Has Corporate Foresight Become Obsolete?

Reading more about the future can make a leadership team feel prepared. René Rohrbeck warns that the feeling can be misleading. A detailed trend report tells you what might change. It does not tell you whether your organization has worked out how to respond.

For the corporate foresight researcher, that is the gap that matters: the distance between knowing about possible developments and making decisions that create a better position in a future market.

In this conversation with Dr. Christian Mühlroth, Rohrbeck challenges short-term thinking, describes why foresight needs to reach beyond reports, and questions whether AI-generated ideas are as novel as they appear. His argument comes back to people: a useful foresight process helps those responsible for change develop a shared understanding and commit to action.

Being informed is not the same as being ready

A team can scan trends, write an impressive report and distribute it widely without changing a single investment decision. Rohrbeck wants to know what the work contributes to innovation, partnerships and strategic choices.

Does it help the company move beyond its industry's status quo? Does it bring together partners needed for a difficult innovation? Does it influence where the organization intends to compete?

His practical demand is clear:

“You need to build a playbook.”

That means working through possible conditions and the decisions they would require. If inflation remains high, for example, what would change in contracting or the business model? The value lies in preparing responses, rather than accumulating observations and hoping somebody else will use them.

Rohrbeck recommends starting with the decisions and processes foresight is meant to inform. The needs of a supervisory board differ from those of an executive team. A useful system connects to those responsibilities instead of treating every audience as a recipient of the same report.

Give decision-makers a common frame of reference

Strategic decisions often begin with a small group working through an issue. That group then has to explain its reasoning to a wider decision-making body. Without a shared understanding of the future, the conversation can become difficult precisely when the proposed commitment is large.

Rohrbeck contrasts that challenge with restructuring decisions, whose immediate logic may be easier to communicate.

He remembers a strategy leader at Deutsche Telekom describing an earlier rhythm: substantial questions from the CEO, followed by months to investigate alternatives. By the time of their conversation, messages and emails were already demanding attention early in the morning.

The anecdote raises a practical question for leaders. Where, in the working week, is there protected time to examine a strategic issue deeply? Faster communication does not automatically produce better strategic judgment.

Look for decisions that help a different market emerge

Rohrbeck uses the transformation of DONG Energy, later Ørsted, to explore what a substantial strategic commitment involves. In his account, the company faced the limits of its existing business and chose to pursue offshore wind while the market and technology still needed development.

The important point is that the company could not simply wait for every condition to become favorable. Its commitments helped suppliers and the wider market move toward the future it wanted to participate in.

Rohrbeck asks students what it would take for them, as managers, to make such a decision with their colleagues. They have to consider the system around it, the partners involved and the conditions required for the investment to become viable.

For R&D leaders, this connects foresight to a concrete task: understanding which dependencies must change alongside the technology, and who can help change them.

Use AI to investigate, then challenge what feels convincing

Rohrbeck sees value in AI-assisted research, particularly when it helps an analyst examine questions faster and trace an answer back to its sources. He is much less comfortable with treating a fluent output as a substitute for collective strategic thinking.

The discussion becomes particularly interesting when Mühlroth describes experiments in which experts rated AI-generated ideas favorably. Rohrbeck offers a competing explanation: perhaps familiar ideas resonate because both the model and the evaluators have encountered the same material before.

An idea can sound convincing without being genuinely new. He illustrates the concern with a self-deprecating anecdote. When he asked an AI system who the leading corporate foresight researcher was, it named him. He questioned whether that answer reflected emerging contributions or simply his accumulated publication record.

Mühlroth acknowledges the remaining gap between favorable evaluations and demonstrated business results. Neither a persuasive description nor an expert score settles whether an idea will work. The exchange is a reminder to test the assumptions behind the evaluation, not just the output being evaluated.

Help people believe they can shape the outcome

Rohrbeck's teaching brings students, researchers and industry participants together around complex questions, including the future of nutrition. He describes using ITONICS trend information to give participants a broader view before they explore possibilities and collaborate.

The shared work matters because the people contributing insight may also be the people who must implement change. A quick answer cannot replace every part of that process.

His own childhood in West Berlin gives the discussion a personal anchor. The wall made fundamental change seem improbable, until it happened.

“Change looked so unlikely until it happened.”

For Rohrbeck, stories of change help people see that the future is not merely something to endure. Foresight becomes useful when that sense of possibility turns into considered choices, partnerships and commitments.