future.ctrl®
FUTURES and
foresight
We deliver an end-to-end futures and foresight service, implementing the policies now that mitigate the threats and realise the opportunities on your horizon.
Using our industry-leading Future.Ctrl methodology, we take an academic and methodological approach to joining futures thinking with policy delivery. Putting futures and foresight into action is the ‘USP’ of our business.
We do this with a number of tools and techniques, including providing you with accurate forecasts and probability scores with our Futures x Forecasting methodology, bespoke futures toolkits that show your unique organisation how to link long-term analysis with present-day change, unique accessibility tools that help target underserved populations, and extensive contacts and links with academics, governments and some of the world’s most forward-thinking businesses.
We also offer live tuition on all this, and much more besides, via three live courses: one for policy (Vanguard), one for strategy (Lodestar) and a third for senior leadership (Apex). This is complemented by our online Future.Ctrl course, which has been purchased and enjoyed by thousands of policy, strategy, futures and foresight professionals around the world.
We are an approved supplier to Government as part of the Futures Procurement Framework and our framework prospectus can be found here. We are also organisational members of the Association of Professional Futurists and a number of other organisations and frameworks (e.g. for defence, and research and insights).
legacy
We have built a unique proposition based on our experience as civil servants. Our ‘LACES’ approach to legacy creation is a strategy that communicates to clients how to achieve long-term success for their futures and foresight project.
LACES is about identifying specific points for meaningful intervention and bringing you along with us throughout the project’s journey. LACES is framed around five areas, which can be summarised as: (1) Learning (e.g. how to encourage understanding of recommendations), (2) Autonomy (e.g. establish systems to deliver recommendations that can operate autonomously), (3) Cultivate (e.g. create motivation for and time and space to deliver recommendations), (4) Establish (e.g. maintain regular communication and a coalition) and (5) Show (e.g. the best way to expose an organisation to recommendations).
This approach is about recognising that our recommendations are only achievable if they can be sustainably actioned by you long after we have gone. This work is informed by our assessment of, and experience working with, other consultancies during our own time serving in Government.
DATA
We are specialists in data visualisation and feedback loops. Our work is always bespoke, targeted, trackable and measurable for you, long after we have left your organisation. All ForgeFront colleagues have data expertise and are Azure and Power BI qualified. We collaborate with faculties at leading universities to ensure you remain on the cutting edge. We understand the existing data lakes that can help you fill the gaps we identify.
Our high-calibre quantitative and qualitative skills, including econometric analysis, Delphi surveys and interviews, have been utilised across diverse projects. We have collaborated with clients to produce data-based policy recommendations on national security threats, the prioritisation of promising new export markets for healthcare services and creating robust indicators for measuring different future global supply chain scenarios.
We use Scite.ai to undertake weekly scans of the latest futures and foresight literature, which are communicated automatically in summary form to our whole team. Excerpts can be quickly communicated to clients. Team members have the flexibility to digest this thinking with a protected weekly window dedicated to research. As a result of these scans, we have built up an industry-leading repository of futures and foresight literature called the ForgeFront Futures Library. We communicate many of our insights on our team blog, via our LinkedIn page and in our Five Things from ForgeFront newsletter.
Beyond Scite, as ForgeFront we have used a number of existing data repositories in our work, including PitchBook, Beauhurst, GlobalData, Frost and Sullivan, Statista, OPoint News, Trade Data Monitor, UN Comtrade, OECD’s AI Policy Observatory, the Global AI Regulation Tracker and ETO’s Map of Science.
DIGITAL
We are digital natives, using the latest tools such as cutting-edge LLM-backed research methods (with robust human QA) that have transformational impacts for our clients. We partner with industry-leading suppliers who understand the power of our proposition to deliver you a best-in-class digital service.
We create intuitive digital platforms to harness the insights of your stakeholders without friction. We build interactive tools to teach and upskill you and your colleagues in the power of futures and foresight.
Our policy and project professionals have worked on some of the Government’s biggest digital challenges. We have worked for the Government Digital Service (GDS) on projects including One Login for Government and the transformation of the Government’s Top 75 digital services.
With all our clients we request we use Miro during projects. Miro is a digital, interactive and accessible tool that allows us to collectively ‘learn through doing’ and interact directly with tools such as backcasting analysis, a Futures Cone or a policy stress-testing exercise.
Our Forge futures maturity tool is our free maturity assessment that scores how well foresight is used to shape strategy and policy. In our work we noticed that many stakeholders were starting from scratch and had no budget to undertake the initial assessment of their own capability, which is so crucial for informing direction. Forge fills this gap. We designed and built six futures and foresight maturity areas and five maturity levels, based on the latest academic literature, industry best practice, and our own experience of what works.
Procurement information