Why foresight is everyone's job now and how to make it work cross-functionally

I’ve often argued that the first step towards foresight work is simply to start talking about your future. Also I think such conversations can no longer be left to a handful of specialists hidden away in strategy units or innovation labs.

Why? Because the world won’t wait for the “next foresight report” anymore. Technology shifts, customer behaviors evolve, regulators surprise us, and geopolitical shifts are not exactly slowing down either. In this reality, foresight isn’t just the job of strategy teams. It should be a shared discipline that belongs across the entire organization.

And I truly believe that the winners won’t be those with the biggest foresight budgets. They’ll be those who manage to weave futures thinking into everyday decisions from R&D and product to HR and compliance. Along with the traditional strategy and innovation functions, that is where your foresight work makes the biggest impact. Foresight can even act as the core narrative that ultimately aligns everyone and every action they take with the chosen strategy.

Why foresight can’t stay siloed

Think about it: when was the last time an emerging signal neatly followed your org chart? Exactly.

An upcoming technology might look like an opportunity for the product team, a headache for compliance, and a board-level concern for leadership, all at the same time. If those insights stay locked inside one team, you miss the bigger picture.

There’s another issue too: strategic blind spots. Too often, teams rely on backward-looking metrics and past performance. That’s like driving with only the rearview mirror. Embedding foresight across functions flips that. It lets you scan the road ahead, together, before disruption hits.

And let’s not forget the pace of change overall. Annual strategy reviews? Static trend decks? Sure, but too often already outdated by the time you again open them. Organizations today need foresight that’s dynamic, always-on, and shared.

How to make foresight cross-functional

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying every employee should become a futurist. What I am saying is: let’s make it easy for people to bring futures thinking into their own daily work.

Here’s what that can look like:

• Product exploring emerging customer needs and spotting new opportunity spaces.
• R&D tracking weak signals of disruptive tech or scientific breakthroughs.
• Risk & Compliance mapping early signs of regulatory or geopolitical shifts.
• HR preparing for future workforce needs, skills, and cultural trends.
• Marketing aligning brand stories with where consumer values are heading.

And just to go even a bit more pragmatic: you can for example start every team meeting with a 10-min discussion about the recent signals of change. Every customer meeting, too. And then start pulling all these bits and pieces together into a more coherent and then comprehensive futures understanding.

Notice how practical this is? This isn’t theory nor rocket science but foresight grounded in the real, everyday needs of your teams.

The role of tools in enabling collaboration

Of course, here’s the difficult part: gathering, sorting, and interpreting signals continuously is hard work. It takes time. And I think this overhead has kept foresight locked away in silos.

However, we already have evidence that running such a continuous foresight practice will result in better outcomes, and at lower investment—than for example annual one-off studies.

Also that’s exactly why we built FIBRES Foresight Agents. By automating scanning and structuring signals, they lower the barrier for non-experts to join in. Product teams get curated radars aligned with their domain. Compliance sees early signals about regulations. R&D gets structured intelligence on tech breakthroughs.

And perhaps most importantly, it gives everyone a shared language. Once you’re looking at the same foundations, collaboration stops being a nice idea and becomes the natural way forward.

Building a culture of shared anticipation

But let’s be clear, foresight isn’t only about processes or tools. It’s also about mindset and culture.

Leaders need to foster curiosity, encourage “what if” questions, and create safe spaces for exploring uncertainty. Foresight shouldn’t live in a dusty report. It should sit right in your roadmap meetings, investment discussions, and even customer research sessions.

The best organizations don’t treat foresight as an occasional report. They treat it as a capability. They invest in tools to scale it. They train teams to use it critically. And yes, they reward collaboration, not just flawless execution.

They aim to avoid the trap of only relying on historical facts and metrics, and the trap of building those subconscious or sometimes even spoken out “official truths” and “official futures”.

Futures thinking belongs to everyone

In a world this uncertain, it’s no longer enough for a few experts to scan the horizon while the rest of the organization keeps their heads down. Foresight must be shared, distributed, lived in daily work.

Cross-functional foresight helps companies act smarter, faster, and with more resilience. And the good news? With the right tools, culture, and leadership, it’s absolutely doable.

After all, what would your strategic plans be based on if not a shared understanding of what might be coming next?

Curious to see how your own teams could make foresight part of everyday strategy and innovation? Book a demo and see how purpose-built tools can foster collaborative foresight so that futures thinking can become everyone’s job in your organization.