From static trend decks to a living foresight system

Dr. Verena Lütschg has spent her career helping organizations understand and navigate the future. Through her consultancy, About Tomorrow, she works at the intersection of science, technology, ethics, and strategic foresight. Her work spans consulting engagements with companies, keynote talks for leadership audiences, and teaching roles at ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich, and Zurich University of Applied Sciences.

Across all these settings, her goal is consistent: help people understand emerging change and make better decisions in the face of uncertainty.

“At About Tomorrow, my mission is threefold,” Verena explains. “Promote technological literacy, help organizations navigate constant change, and make sure we are building futures that are desirable, not just technically possible. I want to be the bridge between what’s emerging in science and technology and what organizations and society need.”

To deliver on that mission, foresight must become more than an interesting presentation. It needs to be a capability that organizations can use continuously as they plan, innovate, and adapt.

Foresight is becoming a survival skill

The urgency around foresight has grown rapidly in recent years.

When Verena published her book about emerging technologies in 2022, many organizations still treated futures thinking as a niche strategic activity. Today the conversation looks very different.

“The speed of change has made foresight essential rather than nice to have,” she says. “With AI disrupting entire industries seemingly overnight, executives are coming to me saying: we need this yesterday.”

The same shift is visible in education. In her university courses, Verena increasingly sees students who want tools for navigating uncertainty alongside their technical expertise.

“PhD students and young scientists want to understand not just the ‘what’ but the ‘so what’,” she explains. “They want tools for navigating uncertainty, not just technical skills.”

As a result, organizations are beginning to rethink what foresight means.

“Scenarios are not predictions,” Verena says. “We’re building preparation, not prophecy.”

A human centric approach to futures

At the core of Verena’s work is a principle she calls human centric futures.

“Human centric doesn’t mean anti-technology,” she explains. “It means technology in service of people.”

Her Helix framework integrates foresight with ethics, strategy, and implementation. Ethical values are not an afterthought but a cross-cutting discipline throughout the process. Before analyzing trends, organizations first examine the values guiding their decisions.

“In my Helix framework, value guidance runs through every single phase,” Verena says. “Before we even look at trends, we ask: what values guide this organization today?”

In practice this often means building a values compass that becomes the lens through which strategic decisions are evaluated.

“When we assess trends, we look through that values lens. When we design products, we run ethical product impact assessments. When we build roadmaps, we check them against the values charter.”

The test is simple.

“Can you look your stakeholders in the eye and explain why you made a given choice? If the answer is no, we go back to the drawing board.”

The challenge of manual foresight work

As the demand for foresight increased, the work behind it remained surprisingly manual.

Like many practitioners in the field, Verena relied on a combination of tools and personal systems to track signals of change.

“Like most foresight practitioners, it was a combination of manual desk research, Google Alerts, RSS feeds, curated newsletters, and personal networks,” she explains. “I’d spend hours scanning trusted sources, reading scientific papers, monitoring patent databases, and attending conferences.”

Turning that information into usable foresight outputs required even more work.

“For trend radars, I was essentially working in PowerPoint and spreadsheets,” she says. “I’d collect signals manually, cluster them into trends, assess relevance and maturity, and then visualize it all.”

Her signal database was equally fragmented.

“My signal database was, embarrassingly, a mix of bookmarks, Evernote notes, and annotated PDFs.”

The biggest limitation was not just time.

“Horizon scanning is the most time-consuming part of foresight work,” she says. “That leaves less time for the high value work such as sensemaking, facilitation, and strategic advice.”

Another challenge was the static nature of the outputs.

“Every trend radar I built was essentially a static snapshot,” Verena explains. “The moment it was delivered, it started becoming outdated.”

Sharing insights with clients also had its limits.

“They would get a PDF or a PowerPoint slide. It was one directional. They couldn’t explore the radar themselves.”

As foresight became more important for organizations, this way of working became increasingly difficult to scale.

Searching for a platform built for foresight

Verena began looking for a more structured solution. What she needed was not a generic productivity tool, but a platform designed specifically for professional foresight work.

“I was looking for a dedicated foresight platform,” she says. “Not a generic project management tool, not a wiki, not another spreadsheet.”

What she needed was something that supported the full workflow of modern foresight: scanning signals, organizing them into trends, building radars, and sharing insights interactively.

