Research that delivers

At Social Technologies, we use research to understand the changing world, test assumptions, fuel creative thinking, and explore the implications of change for our clients. Our program is continuous and comprehensive, and underpins our maxim: Begin with a firm foundation in what is true.

However, even the most meticulous research isn't valuable until it is transformed into action. We realize this, and excel at using the information we uncover to make unexpected connections, synthesize forecasts, tease out trends and implications, and weed out the transient and unimportant. Here’s how:

Trend tracking and analysis

Trends are patterns of current change. Understanding their magnitude and direction may be the single best way to prepare for the competitive environment of the future.

Social Technologies helps your organization work with trends in two ways: identifying them early, and acting on them decisively.

We can create custom trend reports geared to an industry or field, and can help you establish and operate a continuous scanning system for your organization. Plus, we make it easy to monitor trends on an ongoing basis through our Futures Consortium, which provides hundreds of briefs written by our futurists and researchers focusing on Global Lifestyles and Technology Foresight.

Forecasting

Our goal is to prepare your organization to meet multiple plausible futures. Of course, predicting the future—asserting precisely and definitively what will happen—is not only impossible, it is also harmful if it leaves an organization unprepared for the infinite range of conditions that could emerge.

Much more useful than predicting is forecasting. This is one of our key Practice Areas because forecasts are well-informed estimates of what will probably happen, based on a grounded appreciation of current trends, countertrends, drivers, and the other forces shaping reality. Forecasts are embedded in nearly all of Social Technologies' deliverables, including our multiclient projects, custom reports, scenario development, and presentations and workshops.

Scenario development

We bring the future to life for people by telling stories about how the future could unfold. Sometimes our stories are told with words. Sometimes with numbers, illustrations, or theatrics. How we tell the story depends on the audience.

Scenarios serve different purposes, including:

• Strengthening strategic conversations
  
• Raising aspirations
  
• Challenging assumptions
  
• Educating managers and employees
  
• Inspiring new market and product development
  
• Sparking innovation

• Literature reviews comprehensively scan the current writing about a particular field, topic, technology, trend, or discipline. They yield an up-to-date synopsis of an area of interest. They may be standalone deliverables, or can be used as the foundation for trend analysis, internal planning, forecasts, or other value-added research and consulting services. In fact, many of our clients often ask us for a standalone literature review as input for a presentation, for example.
  
• Environmental scans draw upon a broader set of sources—anything constituting the "environment" around a particular topic. A scan about the changing lifestyles of the global teenager, for example, might consult teen magazines from around the world, pop culture media, teens themselves, and market experts. An environmental scan also can be a standalone deliverable, or used as part of a scenario-planning workshop.