or be done internally, and it can be done in a fairly conservative way or imaginative methods can be used. Each of these approaches has its merits and demerits, and actually is applicable in different situations.
The work can be commissioned outside with a futures organization, which may be one that specializes in this sort of activity, or more com- monly a management consultancy. This is a safe decision to make as the external organization (of either type) will have a reputation and
track record, and this therefore appeals to cultures that are risk-adverse.
Management consultants will also include a financial dimension in what they do and finally report, and this can be appealing to a board that thinks it might be heading for trouble. Another advantage of using an external organization is that a labour force is available for deploy- ment in driving the project forward. Typically, the process involves quite extensive interviewing with internal staff, followed by some sort of experiential stage where the people concerned immerse themselves in an aspect of the market, followed by a data assembly stage and an analysis of all the information, from which a strategy is formed. The disadvantage to the organization is that the organization does actually have to spend a lot of timeon this, especially those people in the infor- mation areas, so the labour force issue becomes a problem.
Furthermore, there is the problem of getting the overall strategy emo- tionally accepted by the company, and external organizations tend to use their reputation (and the fact that the invoice is very high) as a lever to do this.
If the process is to be conducted internally, then it will need very heavyweight support to actually galvanize people into action – this is not something to take on lightly. A team will need to be assembled that includes the various stakeholders. This should comprise people from the marketing team and their associated agencies as well as people from various relevant functions such as R&D and operations. The problem is limiting the team to a reasonable size, not only because the bigger the team, the more difficult it is to get them all together at one time, but also because creative methods tend to work better when used with smaller groups. The advantage of doing this all internally is that the stage of getting up to speed (which is necessary when using an outside organization) is short-circuited, saving time, money and effort. However, a difficulty of doing this internally is the ability to drive the work to a sat- isfactory conclusion – there are too many other things to do.
The particular approach that the company adopts (either using outside people or running the process internally) can lie anywhere along the pedestrian-creative axis, and will mirror the culture of the organization. Some organizations are very risk-adverse and a bit stodgy, and organizations such as these will always want to work in a way that is manifestly logical. Others may be quite happy to be very speculative and, for example, use group projective exercises to help achieve their end.
This author has a preference of undertaking these processes inter- nally and being as creative as possible. The reason for this preference is that it is easier to get access internally to people who have a really gen- uine contribution to make, and who will become committed to the out- come as the journey proceeds. From a creative point of view, there is also the matter that if the company does not know what to do, then it will not find the answer using logical methods, as these will already have been applied.
A process for looking at the future
There are four main stages in doing this difficult and important exercise.
The first stage is to get some idea of the factors that are operating in the market and how they may change in the immediate and distant future.
The second stage is to extract the meaning of these changes to the market, the third stage is to formulate a strategic approach to these anticipated changes, and finally there is a need to persuade the organization to buy in to this strategy. Implementation of the strategy is then done through the normal agencies used by the company. Actually, the fourth stage of getting buy-in is not really a fourth stage at all, as it cannot be bolted on at the end, and tends to be a feature that is considered all the way through the process. Each of these stages is considered below.
Factors affecting the market: formulating the ‘trends’
It is important to take into account the social and economic trends that are likely to impact the markets in the future – whether they generate more of the same needs or spawn completely different ones.
Developing such a view is clearly vital to understanding the value of future markets and thinking about how best to address them.
A fairly safe way of doing this is to list some trends (often well- documented economic, demographic and social trends), that seem important, extrapolate them into the future by drawing a straight line graph and ask questions as to their significance (if any). As a method of short-range forecasting this is reasonably sound, and was the process advocated by Henley in the 1980s. The reason that this process is safe is that it unashamedly quantitative and therefore is underpinned by the numbers so liked by contemporary organizations (see Chapter 6).
The basic problem with this approach is that it assumes three things
that, at best, can only be partially true: trends are linear and therefore immutable, the only trends usable and therefore worth worrying about are those that are documented, and the future is ordainedand not made.
An alternative to this process, or preferably an addition to it, is the use of conceptualtrends. These can be arrived at by buying into a pro- prietary futures system, which is generally quantitative and has some history about the way trends are moving. Furthermore, since it is estab- lished and known, the futures system is likely to have some credibility within an organization. Alternatively, one can arrive at conceptual trends through qualitative research, especially semiotic research, which seeks out trends as a primary part of the method (Alexander, 2000).
However, a more interesting way to do this is to invent the trends oneself by considering the knowledge that lies in the organization and arriving at a view about changes (that seem particularly relevant to one’s market) that are happening in the world. It is easier, and certainly much better, to do this with a group of people chosen from what would be the equivalent of the research stakeholders if the process had been researched. Not only does this bring to bear an important and commit- ted knowledge base, it also helps with the ultimate buy-in to the out- come of the process.
Normally an early stage to this is to share experiences and informa- tion. This is an important stage, but at the same time it should not have too much emphasis placed on it. The range of inputs might be extracts from a number of research studies or other data sources, or might be reports on softer, more stimulating experiences, such as the examination of alternative markets, or perhaps visiting another country (typically, the United States). The participants could also be asked to do something that they would not normally do, for example, actually buy some of the products they are responsible for and see what the experience of both buying and using the product is like, or perhaps even live for a short time with the consumers they expect to influence. These experiences can then be reported back to the group, and the process is generally facilitated by an external person to ensure that it runs in a satisfactory way. The purpose of all this activity is to get people into a common frame of mind in which the brain has been loosened up.
