Strategic Foresight x Design

Strategic Foresight is an approach to understand how change is happening and to create organizational and personal resilience for that change.

Foresight as a practice is an exceptional tool to extend the reach of design within an organization by deepening the understanding of core issues, trends, and opportunities. It has traditionally been used by large organizations and consultancies to build future “literacy” and is increasingly being adopted by others to build new models and narratives for new product visioning and marketing development.

This workshop will provide the fundamentals of how to use strategic foresight in your professional context as well as guidance on some of the opportunities to customize design provocations that can seed these diverse perspectives of the future. We will also have an opportunity to digitally roll up our sleeves and work on foundational skills around identifying foresight driven insights that can support your service design practice.

Adam Elmaghraby bio:
Adam Elmaghraby’s work bridges Design Strategy & Product Development; he is focused on how we can connect focused insights for new product development and innovation. As VP of Co-creation at Launch Forth, Adam honed his skills as a team leader and supported the redevelopment of the co-creation SaaS platform, doubling product launches and working with partners like Allianz and USMC. He has led foresight efforts with Fannie Mae and Samsung.

As a consumer driven innovation strategist, Adam worked as a Manager at Samsung North America for the Product Innovation Team. Adam has also worked with dozens of companies and entrepreneurs globally as an independent innovation strategist including Audi, Brita, BRAC, Wrigley, Pax Labs, Clorox and Nestle. He also consults and supports numerous start-ups.

Adam is best known for being an optimist and activator, moving towards understanding how people and systems work to shape a better world. Adam’s understanding of business + strategy comes from his Master in Business Administration in Design Strategy from California College of the Arts. He also holds a Bachelors of Science in Philosophy focusing on religion and existentialism and a Bachelors of Arts in Pan-African studies with a focus on the interplay between religion and politics.