Business futures

Scanning based disciplines to identify the potential sequels of long-term issues and trends have been the core activity of Business Futures. They have been employed continually for fifteen years to develop a valuable long term record of signals of potential change.

This data has supported the work of different futures programmes, such as the Corporate Futures Programme on the evolving cultural economy; The Business Implications of Diversity, and Future Youth Values. These programmes have been run by Business Futures in all parts of the world for groups of organisations and internally for individual clients.

BFN has developed specialised applications of futures disciplines, including managing the changing use of space by organisations, futures research and adaptive strategies for companies.

Business Futures is a leading futures consulting group of eight partners based in Europe, the USA and Japan. Established in 1988 when the founders left the California-based Stanford Research Institute, Business Futures started as a group of corporate executives from fifteen international companies.

PARTNERS

Jim Smith - founding partner, California, USA

Geoff Woodling - founding partner, London, UK

Mariko Fujiwara - Tokyo, Japan

Sheila Moorcroft - London, UK

Christer Tufvesson - Stockholm, Sweden

Peter Wilson - UK & Southern Africa

Karen Yorke - California, USA



Partners' profiles (ordered by surname)

Mariko Fujiwara is an authority on changing values, attitudes and lifestyles in contemporary Japan. As a consultant at the Hakuhodo Institute of Life & Living, she has been supervising research to understand the diversity in life orientations, forecasts of general social changes or trends in contemporary Japanese society.She has co-authored reports on Japan's second baby boomers (1995), single women (1993), salaried workers (1991), families in transition (1989), senior citizens (1987), and the young New Breed generation (1985). She is also an active contributor to ministerial study groups and government policy councils. She is currently contributing to the Economic Council, the Industrial Structure Council, the Councils in the Finance and Construction Ministries.



Sheila Moorcroft is futures research consultant with over 15 years experience, specialising in scanning, identification of issues and their assessment, and scenario development, especially the business implications of changing values and lifestyles. Previously, she was a Director of Applied Futures where she worked with clients in retailing, financial services, healthcare and travel, looking at new product development and business strategy. Prior to that she spent ten years at SRI International providing strategic research services to clients throughout Europe. She regularly talks at conferences and contributes to management training courses.



Jim Smith, a BFN co-founder, heads BFN's strategic scanning practice. Jim has over 25 years' experience dealing with the identification of change and its implications. As both a practitioner and consultant, he is intimately familiar with the environmental scanning process and how it can be employed to support strategy development, innovation, issues management, and organizational learning to help create value in the emerging information economy. In addition to change and its implications, Jim interests include advertising, consumer behavior and marketing, and values and lifestyles. He has pursued these interests as a program manager at SRI International's Business Intelligence Center (Menlo Park, California), a consultant for the Global Business Network (Emeryville, California), and (in New York City) as an account executive at Young and Rubicam, an international advertising agency. Jim earned his BA and MBA degrees at the University of California, Berkeley.



Christer Tufvesson, the Swedish partner in the network, was previously a client when at Ericsson Information Systems and responsible for strategy to the financial services sector. In collaboration with Ericsson and one of Sweden's major banks, he also worked with the Business & Industry Advisory Committee for computers and telecommunications strategies at the OECD, and he continues in an advisory capacity. He specialises in technology and lifestyles futures in Sweden.



Peter Wilson is an expert in scenario development techniques and their application in strategic management, having spent many years at Shell International in South African and in the UK. He worked in their Corporate Planning department, particularly in their scenario planning activities. He has helped to develop the BFN Futures to Strategy process, and now focuses on the application of futures in corporate strategy, particularly in real estate. He also works with UNDP in developing scenarios and long term development strategies for several African nations as part of their planning process.



Geoff Woodling has 25 years experience of futures and innovation strategy consulting. After ten years advising the transport and engineering industries of the market and locational impact of new technologies, he became European Director of Research at SRI International, where he founded the business futures practice which later became BFN. His work on special impacts of spatial change in the economy led him to become a partner in Jones Lang Wootton, to develop their real estate business strategy consultancy, which continues through the REBUS practice of BFN. He founded Business Futures Network with Jim Smith in 1990, to develop global future scanning in North America, Europe and Japan, as well as its scenario to strategy consulting practice. BFN has seven global partners serving clients around the world.



Karen Yorke came to BFN's futures practice 3 years ago with more than a decade of research and work experience related to Japanese business, technology and lifestyles. At BFN she continues to follow Asian futures while broadening her expertise to include human resources management issues and information technology in the new economy. Prior to BFN Karen worked at the U.S.-Japan Technology Management Center at Stanford University, and at SRI International as a Program Manager in the Business Intelligence Center and as U.S. Director of the Japan-Western US Association. At SRI she was actively involved in the scanning activities. She lived in Japan in the early 70's and again in the early 80's and speaks and reads Japanese.



Associates

Peter Cannell has extensive senior experience in solving a wide range of business problems. He is able to draw on a strong background in strategic planning, business development, and project management gained in the fast evolving world of electric utilities where he held a variety of posts culminating in Strategic Planning in Scottish Power Head Office. Peter graduated from Cambridge and recently attended the Advanced Management Programme at the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania. Peter currently helps organisations and communities think productively about their futures so that they may create more valuable options within their strategies.


Wyn Jones has over twenty five years experience in consulting, international business and executive management. With IMR Ltd. in London hemanaged a wide variety of projects throughout Western Europe and the Middle East, as diverse as truck hire, car components, crushed rock, and cut flowers, as well as feasability analyses of major infrastructure projects such as port facilities, retail shopping complexes and expansion of production facilities in steel and heavy engineering. After various business planning positions at AM International Inc., he became Vice-President of Marketing and Strategic Planning for ECRM - involved in many aspects of electronic publishing. As part of a close-knit management team, (which implemented a MBO from AM International in 1982), he was directly responsible for revamping the company's product line, and transforming its worldwide distribution strategy. He set up his own consulting practice in the US in 1991 and also works with a Dutch management consulting firm - New Business Search and Development - and has carried out project assignments in Belgium, Holland, Germany, France and the UK, as well as extensively within the US. Typical NBS&D projects include helping clients achieve increased business innovation and growth, as well as international partner/acquisition searches. He is also a partner in MSA International with operations in the UK and the US. Wyn is an honors graduate of University College London, has a Masters Degree from the University of Essex, and pursued an advanced degree at the State University of New York. Between leaving graduate school and returning to the UK, he was a Research Fellow in the Washington office of US Senator W.E. Brock. He has Permanent Residence status in the US, but also spends much time in Europe.