This is how we turn possible futures into concrete action.
We are certain: the future will be different from today
For most companies, dealing with the future is not a problem of knowledge. Trend reports and risk radars are all on the table. What is missing is the translation from possible futures to everyday business, and the courage and clarity to act on it.
Nokia and VW did not lack information either. Nokia missed the shift to smartphones and nearly disappeared from the market. VW underestimated electrification for too long and is now in crisis. What was missing was openness and courageous action.
Our guiding principle
We understand Future The future does not exist yet, it can only be imagined. It is everything that is neither present nor past, and so the only part of time we can still influence.Courage Doing what you believe is right despite uncertainty and possible downsides. Not fearlessness, but acting in spite of fear. as the ability and willingness to engage systemically with possible futures and, despite uncertainty, Entrepreneurial Acting under real uncertainty, not just taking calculable risks. That is what sets entrepreneurial action apart from mere administration. toward a forward-looking goal.
Sources of the definition
Based on Riel Miller (2018), Rate, Clarke, Lindsay & Sternberg (2007), Frank Knight (1921) and Saras Sarasvathy (2001).
Expertise
three areas of expertise we bring into every project
Futures thinking that orients
Through our networks, we have a good sense for a spectrum of future scenarios from science, politics, economy, environment, and technology. We pick up on signals of change and trends and craft future questions. What's emerging right now, and what could it become?
Business expertise that grounds
We think entrepreneurially, develop strategies, read balance sheets and know what it means to run a business. We bring a hands-on spirit and stay pragmatically close to day-to-day business.
Moderation that brings people along
The future is a mental image in our heads. That's why a change of course only succeeds with people who are brought along. We have a fine sense for the social dynamics within businesses and know how to inspire, involve, and activate your team.
Our tools
The Map
Looking outward: your environment
A map of your changing environment. Together we pick out the developments that are relevant for your business, like shifting customer expectations, new technologies, regulation or scarce resources. The Map shows the landscape taking shape around you.
The Ship
Looking inward: your business
A picture of your business: construction, crew, speed, resources on board. A direction is only as good as your ability to actually sail it. Whoever knows their ship knows how much it can carry, and how fast.
The Compass
Looking ahead: the direction
A compass that provides orientation and sets the course. Not a plan that sits in a drawer for five years, but an instrument you pick up whenever something shifts. It shows where you want to go, what to do next and if you are still on course.
Our tools
In our projects, we look outward, inward and ahead.
The MapThe changes in your environment and what they mean for your daily business.The ShipWhat your business can realistically handle and where to strengthen it.The CompassYour clear direction and the next steps towards it.
We'll show you how it's done.
Then, you navigate yourselves.
Theoretical background
the small print, for anyone who wants to know exactly
About every three seconds, we think about the future and make assumptions about how things will change. These assumptions guide how we act here and now. Even though they are not proven facts, we trust them almost blindly. Until things turn out differently.
Checking the weather, planning a product launch, setting next year’s forecasts, the next meeting in the calendar: all of this is futures thinking, just mostly unconscious and unstructured.
Cognitive science goes even further: according to philosopher Andy Clark, our brain constantly predicts what happens next. We mostly perceive what we expect and easily miss what doesn’t fit the picture.
That alone wouldn’t be a problem if the future weren’t so powerful. Systems theorist Robert Rosen shows in his theory of anticipation that our assumptions about what’s coming strongly shape our decisions and actions today, even though they are pure mental constructs.
On top of that, many images of the future around us look strikingly alike. Lots of green, glass buildings, lots of technology. Often a few loud voices shape what we imagine the future to be. Adopt these images unquestioned, and you think within someone else’s limits. Develop your own, and you gain room to move.
Because the future isn’t written yet. It is always in motion, never fully predictable, more a space of possibilities than a fixed point. The Future Cone shows this: possible, probable, preferable and alternative futures side by side. How wide this space opens depends on our imagination, as people and as businesses.
This is where ORA comes in. Making assumptions visible is the first step. With Futures Literacy, Riel Miller describes the capability to use the future deliberately as a tool: recognising assumptions, expanding them and turning them into new questions for the present. Yet insight alone doesn’t change a business.
As early as 1921, economist Frank Knight distinguished between risk, which can be calculated, and true uncertainty, which can’t. The latter calls for a different logic. Saras Sarasvathy observed it in experienced entrepreneurs and called it effectuation: they start with what they have, know and whom they know. And they let the direction emerge through doing.
Then there are people. A study from University College London shows that our stress rises with uncertainty: what weighs on us most is not the unpleasant thing itself, but not knowing whether it will come. At the same time, our own future is surprisingly foreign to us. Psychologist Hal Hershfield shows with brain scans that we think of our future self much as we think of a stranger. Those who can see their future concretely, however, decide with more foresight. That’s why ORA works with formats that make the future tangible and draw on the knowledge of everyone in the room. Individual assumptions become a shared picture. And uncertainty becomes a step a team takes together.
Do you move with the future or let it surprise you?
