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FutureLab Services

Through an integrated approach to Foresight, Strategy, Innovation, and Branding, we help you address the most important and complex business challenges.  FutureLab offers a wide range of consulting services, workshops, trainings, and technology solutions to help your organization achieve innovation proficiency and accelerate business productivity.

 

Foresight : Perspective

Effective foresight yields perspective, that essential quality of clear understanding from which the right actions emerge.  Without the right perspective, it's not clear even what problems are the most important ones to think about.  To help you gain the perspective you need to be an effective leader in your organization, FutureLab's uniquely experienced team brings an unprecedented depth of understanding of todays trends, what they mean, what's behind them, and where they're headed.

D-Curve Scenario Planning™ is a new and remarkably effect way to look at the future.  Instead of trying to make predictions, which are generally wrong and typically very misleading, scenarios of possible futures enable you to explore the many different and critical facets of emerging technolgies, social trends, economic forces, and business patterns. With compelling content seeded by the deep insights provided by FutureLab's proprietary D-Cruve™ model, this approach to scenario planning is being used by our clients in the energy, health care, technology, defense, and consumer sectors to unlock important new perspectives on the future. Learn more...

Painstorming: An Ethnography Master Class is an intriguing new way to explore the experiences that your customers have, by focusing on deeply embedded pain points that can reveal breakthough innovations. PAIN stands for Persona, Activities, Insights and Needsfinding – and provides a systematic approach to engaging with customers, non-customers, potential customers, and future customers to gain a deeper understanding of their needs, desires, attitudes, and behaviors. By focusing on the factors of use (how products and services are used in daily activities), usability (what makes things easy or difficult, including assessing cognitive workloads and perceptual bandwidth), and meaning (the significance of artifacts and actions in the experiences and lives of people, families, organizations, and cultures), we gain important perspectives on present and future realities, problems, and opportunities.

 

 

Strategy : Inspiration

There's something amazing that happens when you identify the right strategy, the winning strategy, because it inevitably inspires you to go out and make it happen. Doubt becomes purpose; hesitation becomes momentum; confusion becomes clarity.  FutureLab works with your team to clarify the right strategies and inspire the right behaviors.

The Blockchain Design Sprint™ is an accelerated, immersive design session enables you to fully understand how blockchains work by getting hands on experience by designing and deploying an actual blockchain. The blockchain revolution has begun, and it leverages a fresh, inspiring, multifaceted new world of digital ledgers, consensus computing and decentralization that promises to further disrupt the global economy. The blockchain is a tool for disrupting business models, and as the blockchain revolution grows it promises to disrupt nearly every business, including yours. So how can you master the blockchain in a fast and effective way? Based on a very practical, hand-on learning approach, this is a “learning by doing” experience that leverages the powerful design sprint method used by Silicon Valley companies like Google and Nest. Learn more...

The Innovation Master Plan™ is the compelling synthesis of right strategy and effective innovation methodology.  It's also the world's most comprehensive approach to innovation management.  By integrating the five critical dimensions of innovation performance into a single system, the master plan approach provides the guidance that your organization needs, and clarifies the essential roles for leaders, process managers, and creative individuals and teams throughout your organization.  FutureLab will help you craft a Master Plan that's just right for your organization, just as we've done for a wide variety of clients in financial services, education, consumer goods, health care, government, and telecom. Learn more...

The Innovation Audit is a rigorous assessment of an organization's existing innovation processes, culture, and innovation portfolio.  The purpose of the Audit, of course, is to compare the existing situation with best practices as reflected in the Innovation Master Plan framework, and the specific output is generally a set of significant recommendations for how to improve both performance and results.  We've done Innovation Audits for many organizations in health care, financial services, education, government, consumer goods, technology, and the resutls have always provided critical guidance that enabled senior management to make outstanding improvements.

Dynamic Trend Analysis™ is a very useful way to examine and master the critical trends and driving forces that are shaping the marketplace today, and which will shape it tomorrow.  By drawing on deep knowledge in science, technology, economics, business, and culture, the FutureLab team and our broader Innovation SWAT Team partners will help you see the future.

D-Curve Scenario Planning is a compelling way to prepare for the future.  Rather than basing your strategic efforts on predictions, which will almost certainly be wrong, the principle of scenario planning is that by anticipating possible futures, and the driving forces that are shaping the world of tomorrow, your executive team will gain a much greater depth of understanding of change, and identify the right actions and initiatives that will enable your organization to be successful in a wide variety of possible future market conditions.  This is a proven process that we've used throughout the health care industry, as well as in high technology firms, the energy industry, consumer goods, government, and defense.  (The D-Curve refers to our D-Curve white paper, a deeply insightful analysis of key trends and driving forces that are shaping the future.  You can learm more here ...)

 

Innovation : Creativity

You've foreseen the future and you've strategized about what needs to be done.  And now comes the creative work of combining insights and intentions in the joyful and engaging creative work of conceiving, designing, building, and launching the new products and services and business models that will shape the future of your organization, and perhaps the future of the market as well.  Because the world is changing so rapidly, because your current products and services are likely to be obsolete well before their time, because new competitors are emerging all the time, you must innovate.  FutureLab's innovation services can help you find the great ideas, and transform them into marketplace realities.

MindSpark™ is an accelerated, collaborative, divergent thinking workshop for your company's top innovators and executives. It's focused on helping your team unleash its core creativity to generate better ideas and business development strategies. This two day workshop provides unique and powerful new methods to help your team renew, energize and expand your ideation capacity. It's led by Moses Ma, Langdon Morris and Jack Canfield, three globally recognized thought leaders and experts in innovation and peak performance. Learn more...

