ICG provides Foresight services in one of three main ways:
- ICG plays the double role – providing simultaneously the services as the Foresight Organizer (Facilitator) and playing the role of Expert Group
- ICG provides the services as the Foresight Organizer (Facilitator) – while Expert Group is presented with external exerts (found with the customer or with ICG)
- ICG provides expert services in Foresight projects done with external Organizer/Facilitator (it may be presented with the customer or another party hired with the customer)
Thus ICG provides its clients significant flexibility in Foresight projects – making it possible to select services from a wide range, from hiring our experts in any existing Foresight project up to delegating us full responsibility for Foresight work in the client’s interests.
- We provide the following services as Foresight Organizer (Facilitator):
- Launch of a workgroup consisted of ICG’s experts with deep knowledge in the target area (market, country, etc.)
- Creation and adjustment questionnaires for expert surveys
- Selection of experts (from ICG’s staff or/and from external experts)
- Formation and support for expert panels, structured (Delphi method, etc.) and unstructured expert groups
- Organization and coordination of expert surveys, face-to-face meetings, computer-supported cooperative work
- Processing of the questionnaires; summarizing results of the survey
- Future scenario formalization
- Making drafts for road maps and strategies, their discussion with experts
- Providing capabilities for computer supported cooperative work (software, access, etc.), processing of the results
- Reporting to a client
- We provide the following services as Foresight Expert Group:
- Participation in structured (Delphi method, etc.) and unstructured expert groups and panels
- Environmental scanning
- Forecasting the future alternative scenarios
- Development of the "desired future" vision
- Development of road maps and strategies
- Strategic planning
- Futures imagining and visioning with our selected experts
ICG uses a wide range of the Foresight techniques – such as expert panels, Delphi method, strategic analysis/planning methods (SWOT, PEST, STEER, EPISTEL, etc.), brainstorming, scenario analysis and planning, causal layered analysis (CLA), morphological analysis and cross-consistency assessment, relevance trees, systems engineering, etc.
To overcome foresight methods' major limitations (such as ignoring of the minor opinions frequently presenting the "creative" approach not shared with the majority of the experts; experts’ conformism; organizational challenges at large expert group management, etc.) we actively use such advanced methods as chaos theory, catastrophe theory, tensor analysis, graphs theory, game theory, case based reasoning (CBR), genetic algorithms, etc. in our Foresight projects.