Satu Kalliokulju, Head of Consumer Excellence at Fiskars Group, talked about consumer futures at Fiskars. The company was founded in 1649, making it the oldest company in Finland. Their strategy is to build a family of iconic lifestyle brands – the most famous example being the orange-handled scissors.

Dr. John Geis is the Director of Airpower Research Task Force for Air University. He came to the Strategic Foresight Summit to talk about the alternate futures work he has done for the U.S. Air Force since the 1990s. “My goal is to show that these alternate futures analyses have a way of doing pretty well,” said Geis.

Soile Ollila is the Foresight Manager at Business Finland, which focuses on offering a service path for customers in Finland and abroad in innovation funding, internationalisation, and investments.

Jussi Leskinen, Director of Customer Experience Management and Operations at Lindström, and Mika Raulas, Business Designer at Roger Studio, took the stage to discuss using strategic foresight to design future customer experiences.

Scenario planning can be used for engagement, which means building bridges and forming collaborations. The focus is on influencing and communicating. “During a big merger between companies, they disagreed on everything but then did a scenario exercise to start working together and exploring the future,” Drenth cites an example.