How Do You Plan for the Future When You Can’t Predict It?

Will AI usher in a new renaissance, or cause a Chernobyl-level disaster that kills millions?

This question has been on my mind since I attended the Jump Offsite. Zack Kass, who led Go-to-Market at OpenAI, predicted we’re on the precipice of a new era in which humans focus on art and the humanities while AI continues to make scientific breakthroughs on our behalf. On the other hand, Professor Stuart Russell, who literally wrote the textbook on AI, argued there’s a 10% chance AI causes a Chernobyl-level catastrophe that kills millions but finally forces society to create guardrails for this new technology. We could cite a ton of data to support either side, so who’s right?

Uncertainty is the defining characteristic of the AI debate. It’s also a core motif of the world we live in today – from business to politics and society, uncertainty is everywhere, and it can be particularly lethal for strategy and innovation. Since no one can predict what’s going to happen, the easiest thing to do is continue with business as usual. But in reality, our world is constantly changing and businesses that aren’t actively wrestling with uncertainty get fracked. Just look at Blockbuster, Kodak, Sears – the list goes on and on.

Uncertainty is uncomfortable, but it doesn’t have to lead to inertia. The best way to deal with uncertainty is to prepare. If no one can predict the future, a sense of uncertainty gives leaders the liberty to get creative, imagine different ways the future could play out, and identify key strategic shifts that would prepare their business for whatever comes to pass.

Smart leaders recognize that preparing over predicting is the most prudent way to plan for the future. Wise leaders go a step further and ask themselves, ‘How can we better prepare for an uncertain future?’ We’ve thought deeply about this question at Jump and have developed three key principles that guide how we practice strategic foresight.

Focus on forces, not trends

When’s the last time you saw someone wearing a velour tracksuit? What about leg warmers? Chances are it’s probably been a while. That’s because fashion runs on trends, and trends are always changing. (Also, in case you hadn’t heard, ties are back. Thanks, Dior.)

Trends rapidly going in and out of style keep fashion interesting, but this state of constant flux is why trends are a poor input for strategic foresight. When businesses use trends to prepare for the future, they end up making strategic decisions and investments based on information that will be irrelevant in a few months, much less in 5-7 years. Not only does this lead to misallocation of resources, but it results in a whipsawed strategy that’s more reactive than proactive.

Instead of relying on trends, effective strategic foresight focuses on forces. While trends are general patterns, forces are underlying shifts in society that play out over a longer period of time. Forces cause trends, so when we see a trend it’s usually indicative of something deeper. A strategy that’s built on forces will be less prone to short-term fluctuation because it’s addressing the core drivers of change, not their downstream effects.

Spotify Live is a cautionary tale about relying on trends. Spotify Live was launched in response to Clubhouse, an app where people had live, audio-only conversations. Clubhouse went from 0 to 10 million weekly active users in less than a year. For context, Facebook and Twitter each took over 2 years to hit that same milestone. It seemed like social audio was the future of social media, so in 2021, Spotify invested $67.7 million in building Greenroom, its standalone social audio app. Despite later rebranding it to Spotify Live and moving it into the main Spotify app, Greenroom failed to gain traction. After just 2 years, it was discontinued.

Ironically, Clubhouse, which was valued at $4 billion, is also irrelevant now. So are other social audio apps, like Facebook Live or Reddit Talk. That’s because the rise of social audio was a trend brought about by the pandemic; once the lockdowns ended and in-person life resumed, those apps became immaterial. However, the force behind that trend – humans wanting to better communicate with each other – is still showing up in different ways today, like when people try to talk to each other telepathically using Neuralink. A strategy tailored to one trend wouldn’t work for another, but a strategy that addresses the underlying forces will be able to weather many trends.

Discerning forces from trends is more of an art than a science. At Jump, we collect many trends, group them, and then use conversations with experts to understand why they’re happening. Generally, asking ‘Why?’ helps uncover forces. Asking ‘How?’ points to trends.

Don’t over-index on technology

In 1962, “The Jetsons” anticipated robot vacuums, video calls, online workouts, and voice-controlled computers. Even though the show is set in 2062, some of their wilder bets – like flying cars and robot butlers – seem not so far off. “The Jetsons” got these gadgets right but missed the mark on so much else.

If we take a closer look, we’ll realize that everyone in the show is the same color, they all speak the same language, and conform to traditional gender roles. In the age of AI, we tend to over-index on how technology will shape our future, but without also considering the impact of social, economic, environmental, and political forces we end up creating one-dimensional worlds like in “The Jetsons”.

