Trading Insights: Thinking ‘Future Back’, with J.P. Morgan’s Head of Corporate Futurism
Dec 10, 2024
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Debora Kantt, Head of Corporate Futurism at J.P. Morgan, specializes in strategic foresight and future-back thinking. She discusses innovative approaches to overcoming cognitive biases and the necessity for non-linear thinking in predicting futures. Debora shares insights on emerging trends in biocomputing and affective computing, emphasizing their transformative potential across industries. Alongside Eloise Goulder, she highlights the importance of recognizing weak signals and adopting adaptable strategies for future success in investing.
Thinking 'Future Back' allows businesses to anticipate change and strategize effectively in a rapidly evolving market environment.
Identifying weak signals in emerging technologies can lead to innovative models, enhancing competitiveness while embracing uncertainty and adaptability.
Deep dives
The Importance of Horizon Scanning
Horizon scanning is a crucial method in foresight research that involves identifying weak signals, which are early indications of future trends that may take five to ten years to develop into more defined changes. Recognizing these signals early on can give businesses a competitive edge, allowing them to adjust their strategies and explore new revenue streams ahead of the curve. For example, by tracking emerging startups and innovative patents, companies can better position themselves in a rapidly changing market. This proactive approach to strategic planning highlights the significance of being anticipatory rather than reactive in business.
Future-Back Methodology vs. Traditional Forecasting
Adopting a future-back methodology, often referred to as backcasting, allows organizations to envision multiple possible futures based on current evidence and emerging trends, rather than solely extrapolating from past data. This method contrasts with traditional forecasting, which can falter in today's dynamic and nonlinear environment where changes occur rapidly. By utilizing backcasting, businesses can develop robust strategies that account for various future scenarios, including unpredictable 'wild card' events that could disrupt industries. This approach encourages a mindset shift from seeking certainty to embracing uncertainty, thereby fostering greater adaptability and resilience.
Exploring Emerging Technologies and Their Impacts
There is a growing intersection between biology and technology, particularly in the field of biocomputing, which leverages biological systems for computational tasks. This paradigm shift suggests a future where biological computers could potentially outperform traditional silicon-based systems in efficiency and functionality. Furthermore, technologies like affective computing are being developed to enable AI systems to understand and simulate human emotions, with implications for various applications including empathetic AI assistants. Recognizing these emerging technologies early and understanding their synergies can lead to innovative business models and transformative change across industries.
In this episode, we hear from Debora Kantt, head of Corporate Futurism at J.P. Morgan. Debora discusses the importance of thinking ‘Future Back’, in overcoming behavioral biases and training the human brain to think in a non-linear way. She also provides examples of ‘weak signals’, or seeds of future trends, across the biocomputing and affective computing fields. Debora is in discussion with Eloise Goulder, head of the Data Assets & Alpha Group at J.P. Morgan.
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