OS/i - the Operating System for Innovation is the powerful technology solution we've created to help you manage the entire innovation effort.  By supporting all three critical lenses, senior management, project management, and creativity, OS/i provides you with the detailed tools and the necessary overview to accelerate your innovation process and significantly improve the results. Some of the key elements of OS/i include:

The Agile Innovation Toolkit™, is part of the OS/i framework for innovation management, and is a next generation application that helps teams better capture, refine, evaluate and manage knowledge - all within a structured innovation pipeline and portfolio. It presents a revolutionary approach to digitally-supported ideation by combining the power of the Agile process with our unique innovation techniques that boost creativity. The system drives progress using "brainsprints" and social workflow - an easy and "gamified" (thus fun and compelling) way to stay on track. 
 
InnoMetrics™ is part of the OS/i framework for innovation management, and is a dynamic analysis tool that gives your executive team the ability to perform instant innovation audits and to drive your collective brainpower in the right directions – think of it as SaberMetrics for innovation, your secret weapon for beating the competition by knowing your stats and optimizing your capabilities. Learn more...
 
 
The Innovation SWAT Team™ is an outstanding team of world-class technologists, thinkers, and business leaders who can help you break through to brilliant new ideas and business models. Armed with "special weapons and tactics" for a deeper and more insight-driven innovation, SWAT Team workshops are like your private "TED" conference: concepts become insights, insights become ideas, and ideas become limitless possibilities to fill up your pipeline of compelling innovation projects. We can even bring in a world class speaking coach and indie film production team to help you articulate your new and innovative vision, and star in your own 18 minutes of empowered communication. Learn more...
 
A C:Space BrainStudio™ engagement begins with a rapid innovation assessment and a personalized workshop for your company's top innovators and executives, followed by a design engagement to create optimized work spaces that support creativity, collaboration, conferencing, and innovation at your organization. These spaces are designed for world-class innovation processes and include FutureLab's powerful tools and solutions, including patent pending smart wall and smart chair technology. Spaces that stimulate effective ideation, high energy collaboration, and effortless knowledge capture will enable your organization to take innovation to the next level. This engagement is led by Langdon Morris, Moses Ma and Claire Rumore, in partnership with the SmithGroup JJR architectural firm. Learn more...
 
 

Branding : Resonance

Branding is a comprehensive issue that addresses everything from strategy through innovation and communciation, and thus it encompasses everything on this page.  The intent is to bring alignment to your thoughts and actions about the future that you intend to create.  What do you need to communicate to the many different kinds of customers and stakeholder who's attention you want to capture?  And how are you going to communicate with them in a way that resonates with their own values, beliefs, and desires?  Branding is the final step in our action cycle, and it is as profoundly important as the other three.  Because great brands are not only tremendously valuable assets, they're also dynamic expressions of both intent and capability.  Great products and services deserve strong branding efforts to support them; and strong brands convey high standards to both internal and external constituents, defining meaning and embodying value. 
 
Brandspark™ is an accelerated, collaborative, divergent thinking workshop for your company's top brand and marketing executives.  It enables you to see your brand in a deeper way and to increase your core creativity to generate better brand and business development strategies, with the power to add more life to your business and more resonance in your brand.  This two day workshop provides unique and powerful new methods to help your team renew, energize and brighten your brand. It is led by Jerome Conlon, a globally recognized thought leader and expert in brand management. Learn more... 
 
Branding Master Plan™ is a comprehensive program that combines workshops, client training and directed project work to apply our principles and tools to advance your branding practice. The Branding Master Plan generate a multi-year perspective on goals, milestones, requirements and planning for your journey to brand optimization.  Tactically, it provides a comprehensive brand innovation process that moves from strategy, to a portfolio of brand initiatives, to research, insights, project development, financial, fit & feasibility reviews and project implementation and feedback. The Master Plan process starts with a Big Dig, and uses BrandScans, Brand Strength Monitors, and a series of "depth workshops".  This consulting service uses proven principles that has build world class brands. Engagements last six to twelve months.

BrandScan™ is a series of tools, techniques, processes and software that empowers marketing and brand executives to identify brand strengths, weaknesses, brand and business development opportunities and threats… in real-time.  Brandscan helps marketing teams tune-up the marketing mix and brand initiatives for the greatest marketing impact, from a consumer perspective. It is toolkit for aligning internal resources and projects in such a way as to have the greatest marketing impact. The Brand Strength Monitor is a custom designed brand tracking tool under development that harnesses the power of an app, social media and dynamic intelligent sampling of internal and external key constituents. 

The Big Dig™ is a comprehensive assessment of your brands meaning, character and positioning, desired and actual, from the inside and outside to give the brand management team the perspective needed to map the gap between the current state of the business and its potential. The big dig is a variation of the ethnographic process that first looks at internal values and beliefs driving your positioning goals, then assesses what consumers externally associate emotionally with your brand. The Big Dig is a valuable tool for any company that has never done an in-depth brand assessment.  The Big Dig findings and recommendations are aimed at planning your brands category differentiation strategy and in setting new brand positioning goals and initiatives.

 
 
 
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A Note on Our Service Offers
 
Thank you for your interest in FutureLab.
 
We approach our work in a comprehensive manner because as business leaders ourselves, with many successful ventures in our past, present and future, we have experienced the benefits of integrated approaches, comprehensive thinking, and sound advice.  We also know the high costs of fragmented thinking and less-than-robust methods and "solutions."
 
We realize that each of our clients comes to us with a unique set of needs and perspectives, and we respect your specific needs. All of our offerings are built to adapt to your unique, organic business process.
 
Please review a list of our recent clients (here) for a sampling of the firms we've worked with.
 
Please also take a look at our white papers and books, which describe many of our methods in detail.
 
If you're ready to take your innovation to the next level and engage with us, contact us via our inquiry form.