Resetting Our Future

The pandemic wrecked our plans. Strategic Foresight will help us make better ones.

COVID-19 wrecked the plans and strategies of organizations everywhere, while injecting greater uncertainty into a world already undergoing disruptive social and technological change. Strategic Foresight can help us navigate through the recovery and beyond. Strategic Foresight is a systematic, intelligence-gathering, vision-building process that helps us manage uncertainty by discerning plausible alternative futures and applying the insights to present-day planning. It is ideally suited to a world upended by the pandemic and rapid transformations in the way we live, work and interact.

Using approachable language and a multitude of examples, Learning from Tomorrow shows how Strategic Foresight broadens our perspectives, exposes opportunities and risks, and opens our minds to innovation in a post-pandemic world. It is essential reading for organizational leaders and those responsible for developing strategies, scenarios, policies and plans.

About the Author

Bart Édes is a policy analyst and commentator, and author of Learning From Tomorrow: Using Strategic Foresight to Prepare for the Next Big Disruption (2021, John Hunt Publishing). He focuses on developing Asian economies, international development, innovation, social policies, cross-border trade, and transformative trends reshaping the world. Between 2001 and 2020, he held senior staff positions at the Asian Development Bank (ADB), most recently serving as the lender’s North American Representative. While based in ADB’s Manila headquarters, he oversaw teams responsible for policy, strategy and operational guidance on education, governance, health, inclusive business, IT for development, knowledge management, poverty reduction, social protection and stakeholder consultation. He guided formulation of ADB’s landmark Public Communications Policy, explored the impact of climate change on migration in Asia, launched ADB’s largest community of practice (on social development), and managed partnerships with donors and international organizations.

Between 1994-2000, Édes led communications for an EU-OECD joint initiative (SIGMA) supporting public administration reform in Central and Eastern Europe. From 1987 to1992, he supported US-Canada trade relations and contributed to US government positions and negotiations on foreign direct investment agreements at the US Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration. Before that, he served on the founding teams of a credit union (GUASFCU) and radio station (WGTB) in Washington, DC. Édes has a bachelor’s degree in Government from Georgetown University, and a master’s degree in Public Policy from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.