Professor of Management Practice
Companies constantly need to look ahead to keep pace with unforeseen market shifts, new trends or technological developments. We tend to talk and think about the future as if there’s only one way forward. But if we let go of this narrow mindset, we can imagine multiple plausible futures that could unfold. Technological foresight provides a framework to think about these possible futures in a structured and constructive way. It’s not about predicting a pre-determined technological future but about exploring how technologies could impact the future in different ways.
Diving into this fascinating subject are Martin Butler, Professor of Digital Transformation at Vlerick Business School, and futurist Doris Viljoen. Doris is the Director of the Institute for Futures Research at Stellenbosch Business School – and she’s a Senior Lecturer in Futures Studies, teaching modules on the Principles of Futures Studies, Scenario planning, Organisational Foresight, Managing Foresight Projects, and Foresight Tools and Techniques.
In this first episode, Doris Viljoen talks about the importance of including the human aspect of technology trends. She explains how business leaders need to combine the right mindset and the right tools to be able to embrace these possible futures. And how we can counter change fatigue that results from the rapid pace at which new technologies arise.
Doris emphasises the importance of including the human aspect of technology trends. She suggests that while technology evolves rapidly, it's not the trend itself that matters most but rather how people interact with it. What do they decide to adopt or not? Doris highlights the significance of considering the potential impact of technology on existing business models and how a certain technology will shift or shape the way in which we work and engage.
She believes that technology will definitely continue to reshape both the business environment as well as society, as it has done over the last three to four decades. People shape machines – and then machines shape us. This means that tech spreads rapidly across boundaries. Tech, which was designed by people to address a specific issue in a specific geography, may have unintended effects in another geography. And tech foresight takes into account those second or third-order consequences as well.
For business leaders to be able to navigate technological foresight effectively, Doris feels that we need a good combination of mindset as well as tools and techniques. To develop the right mindset, you need to create a culture of curiosity in your organisation. People should not limit themselves to looking outside of the window, but they should be curious enough to experiment with new tech and share those experiences within the organisation. And as for tools and techniques, Doris introduces the idea of asking very simple yet fundamental questions: what’s the timeline for a certain technology to arrive? To what extent will it be adopted by the market? Where’s the ceiling? And especially, how fast will this happen?
She especially acknowledges the challenge posed by the rapid pace of technological change, which can lead to change fatigue among individuals and organisations. Trends and technologies come and go so fast that people stop caring about them. Overcoming this fatigue requires establishing supportive systems within organisations to enable leaders to advance technology effectively.