It’s an exciting time for strategic foresight. UK interest in the topic hit a five-year high in late 2025, according to Google Trends. But in parallel, searches for “What is strategic foresight?” achieved ‘breakout’ status, while interest in “future trends” dominated by far.

The challenge is that foresight is becoming mainstream ahead of stakeholder understanding. When a discipline grows rapidly without a shared baseline, it risks being reduced to popular shorthand and ‘deliverables’ that tell only part of the story: signal radars, trend decks or occasional scenario workshops.

Just when organisations most need rigorous long-term thinking, foresight must be credible. That doesn't require one, rigid academic framework – foresight needs to be accessible and flexible – but it does need a common understanding of what makes it effective and how to measure impact. A closer partnership between insight and foresight is a key part of the fix.

The pressure of the ‘next’

For insight practitioners, this appetite brings new expectations that, in a ‘polycrisis’, foresight can be neatly layered into current research – that today’s consumer data can provide a simple roadmap for the years ahead.

This is aggravated by commercial tensions. While leaders increasingly recognise the need to explore multiple futures to build resilience, the realities of business still favour short-termism. PWC’s 2026 CEO Survey highlights the gap: global chief executives typically spend nearly half of their time ( 47%) on a 12-month horizon, compared to just 16% on anything beyond five years.

In this environment, foresight is often compressed: ‘trends’ are preferred over ‘uncertainty’ and ‘predictions’ over ‘potential futures’. While understandable, these pressures entrench myths that limit the value foresight can deliver. To build a more effective bridge between present and future – and between insight and foresight – we need to address four common misconceptions.

Myth 1: Foresight is just future-facing trends

Reality: Year-ahead trend reports are often presented as foresight, but foresight really begins when emerging signals are interrogated against organisational strategy and long-term uncertainty. A shift in consumer values doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it intersects with economic shifts, technological breakthroughs and regulatory changes.

How to collaborate better: For insight teams, this is about moving from ‘what is happening?’ to ‘where is this heading?’. Rather than analysing siloed trends, we can use foresight to explore how today’s evidence might intersect with other forces to shape alternative futures. This extends the shelf life of current research by making it a foundation for long-term strategy.

Myth 2: Foresight is prediction

Reality: In volatility, stakeholders crave the certainty of a forecast, but foresight’s value lies in delivering the opposite. The aim is not to be ‘right’ about 2030, but to be prepared for it. It is about stress-testing current plans against a range of plausible futures to ensure they are resilient enough for multiple outcomes. It’s also about moving early on opportunities.

How to collaborate better: Insight teams provide the ‘reality check’ with evidence that helps assess which futures are plausible, grounding strategic responses in human and commercial reality. It is about looking beyond ‘what will happen?’, to ‘are we ready if it does?’.

Myth 3: Foresight is just scenario planning

Reality: Scenario planning is popular shorthand, but it is a tool, not the entire discipline. Scenarios are an integral part of the process but rarely the starting point and often not the end goal. The risk here is treating foresight as a one-off event – an engaging workshop with outputs that are quickly forgotten.

How to collaborate better: We should feed rigorous analysis into a holistic foresight system that continuously informs an organisation’s view of the future; a ‘living toolkit’ that allows for more confident navigation of uncertainty and helps to embed foresight as a capability.

Myth 4: Foresight is only for the C-suite

Reality: While foresight often informs senior strategy, it is most impactful as an organisational muscle. Exploring alternative futures should be powered by diverse perspectives. However, effective participation needs to be nurtured. The wiring of the human brain means we often treat our ‘future selves’ as strangers, making long-term empathy and imaginative thinking difficult. Without expert guidance, foresight sessions often revert to ‘groupthink’ or safe, incremental ideas.

How to collaborate better: This is about priming the whole organisation to engage with the future. Integrating futures psychology is essential to unlock imagination and support radical change, and when combined with participatory approaches, can ensure people at every level engage confidently with what lies ahead. 

A pragmatic path forward

Growing appetite for foresight signals a positive move towards more deliberate, resilient decision-making. However, if we don’t challenge these myths, we risk the discipline being dismissed as a management fad when it fails to ‘predict’ the next wild card event or seen as too abstract for effective commercial application.

We do not need to obsess over terminology; foresight must be accessible to be useful. But we do need a shared understanding of where insight and foresight are respectively best focused and combined within a long-term programme. Clarity helps us protect the rigour of our work, manage expectations, and ensure that insight plays a meaningful role in shaping strategy in uncertainty.

Pippa Goodman is co-founder and managing director at Next Up

• Pippa’s colleagues Josh McBain and John Robson are chairing the MRS Futures and Insight Conference in June 2026.