One important part of this process is working with formal quantita- tive information. As was mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, most market research, and for that matter market analysis, is carried out for short-term tactical reasons, and therefore the bulk of the company’s
information will be in that form, unless the company has attempted to build an ‘information climate’ (see Chapter 2). Either way, there will need to be some form of extrapolation of the data, and this can only be achieved by using creative methods. This type of work seems to be getting more common, and the skills for doing it are being developed at the moment (Shields, 2001).
Typically, facilitation of the group will draw on creative meeting methods, and qualitative researchers have a whole gamut of techniques that are helpful in this, although meeting facilitators generally have developed bespoke skills for this purpose. The sort of techniques used range from simple structured brainstorming (for example brainstorming against a series of questions), to methods aimed at getting to the ‘prima- ry dimensions’ such as grouping sticky notes with ideas on, using
‘laddering’ methods (why is this important?), or ‘break-out’ methods using classic projective techniques such as drawing and storytelling.
Trends developed in this way, being conceptual and specifically devised for the purpose in hand, are in principle very potent in help- ing to construct a relevant future because they allow more creative solutions to be adopted. However, such trends do not have the for- mal validity that well-documented ones do, and are therefore easily challenged by people within the company who may wish to question the process. People can become very unsettled when major changes in the direction of the company are in the air, and power politics are very likely to emerge (see Chapter 3).
As an illustration, some examples of such conceptual trends (used by the author in the past) are listed below:
■ Peace and prosperity.It seems that the western world has reached an unusual position that could well provoke change on a grand scale. There has never before been such a long period of peace, in which sustained economic growth has taken place and allowed major social changes to occur.
■ Material wealth. Furthermore, there are important structural changes happening to consumerism that seem to be driven by the level of sheer wealth that is now increasingly common. There really is a limit to the extent to which people can surround themselves with material goods, and in this context the fear of making poor purchasing decisions is lower, as the consequences of doing so become of little material importance. Interestingly, this should
mean that there is a trend to buying ‘better’ (whatever that will mean), rather than ‘more’.
■ Two people working per family. The stresses of the modern world and the trend of two people working to support a family have meant a considerable growth in products aimed at removing as many chores as possible, but again there is a limit to all of this. Buying things can itself be a chore because it involves engaging the brain.
■ Anti-capitalism. The emergence of the European Union with its tra- dition of social democracy will inevitably act as a counterbalance to the dominant capitalist tradition of the last few centuries in a way that communism failed to do. Wealth and stability may well lead to the traditional work ethic being questioned, and greater value attributed to other aspects of human endeavour. For example, the substantial reduction in birth rate over the last few decades (which is likely to undermine the economic success of Europe into the future) looks like a manifestation of materialism, and it is possible that this may start to be reversed if society re-evaluates its basic tenets.
The reason that these trends have been included here is not that they have particular general validity, but they are an illustration of opening up thinking about the future.
Extracting meaning from the trends
Once the process of identifying a series of relevant trends is complete, it is important to identify the ‘therefore’ that they imply in the market.
If these trends have been identified internally, the emergence of the
‘therefores’ will have been happening simultaneously with the identi- fication of the trends. Indeed this process can generate an enormous amount of enthusiasm, and a type of religious belief in the work devel- ops. This is valuable (in that it achieves the difficult objective of buy-in) but dangerous (as the thoughts may be too uncritical), and it is sensi- ble to undertake a process of scenario developmentin which alternative possible futures are developed. This means that the trends are put together differently, and ideally one should seek to develop a future that is optimistic about the market, one that is pessimistic and another that is neutral. The great advantage of building scenarios at this stage is that it allows trends that have been developed separately to be put together and be seen as a coherent group. This also allows for the sense of them as a set to be experienced and, by implication, challenged.
However, the point of scenario development is that the impossible becomes debatable. For example, material wealth might not continue to grow because most people have enough and are now prepared to trade off the prospect of more wealth (with its perceived diminishing returns) against another things – spirituality, for example. Another accepted
‘fact’ might be that neighbourhood shopping centres have shown con- tinued decline, and that therefore such shopping environments do not have any retail future. But why have they experienced a decline? Could it be because an increasing amount of women have been going out to work over the last 20 years, and that therefore there have been less shoppers available to use the neighbourhood shopping centre? How will teleworking impact on this? Will more people work in their own home environment in the future? Will local communities start growing and developing in a social sense, and what does this mean to retailing?
Actually, the number of companies that go to the trouble of devel- oping full-scale scenarios appears to be very small, but there are lessons that can be taken from the process and used for more modest
‘adventures’ into the future.
Building consensus using workshops
The whole process of thinking about the future in order to help in the development of the company’s strategy, or the next stage of evolution of its products, means that it is necessary to work with groups of people in the company, primarily to use their individual knowledge, but also to build a consensus. Consensus is a powerful way of getting different parties aligned to a particular course of action, and in the process of achieving this real use is made of the knowledge that already exists in the company.
One of the problems with working to build a set of trends and to interpret their potential impact on the market (as described in the pre- vious section) is that only certain companies have a culture capable of making this happen. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, an early stage of the project involves working with data in an attempt to use it to build a broader picture. Many business people feel comfortable with playing with the data, but people vary in the degree to which they are prepared to extrapolate from it. It is important that the degree to which this is done fits the culture of the organization, as it is not sensible to try to put people in a position where they do not feel comfortable.
Indeed, this would be totally counter-productive.
The individual methods described above are not particularly important; of much more importance is that there is a clear plan as to how the series of meetings are run and what each part is expected to achieve. Gaining consensus about the desired outcomes is generally the critical stage.