The 3 Biggest Challenges in Foresight (and How to Solve Them)

Strategic foresight teams face a persistent challenge: drowning in data while starving for actionable insights. According to recent industry research, organizations scanning their business environments encounter thousands of potentially relevant signals daily, yet struggle to translate even a fraction into strategic decisions. If this sounds familiar, you're not alone - and we have solutions.

When many teams think of foresight, they think of the activities and tasks to be done: signals scanning, trends, technology, and startup scouting, monitoring competitors, and imagining future scenarios. These are the “what” - the building blocks of an effective foresight program. Foundational to these activities are key concepts and foresight practices, which provide the essential principles and methods for anticipating future trends and building robust strategies.

But equally essential in foresight (and in all innovation management endeavors) is the “how” - representing the mortar required to stabilize and structure everything into something truly valuable. It is also the “how” that differs the most across organizations and often represents the biggest pain points cited by foresight teams in 2024 and 2025. This is why strategic foresight is important: it enables organizations to anticipate change, stay competitive, and drive innovation in a rapidly evolving environment.

In this article, we'll explore the three most critical challenges facing foresight teams in 2025: information overload, information silos, and AI integration and governance.

Each of these speaks to the complexity of moving from data to decisions - with speed, confidence, and the right balance of human judgment and technological capability. Read on to find out how different industry leaders are overcoming the most common foresight challenges using ITONICS’ foresight tools and techniques.

1. Information overload

Today’s businesses are constantly bombarded with vast and increasing amounts of information from various sources. While this information can provide valuable insights into the market, customers, and competitors, it can also be overwhelming and lead to information overload.

Cutting through the noise to avoid missing important signals emerging on the periphery or horizon of your business environment - through activities such as signals scanning, trend monitoring, and horizon scanning - is a major challenge for foresight teams.

The ability to identify and attribute meaning to signals, including early signals and weak signals as critical indicators, homing in on what is relevant and potentially valuable, is crucial for strategic decision-making.

A systematic approach is essential for effective signal detection. Teams must analyze information to gain a comprehensive understanding of the environment. Doing so fast, continuously, and systematically is the key to staying ahead of the competition and driving growth.

Best practice example for managing information overload: Intelligent scanning at DMK Group

The food & drink industry is characterized by rapidly changing consumer demands, individual trend developments across regions, and strong international competition. With consumers' tastes and preferences evolving faster than ever, dairy and food companies must identify weak signals in their business environment early to derive new business opportunities and stay competitive.

DMK Group, one of Europe's leading companies in the dairy industry, processes milk into foods of the highest quality. As part of its successful innovation management, the company recognized the need for systematic global trend scouting to respond quickly to changing customer needs. However, DMK faced several obstacles: no worldwide trend scouting network, partially outsourced trend activities to third parties, limited internal resources, and time-consuming manual aggregation and documentation of trend scouting results in static documents.

To overcome these challenges, DMK has been using a trend radar (Exhibit 1) for the analysis of global trends in the food sector. The company established a digital trend platform that connects external trend scouts worldwide to its internal trend management process.

Exhibit 1: Trend radar to identify new trend topics

The platform uses various filter options to analyze individual trend cities separately, and relevant results can be linked to existing trend topics or campaigns with just one click. Semantic analyses and digital linking of results considerably reduce the manual effort involved in trend scouting, while automated imports enable intermediate results to be called up at any time for quick readjustments if necessary.

With ITONICS, DMK Group scouted 450 inspirations for 30 food trends across multiple trend metropolises within just four weeks. The entire trend scouting process from the first briefing to the final analysis of results was reduced significantly, enabling the company to respond faster to changing consumer needs and scale its environmental scanning activities efficiently.

2. Information silos

Information silos occur when data and knowledge become compartmentalized and isolated within specific teams or divisions. And a silo mentality is more common than organizations realize; it can be difficult to recognize and even more difficult to overcome.

The reason for this is that information silos are not only the result of outdated, decentralized systems. Research finds they can also stem from a lack of collaborative culture and a common unifying purpose, vision, and strategy. An organization's ability to share information across various teams is critical for effective collaboration and foresight.

When information is locked away in silos, it becomes difficult for foresight teams to access a comprehensive and holistic view of the organization’s internal and external environment. Silos hinder effective decision-making processes within the organization, as well as the ability to detect emerging trends, anticipate market shifts, and identify potential opportunities or threats. Without a complete understanding of the broader landscape, foresight activities become fragmented and limited in scope.

Best practice example for breaking down information silos: Competitive intelligence at Merz Therapeutics

The healthcare & pharmaceutical industry faces rapid technological advancement across multiple fronts. New treatment modalities, digital therapeutics, and breakthrough technologies in neurostimulation and targeted drug delivery are constantly emerging. For companies looking to expand their portfolios, staying ahead of these developments is critical, but only if the right information reaches the right people at the right time.

