Shaping the Future
Nobody can precisely predict the future, of course. The team from Strategic Marketing has thus adopted an interesting approach to tomorrow’s world: It helps to shape the future by making strategic recommendations for action. Specialists in the team use the “Pictures of the Future” method, which was developed by Corporate Technology a good ten years ago and has been steadily refined ever since, to identify the major trends and developments that will become important for Siemens’ businesses in the future.
This method combines the extrapolation of trends that are significant for Siemens’ business activities with a scenario technique that attempts to study life in the world of tomorrow as comprehensively as possible. A project team consisting of employees from CT and the respective Siemens sectors analyzes such aspects as the technological, social, economic and political drivers that will influence future developments in markets, as well as the propagation of new technologies.
Megatrends
Megatrends such as urbanization, globalization, climate change, and demographic change have a major impact on Siemens’ business activities. These trends are slow to develop, but eventually they draw everything into their powerful wake. In order to identify and assess such underlying flows as well as business-specific trends as early as possible, experts from the project teams discuss them with opinion leaders who are based throughout the world. The project teams then harmonize the opinion leaders’ statements with the findings of experts in various Siemens businesses. This enables CT T SM to describe long-term yet tangible and realistic objectives for Siemens and, on the basis of these objectives, to provide the management units with valuable ideas and recommendations by means of the Pictures of the Future process. Many business areas undergo significant changes over the years. Software displaces hardware; service replaces products; and highly specialized devices become generally available commodities. These changes are not always easy to recognize because they occur over extended periods of time. Strategic Marketing typically chooses an observation period of between five and 15 years for a Pictures of the Future project.
Revolutionary Trend Statements
What comes out at the end of a Pictures of the Future project is in many cases a set of trend statements that could potentially revolutionize entire industrial sectors. This helps Siemens to prepare for major changes at a very early stage. That’s because even though it’s not possible to precisely predict future events, the future can be influenced and to a certain degree shaped through directed action. The Pictures of the Future are the proper and proven tool for doing this, which is why the results are incorporated directly into the strategy development of the respective Siemens division.