That search led her to FIBRES, an AI powered collaborative foresight platform designed for horizon scanning, signal management, trend analysis, and interactive radar creation.

One capability stood out immediately.

“The visual, interactive trend radar capability was a major draw,” Verena recalls. “In my keynotes and workshops, I want to show people a radar they can actually explore, not a static slide.”

The moment the conversation changed

The real turning point came when Verena shared her first interactive radar built with FIBRES.

“It clicked when I built my first interactive trend radar in FIBRES and shared it with a client,” she says.

Instead of passively watching a presentation, the client explored the radar themselves.

“Instead of me presenting trends at them, they were exploring the radar themselves. Clicking on trends, reading the signals, asking better questions.”

That changed the dynamic of the discussion.

“The conversation shifted from ‘Is this relevant?’ to ‘What does this mean for us?’”

For Verena, that moment revealed the deeper value of the platform.

“This isn’t just an efficiency tool,” she explains. “It changes the quality of the conversation. And better conversations lead to better strategic decisions.”

Using FIBRES across consulting, teaching, and keynotes

Today FIBRES plays a central role in how About Tomorrow delivers foresight work.

In consulting projects, the platform supports horizon scanning, signal collection, trend clustering, and the creation of interactive radars tailored to each client’s strategic context.

Clients can access and explore their radar between workshops, which keeps the foresight conversation alive over time.

“When a client sees their radar evolving with new signals and validated trends, they understand that foresight is a living process,” Verena explains. “That understanding is what turns a one-off project into a retainer relationship.”

The same approach also enhances her keynote presentations. Instead of static slides listing trends, audiences see a dynamic visualization of emerging change.

“It makes abstract foresight concepts tangible,” she says.

In the classroom the platform helps students understand how professional foresight work happens.

“They can see how signals become trends, how trends are assessed and clustered, and how that translates into a strategic tool.”

Combining AI scale with human judgment

One of the most important aspects of FIBRES for Verena is how it supports rather than replaces expert interpretation.

“The AI handles the breadth, I bring the depth.”

AI supported scanning helps surface signals from a wide range of sources and suggest connections across fields. This is particularly valuable for someone working across both digital technologies and life sciences.

But human expertise remains central to interpreting those signals.

“Every signal that makes it into my radars has been vetted through my lens,” Verena explains. “Is this scientifically credible? Is it genuinely novel? What are the second order effects?”

Her scientific background and consulting experience remain essential for turning signals into meaningful strategic insights.

“I think of it as an augmentation of my natural ‘infovore’ tendencies,” she says. “The AI makes me faster and broader. My expertise makes the output sharper and more meaningful.”

From manual work to strategic focus

The most immediate impact of the platform has been a shift in how Verena spends her time.

“The biggest shift is that I spend significantly less time on data collection and formatting and more time on what I do best: sensemaking, facilitation, and strategic advising.”

Clients notice the difference as well.

“Clients take foresight more seriously when it’s presented as a professional, interactive platform rather than a consultant’s opinion in a slide deck,” she says. “The tool lends institutional weight to the work.”

That credibility also supports longer term engagement.

“When clients see their trend radar evolving over time, they understand that foresight is a living process.”

The result is a foresight workflow that is faster, more collaborative, and easier for organizations to engage with.

Moving beyond static reports

For Verena, the shift away from static foresight outputs is inevitable.

“Static reports are dead on arrival,” she says plainly. “You’re spending your best hours on logistics instead of insight.”

In a world where technological and societal change is accelerating, foresight needs to be dynamic, collaborative, and continuously updated.

“Foresight needs a home,” she says. “A single place where signals are collected, trends are tracked, and insights are shared.”

Platforms designed specifically for foresight workflows make that possible.

Preparing for multiple futures

Ultimately the goal of foresight is not prediction but preparedness.

“It’s never about accuracy. That’s a trap.”

Instead, the value lies in expanding an organization’s ability to navigate uncertainty.

“Foresight is about expanding the range of futures you’re prepared for.”

Through her work at About Tomorrow, Verena helps organizations build that capability. With the support of platforms like FIBRES, the process becomes more scalable, more collaborative, and more engaging for the teams involved.

For organizations navigating rapid technological change, that capability is becoming essential.

As Verena puts it, “foresight has gone from a niche strategic function to a survival skill.”