an EPIC Talk presented by RICH RADKA, Fuse Foresight Overview Strategic planning is becoming less and less viable in a volatile world prone to black swan events. Prediction is a low-percentage approach to an unknowable future. But we still need to navigate change and set course to a better future for businesses, for people, and for the planet. In searching for new ways of engaging with the future, we have to start with people. In this talk, we will address three key questions: How can we apply ethnographic methods to realities that don’t yet exist? How can we paint credible human-centered futures that avoid utopian and dystopian fantasies? How can we shift businesses from preparing for inevitabilities to actively building preferred futures? Rich Radka will share ways to combine macro-trend analysis with behavioural science that can model human responses to hypothetical contexts, as well as ways to mix qualitative methods with data analytics to develop future scenarios useable by a variety of audiences....

RICH RADKA, Chair Fuse Foresight WENDY CHAMBERLIN BOMA Project GEMMA JOHN Human City RAMESH LOGANATHAN IIIT Hyderabad This panel explores the specific reasons organizations generate ideas about the future, the methods they choose, how they act on foresight, and consequences for both business and society. Panelists address the theme of scale in various dimensions, such as how to appropriately scale our imaginings, scaling to multiple time horizons, scaling breadth vs. depth of focus, and thinking of scale in terms of organizational value creation. Panelists Rich Radka has 20+ years of providing deep human insights to corporate, scale-up and public sector clients in the arenas of  innovation, customer experience, strategy and forecasting. He brings inspired design thinking, and a practical human-centred approach to co-create solutions that involve customers, employees, partners and other stakeholders.Wendy Chamberlin serves as the Global Program Director for the BOMA Project, a livelihood development...

RICH RADKA Identifying differences in how ethnography is practiced in academia and in business is the key to successfully developing ethnography further as a business discipline. In the following paper, I propose that the key difference between the practice of ethnography in academia versus business is the purpose of the ethnography, and that all other questions we struggle with in the transition from academia to industry clearly flow from this difference in purpose. Addressing this difference honestly is the key to being heard correctly, even to being heard at all. By describing how business disciplines are conceptually structured and by exemplifying analogous disciplines, I will provide thoughts on how we might shift the way we think and talk about business ethnography. I believe this shift will enable us to find common ground with other disciplines, be recognized for delivering clear value to the businesses we work for, and create opportunities for making positive contributions to society at large. Finally, I will conclude by summarizing...