Futurescaper is used by multinational professional services firms, governments and public sector organisations, international NGOs, foundations, and think-tanks. The stories below provide a few examples of how different organisations are using Futurescaper.

 

UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME (UNDP)

Futurescaper has been working on multiple UNDP projects across the globe. We provide insight and guidance at innovation workshops and conferences, and help country teams and regional offices develop forward-looking plans with their stakeholders. Some recent examples include:

Since 2014, we helped UNDP engage thousands of stakeholders in in-depth explorations of the issues that matter most to them, identifying and analysing over 3,000 trends and drivers of change. On-going projects continue to explore cross-sector, multi-party development challenges, helping UNDP achieve its goals through poverty reduction, governance, crisis prevention and recovery, and sustainable development. 

 

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

OECD’s Strategic Foresight unit wanted to engage their team of global experts to shape international development strategy at an internal conference. To do so, they needed insights on the challenges reshaping the development agenda, and use futures techniques to turn these insights into learning for the entire team. The open-ended nature of the topic, large number of experts, and budget constraints for the event meant that a traditional survey, workshop, or consulting approach were unfeasible.

Over two weeks, Futurescaper engaged 87 OECD and external experts, who collectively created 162 stories and opinions on the agenda-shaping challenges, and 27 recommendations for strategic responses. We then analysed these responses through the Futurescaper platform, and presented the results at the conference.

As a result of our analysis and presentation, conference participants reported greater understanding, more motivation, and higher desire to continue engaging topic areas – and overwhelmingly answered the question “what was your most enjoyable part of the day?” with “Futurescaper”.

 

The Rockefeller Foundation, with Forum for the Future

The Rockefeller Foundation, along with Forum for the Future and the University of Pennsylvania, hosted a workshop at the Foundation’s Bellagio Center to envision how transforming cities should be reflected in their annual investment strategy. Twenty-three experts had a task to develop a sense of how cities might evolve, identify future interventions that might shift the urbanization trajectory, and create forecasts that would help prioritise where the Foundation’s funding should be invested.

In just two days, Futurescaper enabled twenty-three urban thought-leaders to collectively identify, analyze, and prioritize over 300 interrelated trends and issues related to rapid global urbanization. With Futurescaper, the participants distilled these trends into 80 themes and observations, outlining responses to the challenges resulting from the trends, and pointing towards priority areas for funding.

Futurescaper allowed Bellagio workshop participants to converse at a much higher level than otherwise possible, informed by real-time testing of trend and strategy dynamics. Read more about this experience at the University of Pennsylvania’s blog post, here and a link to the final Rockefeller Foundation report, here.

 

The Futures Company

The Futures Company (TFC, a WPP company) was commissioned by global FMCG supplier of food ingredients to help anticipate the future of global food preferences. Their client wanted to discover how global food tastes might change, where growth might come from, and how changing cultures of food consumption might impact their products.  TFC needed to conduct a horizon scanning exercise with a global team and summarise these findings quickly as part of their client’s high-level strategy process.

Futurescaper provided a platform for the TFC team to capture and analyse relevant trends. We trained and supported their team, advised on the analysis, and helped interpret the results. Five analysts collaborated through Futurescaper to capture over 500 trends and data points. Futurescaper then automatically analysed these trends for categorical and geographic diversity, maturity, and key drivers.

Futurescaper enabled TFC to manage a geographically distributed team and help them make sense of large volumes of data. As a result, a horizon scanning exercise that would have otherwise taken up to 6 weeks was completed in far less time, helping the TFC team better understand the data and spend more time supporting their client - while maintaining the analytical robustness that TFC’s client needed.

 

THE START NETWORK

The START Network is a coalition of 19 international NGOs with a global membership of over 1 million members. Futurescaper worked with the network to explore how crises like Syria could represent a paradigm shift for how humanitarian operations will be conducted - a first example of the new pattern of challenges that international NGOs will face in future crises. To help its members adapt to this new paradigm, START sought to engage its members in a discussion on the role of NGOs in future Syria-type crises, culminating in a conference for member NGOs.

Over one week, Futurescaper crowdsourced 152 humanitarian experts from within and beyond the START Network, to collectively create 138 stories and forecasts on the paradigm-shifting challenges, and 28 recommendations for NGO organisational responses. We then analysed these responses through the Futurescaper platform, and presented the results at the conference. As well as much higher participation than a traditional foresight exercise, our analysis increased the conference participants’ understanding, motivation, and engagement - evidenced by over 50 interactions on social media from our short presentation.