Ignoring these types of forces is also problematic because they can have an outsized impact on the future; like when more women joining the workforce post-WWII created new markets for convenience foods, childcare, and suburban services. Consequently, strategic foresight that over-indexes on technology isn’t helpful because it creates strategies that are unequipped to deal with real-world change.

Now more than ever before, we’re seeing many non-technological forces that have immense disruptive potential. Such as 40% of Americans believing a civil war is somewhat or very likely to occur within the next decade. Or a collapsing middle class, with the top 10% of Americans now accounting for 49.7% of all spending. And if those aren’t convincing enough, what about the 1-3 billion people who will likely have to migrate because of climate change? Leaders hoping to avoid getting blindsided by the future need to ruminate on how various kinds of forces will impact their business.

Royal Dutch Shell is a great example of a company that put this lesson into practice. As part of their strategic foresight, they looked beyond science and technology and studied shifts in culture, geopolitics, and economics. Shell saw that years of colonial rule were culminating in a strong anti-Western sentiment across the Middle East, resulting in a wave of nationalist movements. Recognizing this as a business threat, Shell invested in cracking to protect their oil supply in case geopolitical relations frayed. It was an expensive strategy at the time, but it paid off in 1973, when the Gulf states, along with the rest OPEC, introduced an oil embargo on countries that supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Paying attention to social and political forces enabled Shell to be the only large oil company that didn’t have issues with its supply during the crisis.

Using a tool can help ensure we’re considering a variety of forces in our analysis. At Jump, we use STEEPLE – Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political, Legal, and Ethical – but other frameworks, like PESTLE, work just as well.

Take time to deeply understand the competition

In 2016, Maria Konnikova took a break from her day job at “The New Yorker” to become a professional poker player. She realized that although luck played a role, being analytical by tracking outs, blockers, and live cards was equally important. But Maria only started winning tournaments once she began leveraging her background as a psychologist to better understand her opponents. Maria learned that since everyone has a reason for their actions, understanding their underlying motivations enabled her to make better decisions with the hands she was dealt.

Understanding our competitors’ mindset and anticipating their moves is a key element of good strategy. But when it comes to strategic foresight, leaders tend to focus on the implications on their own business. Investing the time in playing out what your competitors would do in each of the worlds you created could change your perspective on what strategy makes the most sense.

For instance, Apple could have made billions of dollars selling customer data. Instead, in a world where almost every tech company sells our data, Apple decided to differentiate by becoming a leader in data privacy. As a result, Apple has one of the strongest reputations across the globe, well ahead of Google, TikTok, and Meta.

As the world changes, businesses also need to constantly reevaluate who they’re competing against. To get the most out of strategic foresight we need to go a step further than just walking a mile in the competition’s shoes. When immersing in future worlds, ask yourself, ‘Who am I competing against here?’ Mainstream companies will come to mind but push yourself to think about players that aren’t the usual suspects.

Let’s take Netflix as an example. Who’s the obvious competition? Disney+, Amazon Prime, and HBO Max. We’ll even throw in Apple TV+. But in a world where viewers are shifting from “binge-watching” (completing multiple episodes in a row) to “binge-racing” (finishing an entire TV series the day it’s released), Netflix isn’t just fighting streamers. It’s competing against video games, outings with friends, and even rest itself. In fact, Reed Hastings thinks Netflix’s main competitor is sleep. Moves such as enabling users to increase the playback speed and having the next episode start automatically aren’t targeted towards traditional competitors – it’s how Netflix is taking on the new kid on the block.

At Jump, a key part of our strategic foresight process is having clients role-play leaders from traditional and unconventional competitors. We run war games in each of our futures to understand how the competition would try to win. Then we ask clients to articulate the best moves for their business. We consider all these data points when deciding strategic shifts.

In Conclusion

Since no one can predict what’s going to happen, the best way to plan for the future is to prepare. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but following these principles will enable us to put our best foot forward when preparing for the future.

Remember that focusing on forces instead of trends ensures we’re addressing the underlying causes of change instead of their downstream effects. Pondering over how different types of forces will impact our business instead of over-indexing on technology enables us to envision futures that are equipped to deal with real-world change. Lastly, thinking about the future from our competition’s perspective can change our opinion on what strategy makes the most sense while also pushing us to reevaluate who (or what) we’re defining as a competitor.

So, will AI usher in a new renaissance, or cause a Chernobyl-level disaster that kills millions? Zack Kass and Professor Russell are incredibly bright and distinguished in their own right, but neither of them can predict where AI is going to take us. No one can. But we can certainly prepare.