Strategic Tools for the Future of Biotechnology: A Toolbox for Industry Leaders

Strategic Tools for the Future of Biotechnology: A Toolbox for Industry Leaders

Leland Ward | 2018

Abstract

Change is inevitable whether slow and evolutional or sudden and revolutionary. While strategic planning based on traditional trend analysis is effective for evolutional changes, the more volatile and uncertain environment associated with revolutionary changes, require a different approach to future focused planning. Future focused strategies help organizations build resilience against the uncertainties and embrace the potential of diverse futures.

Today’s biotech industry exists in a volatile environment consisting of growing global competition, more restrictive regulation, and declining public opinion. It faces an increasingly uncertain future from ambiguous legal, political, and social pressures. Biotech leaders like many other leaders in today’s rapidly changing business environment, ready or not, are in need of new and innovative tools to develop successful future focused strategies.

This manuscript follows the Association of Professional Futurists’ six future focused competencies and demonstrates how biotech leaders might use them to manage specific future challenges and opportunities related to the biotech industry. The reader will learn how to use valuable future focused tools designed to help organizations navigate in just such a volatile and uncertain environment. They will learn about the history and scientific support behind these tools. Most importantly, the reader will learn what to expect from and how to navigate the natural human responses to the changes associated with implementing future focused strategies. By reading this manuscript, the reader will learn, while one cannot predict the future with any level of certainty, one can most certainly prepare for the uncertainty of the future.