HBMG Inc

Future Perspectives Presentations 

Talks on what-lies-ahead enlighten and start the audience thinking about the possibilities of the future by giving them a new frame of reference. A talk can be targeted to the industry, the organization, or a theme.

Ideation Sessions

Usually lasting a half day, ideation sessions are based on advanced brainstorming techniques created to draw ideas from everyone regardless of their personality type. Other techniques build on these ideas and draw out additional salient idea

Impact Analysis

This service provides a visual perspective of the impact of a trend or future event. An Impact Analysis enlists the team in understanding all the facets and interrelationships inherent in the future topic. We facilitate Impact Analysis sessions and lead the discussion afterward.

Major Trends and Disruptors Studies

Through a scanning and surveillance process as well as directed research and expert opinion, the team identifies major trends and disruptions that will affect society and your organization. This analysis can be specifically oriented to your organization and packaged in a variety of ways, such as an informal session with a small group, a presentation to your executives, staff, and other stakeholders, a Grand Challenges workshop, or through a Future Study.

Forecasting

Forecasts of future technology form the foundation of any effort to focus on specific markets as they provide the information to justify, prioritize, and track strategic plans. We use a variety of tools across the quantitative-qualitative spectrum to assure that our forecasts are accurate, communicable to a diverse audience, and actionable.

Market Assessments

A firm's market position doesn't last forever these days. When it does hold up, revenue and profits shrink. A market assessment identifies what is happening in the specific market and what can be done about it. This information can be used to create a new strategy and inform employees, customers, financial analysts, and thought leaders of the wisdom of strategy shifts. Or it might be like a physical checkup, simply useful to find what incremental changes need to be made.

Regional Opportunity Analysis

Geographic areas need to break away from fad and high level visions to find select technology-based opportunities to pursue. These opportunities must match their culture, assets, and abilities in a way that brings all community stakeholders into the process and empowers them to work as pre-competitive teams to assure success in each chosen area.

Industry Focus Sessions

Technology Assessment

Within an organization it is difficult to get a full, balanced, and objective perspective of the investment in technology. Our team acts as a disinterested intermediary to assess factors such as the technical characteristics, customer requirements, technology life/competitiveness, manufacturability, and business case of your investment. The output can take the form of a value analysis, risk analysis, or strategic recommendations.

Business Incubator Assessment

Incubators are sponsored by many different organizations: a large company, a university, a community, or a private party. Over a series of crises, new practices in incubation have evolved, for example, in funding, in intellectual asset protection, in globalization, and in collaboration. The technology landscape is undergoing a sea change in convergence in areas such as digital systems, biotech/nanotech, and infotech/neurotech. An assessment of how well the incubation infrastructure is working with recommendations for change should be done periodically. The HBMG SI&F team’s experience across a range of technologies and organizational types as well as its understanding of future trends and disruptors is a source of unique insight for such an assessment.

Future Studies Process Development

A future studies process is a valuable addition to the strategic processes of an organization. It is the headlights that allow the organization to see ahead and move faster. Our experience as futurists and our attention to strategic methods, tools, and processes that gain insight from the future is applied to helping you develop a future studies process. The steps involved include gaining an appreciation of the impact of future knowledge, assessing the current futures IQ of the organization, designing a process that fits the care-abouts, capabilities, and culture of the organization, building a business case, and training in tools, techniques, and methodologies needed for the function’s success.

Stakeholder Analysis

Ascertaining the proper role and influence of all the stakeholders in a situation is paramount to a successful outcome. Even more important, understanding the signals of a shift in stakeholder position and doing the analysis allows the organization to create messages and responsive actions can to change those positions so that they are more favorable to the desired outcome.

Impact Analysis

Impact Analysis offers a quick way to uncover the necessary parameters for a strategy to consider as well as later to evaluate the strategy to find gaps and hidden weaknesses, then to charter new analysis. We facilitate impact analysis sessions and document the results with our recommendations.

Weak Signal Analysis

Weak signals are the seeds for insight and have many uses in the services we offer. For example, as input to a strategy exercise they can be the basis for a risk assessment and rationalize the need for an alternative strategy. In a prior form, they can be the basis for scanning activity to track a scenario. The team has tools it uses for forecasting and foresight to identify weak signals.

Drivers and Constraints / Force Field Analysis

Drivers and constraints or force field analysis methodologies look at forces for change. They derive the factors and their relative strength going into a forecast of technology adoption, understanding of a disruptive event, or other issue. They form the basis of directed decisions in a strategy and differentiate scenarios.

Scenario Planning

Scenarios represent a powerful way to depict the future by using familiar paradigms of visuals and stories to show the broad range of people to be impacted. They also trigger innovative insights by presenting multiple views that can be used to understand convergences and distinctive differences. We have added concepts of weak signals, tipping points, fine tuned events, and probability assessment to the traditional approach to this methodology.

Risk Management Assessment

Many of our techniques are used in assessing the risk of a strategy. For example, the methodologies described for Future Perspectives that operate in the real world can be applied to the world envisioned by the strategy. Since it is imperative that a modern strategy include technology assumptions and impacts as well as leverage innovation, the knowledge and insight derived from tools and techniques used in Innovation Management to mitigate risk are also applicable for assessing risk.