The Golden Age of Strategic Foresight

Jake Sotiriadis traces the start of his career to an exchange year in Germany. Living with a host family and travelling through Europe changed how he saw the world. History and foreign policy stopped being subjects to study at a distance. They became questions shaped by conversations with people whose experiences differed from his own.

That willingness to reconsider a worldview runs through his discussion with Dr. Christian Mühlroth on Innovation Rockstars. Speaking in 2021 as Senior Futurist and Chief of Strategic Foresight at the U.S. Air Force, Sotiriadis explains how his team helped leaders challenge assumptions and consider alternative futures. The work included horizon scanning, collaboration beyond the organisation and turning scenarios into immersive experiences. For corporate strategy and R&D teams, his central challenge is familiar: how do you prepare for change while daily demands keep pulling attention back to the present?

Make room for the signals beyond today’s agenda

Sotiriadis describes a horizon-scanning database built with internal talent to examine weak signals and emerging trends. The methods draw on established futures research, including his experience at the University of Hawaii.

The harder part is creating space to use them. Meetings, messages and immediate commitments make it easy to concentrate on what is urgent. Longer-term questions struggle to compete, especially when a specialist has only a few minutes to explain why the work matters.

His response is to connect the analysis to a decision. How might this development challenge an assumption behind the strategy? What could the organisation do differently now?

He is particularly wary of complete agreement about what comes next. If everyone treats one future as certain, the apparent consensus deserves scrutiny. The risk is that a shared assumption becomes so familiar that nobody asks what would happen if it proved wrong.

Use scenarios to test readiness

Sotiriadis discusses a Global Futures Report exploring geopolitical competition after the pandemic. Its broad scenarios considered different possible worlds in 2035, including continued growth, systemic collapse, transformation and discipline. More specific sections examined particular areas through alternative scenarios as well.

He is clear about what the report was intended to achieve:

“The point of the report is not to be right.”

The scenarios create a setting for difficult questions. Would the organisation be ready? Would its current conclusions still hold? Would it need different investments or capabilities?

For an R&D portfolio, that way of thinking can make dependencies easier to discuss. An initiative may look attractive under one set of conditions and less useful under another. Exploring that difference gives leaders something more actionable than a debate about which forecast sounds most convincing.

The interview presents these scenarios as a way to challenge thinking, not as predictions that have since been validated.

Let people experience the implications

One development Sotiriadis is proud of involved translating the futures report into a virtual reality format. His argument is that reading about a possible world and experiencing a representation of it can prompt different responses.

An immersive setting gives participants more than a written description. They can consider what an environment might look and sound like, then discuss what it would mean for planning. Sotiriadis sees that as a different way to help leaders engage with the material.

The conversation does not establish that the format produced better decisions or quantify its effect. Its practical value lies in the question it raises for anyone communicating foresight: does the format help people examine the consequences, or does it simply deliver more information?

A well-researched document remains useful. But the work still needs a conversation in which people connect its ideas to their own choices.

Distinguish awareness from preparation

Reflecting on the pandemic, Sotiriadis argues that warnings alone were not the missing ingredient. People had discussed the possibility of such an event. The harder question was whether institutions and individuals were ready to process and respond to it.

That distinction matters beyond crisis planning. An organisation can acknowledge a risk in a presentation without changing anything about its capabilities, assumptions or priorities.

Sotiriadis therefore calls for continued questioning and iteration. Teams should examine which signals deserve attention and how developments relate to one another. They also need to consider the futures they would like to help create, rather than only the disruptions they hope to avoid.

This is where foresight becomes part of organisational direction. A shared aspiration needs people to understand how they fit into it and what it would require from them.

Build the habit beyond the specialist team

Sotiriadis describes a “cognitive operating system”: a way of thinking that looks for connections, questions assumptions and takes complexity seriously. The phrase refers to an organisational habit, rather than a software platform.

His emphasis is on making better use of people’s existing ability to imagine something different. Colleagues need tools and opportunities to bring that thinking into everyday work. Public and private organisations may use related methods while adapting them to different responsibilities and cultures.

External collaboration helped his team develop that practice. He describes exchanges with universities and private-sector organisations as a source of learning on both sides. Building the team also depended on support from leaders who were willing to allow experimentation.

“They gave us the room to experiment”

He recalls that trust as an important part of establishing the capability before the pandemic. When circumstances changed, the team already had a basis for helping colleagues think through their options. The lesson for leaders is concrete: the ability to reconsider a strategy has to be developed before the moment when the organisation urgently needs it.