Merz Therapeutics, part of the family-owned Merz Group, focuses on improving patient health outcomes through therapeutic innovation. As the company works to establish and expand the competitive landscape of its product portfolio, its Technology Scouting and External Innovation Teams needed to answer: Which new products, companies, and emerging technologies should inform strategic portfolio decisions?

Before implementing ITONICS in 2018, Merz Therapeutics encountered classic symptoms of information silos. Different departments - R&D, Technology Scouting, Marketing, and Corporate Development - collected competitive intelligence separately, often duplicating efforts and missing critical connections. There was no single point of truth, and rigid tools like Excel lists led to heavy workload and data loss.

To address these challenges, Merz Therapeutics implemented ITONICS as its technology scouting platform. The company created a central point for competitive intelligence across teams and functions, drawing from multiple sources including clinical trials, patents, publications, and employee contributions. Different stakeholders can now collaboratively collect, evaluate, and prioritize technologies and products using ITONICS' AI-enabled signals feed (Exhibit 2), Radars, and collaborative assessment features. This cross-team collaboration is instrumental in identifying opportunities for portfolio expansion that arise from shared insights and collective analysis.

Exhibit 2: Receive risk alerts from Prism based on signals

Moreover, the company uses insights from this continuous and collaborative technology scouting process to validate decision-making for its strategic portfolio management. This is possible thanks to ITONICS' end-to-end innovation ecosystem that links foresight activities to strategic goals and initiatives.

ITONICS is providing Merz Therapeutics with the tools to ensure standardization, consistency, and transparency throughout its technology scouting process and, ultimately, steer its strategy to execution. These practices not only break down silos but also support effective problem-solving across the organization.

3. AI integration and governance

If your foresight team has successfully overcome the challenges of information overload and silos, the next step is deriving actionable insights to inform decision-making. However, this can be one of the most difficult steps to put into practice. With so many signals, drivers, and variables to consider, teams can struggle to agree on a shared narrative of the future and identify the most promising opportunities for growth. Rather than boosting your confidence in decision-making, the wealth of available information instead creates decision paralysis - hence the decision dilemma.

Foresight teams often encounter the paradox of choice. They must grapple with a multitude of possibilities and options, making it challenging to determine the most appropriate course of action. The fear of making the wrong decision or missing out on significant opportunities can further exacerbate the decision dilemma.

Best practice example for mastering AI integration: Strategic portfolio management at Fletcher Building

The construction industry stands at a critical inflection point. Major public sector investments, particularly in hospitals and medical facilities, combined with emerging drivers such as sustainability and green investment, are reshaping competitive dynamics. For companies navigating multiple business units with diverse innovation activities, the challenge isn't just collecting ideas - it's making confident strategic decisions about where to invest limited resources for maximum impact.

To address these challenges, Fletcher Building integrated ITONICS' innovation platform at the end of 2019, creating a comprehensive system for incubation management, portfolio management, and strategic planning aligned to strategic goals. The aim is to create balanced innovation portfolios prepared for numerous possible contingencies.

Quarterly portfolio reviews provide a direct link to the Executive Committee, where portfolio outcomes and future directions are discussed with full transparency. By visualizing and contextualizing market and technology trends with defined innovation projects on an integrated roadmap using ITONICS Matrix (Exhibit 3) and Radar, dependencies in innovation implementation are revealed.

Exhibit 3: Matrices to display, analyze, and track distinct sets of content for decisions

The roadmap layers represent the overall corporate strategic initiatives: environmental footprint, product innovation, modular/pre-fab, multi-residential, role of distribution, and supply chain. This cross-functional visibility enables informed decisions on project directions and helps prioritize innovation initiatives across the enterprise.

The impact has been substantial. More than 70 ideas and projects have moved through the funnel, with over 30 innovation leaders from across the company now managing their portfolios with full transparency. More than a dozen potential business-to-business collaborations have already been identified. The central organization of information results in immense time savings, and the Executive Committee now has clear visibility into growth opportunities and the right investment decisions for the company.

ITONICS has enabled Fletcher Building to transform decision paralysis into confident, evidence-based strategic choices. The platform became an integral part of the company's innovation culture, contributing to cross-pollination of pioneering growth opportunities and providing the transparency needed to prioritize initiatives and justify decisions based on data rather than intuition alone.

Solving foresight challenges with ITONICS

ITONICS offers a comprehensive solution that empowers your foresight teams to overcome the challenges of information overload, silos, and decision paralysis (Exhibit 4). With one platform, you can scale environmental scanning, boost transparency and collaboration, and foster a future-focused organizational culture.

Exhibit 4: Foresight helps teams to keep everything on radar

ITONICS helps you establish a systematic process for conducting continuous foresight to empower your decision-making and build the foundations of your innovation strategy.

Want to solve the biggest challenges facing your foresight team and free yourself to focus on what truly matters? Get a free demo of ITONICS to find out how easy it can be!