Service Designing a Foresight Tool for Strategic Leadership

The presentation will discuss the outcomes of a service design process focusing on developing a foresight tool for strategic leadership in companies. In business planning, it has been a trend to plan and manage effective quarters whereas business scenarios that would reach from 20 to 30 years forward are more difficult. More than ever, the leadership needs to understand the long-term changes in the business environment and foresee not only the megatrends but also the possible service innovations enabled by emerging and new technologies and their impact on their business models. The presentation is based on collaborative research work between researchers, companies, and creative producers enabled by Business Finland funding in the Empathy Business project. It will illustrate how service design can be utilized to concretize and prototype a user experience of the future. Service design can embrace both artistic and creative methods to create speculative scenarios of the future for testing business models. The presentation will: 1) Include examples of how the companies can utilize a service design-driven foresight tool in their strategic planning. 2) Show ways how to utilize artistic and creative methods for strategic service design. 3) Present a service design method for companies to plan and manage their resources in the future.