Shaping Tomorrow - Detailed Review
Analytics Tools
Shaping Tomorrow - Product Overview
Shaping Tomorrow Overview
Shaping Tomorrow is an innovative AI-driven service that specializes in horizon scanning and foresight, providing strategic intelligence to various organizations. Here’s a brief overview of its primary function, target audience, and key features:
Primary Function
Shaping Tomorrow is designed to help organizations anticipate and prepare for future changes by identifying emerging trends, weak signals of change, and potential threats or opportunities. It uses a combination of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human Intelligence (HI) to scan over 80,000 reputable internet and social media sources, extracting evidence of emerging trends and developments.
Target Audience
The service is targeted at a wide range of stakeholders, including policymakers, businesses, nonprofits, NGOs, and research institutions. Specifically, it serves those responsible for strategy, planning, change, transformation, foresight, futures studies, horizon scanning, early warning, trend-watching, and emerging technology monitoring. Key sectors include financial services, manufacturing, defense & security, automotive, technology, utilities, and transport.
Key Features
Horizon Scanning
Continuously scans a vast number of sources to identify emerging trends and changes.
Scenario Planning
Allows organizations to examine various future scenarios to make informed decisions and capitalize on opportunities.
Strategic Intelligence
Provides insights into external forces driving widespread change, enabling medium to long-term planning and resilience.
AI-Driven Tools
Utilizes AI, named Athena, to produce summaries and visualizations of possible future outcomes in easily shareable formats such as dashboards, slide presentations, and Excel files.
Additional Services
Workshops
Offers online and face-to-face participatory workshops using best practice strategic foresight, change management, and forward competitive intelligence methods.
Surveys
Enables stakeholders to gather views and opinions using pre-prepared foresight survey templates with auto-aggregation of results.
Network Collaboration
Facilitates collaboration among stakeholders through various tools and support.
Project Management
Includes a built-in project management process to effectively manage and conduct deep dives, operating to Prince 2.0 standards.
Shaping Tomorrow’s comprehensive suite of services is designed to make strategic foresight accessible and actionable, helping organizations make better decisions for the future.
Shaping Tomorrow - User Interface and Experience
User Interface
Shaping Tomorrow has recently launched a redesigned user interface, which aims to provide a more efficient and simpler user experience. Here are some key features:6 Powerful Tools
The platform includes six generative AI-enabled, collaborative tools: Trends, Technologies, Modeller, Readiness, Options, and Reporter. Each tool has a clear badge that allows users to generate new results, view or reuse previous results, or explore example samples.
Interactive Models
The Modeller tool enables users to build interactive models for strategic foresight and strategy projects. This feature is integrated seamlessly into the interface, making it easy to create and use these models.
Clear Navigation
Users can easily switch between the new and old layouts if needed, by clicking on their profile icon and selecting the desired layout. This flexibility helps users adjust to the new interface at their own pace.
Ease of Use
The interface is structured to be user-friendly:Intuitive Tools
Each of the six tools is designed to be straightforward, allowing users to easily spot emerging trends, assess business readiness, explore tactical options, and produce future-exploring reports automatically.
Quick Access
The ability to hover over the main badge of each tool and select options like “New,” “My / Our,” or “Example” makes it simple for users to access and utilize the tools effectively.
Efficient Workflow
The use of AI, such as the *Athena* system, significantly reduces project costs and increases strategic thinking time by continuously scanning over 80,000 reputable sources and providing instant summaries and visualizations.
Overall User Experience
The overall user experience is enhanced by several factors:Collective Intelligence
Shaping Tomorrow combines Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human Intelligence (HI) to provide a broad range of knowledge and collaborative thinking. This approach ensures that users receive comprehensive and accurate insights.
Feedback Mechanism
The platform encourages user feedback to continuously improve the service. Regular newsletters and updates on LinkedIn help users stay informed about how to best benefit from the new features and improvements.
Global Support
With operations in over 30 countries and more than 20,000 members and partners, Shaping Tomorrow offers a supportive and global community, ensuring that users can leverage the platform’s capabilities effectively regardless of their location.
In summary, Shaping Tomorrow’s user interface is designed to be intuitive, efficient, and easy to use, with a strong focus on providing valuable insights and tools for strategic foresight and decision-making.
Shaping Tomorrow - Key Features and Functionality
Shaping Tomorrow
Shaping Tomorrow is an innovative AI-driven service that provides organizations with essential tools for horizon scanning, scenario planning, and strategic intelligence. Here are the main features and how they work:
Horizon Scanning
This feature involves the continuous monitoring of approximately 100,000 reputable internet and social media sources by an AI system named Athena.
- Functionality: Athena identifies emerging trends, weak signals of change, and wild cards that could impact an organization’s future.
- Benefits: It helps organizations stay ahead by detecting early signs of change, reducing the time and cost associated with manual research, and increasing strategic thinking time.
Scenario Planning
Scenario planning is a key component of Shaping Tomorrow, enabling organizations to prepare for various future scenarios.
- Functionality: This feature allows users to examine different scenarios to make informed assumptions about the future, tackle potential challenges, and capitalize on opportunities.
- Benefits: Scenario planning helps in developing strategic foresight, enabling medium to long-term planning and enhancing resilience to future changes.
Strategic Intelligence
This feature provides insights into external forces driving widespread change.
- Functionality: Shaping Tomorrow’s AI and human intelligence collective approach analyzes external forces to offer medium to long-term planning insights.
- Benefits: Organizations gain valuable strategic intelligence to shape policy, respond to emerging changes, and make informed decisions.
AI Integration
The AI system, Athena, plays a central role in Shaping Tomorrow’s functionality.
- Functionality: Athena continuously scans sources, extracts relevant data, and produces summaries and visualizations of possible future outcomes in formats like dashboards, slide presentations, and Excel files.
- Benefits: This integration significantly reduces project costs and increases the speed of strategic thinking, allowing decision-makers to create policy and strategy briefs much faster than traditional methods.
Use Cases
Shaping Tomorrow is versatile and benefits various types of organizations:
- Policymakers: Utilize strategic intelligence to shape policy and respond to emerging changes.
- Businesses: Monitor trends and changes to adapt strategies and seize opportunities.
- Nonprofits and NGOs: Anticipate challenges and plan effectively to enhance resilience.
- Research Institutions: Stay informed about external forces and their impact on various sectors.
Collective Intelligence Approach
Shaping Tomorrow combines both Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human Intelligence (HI) to provide a comprehensive approach.
- Functionality: While Athena handles the automated scanning and data extraction, a team of specialists with long-standing experience in writing futures briefs, conducting research, and running participatory workshops helps interpret the findings.
- Benefits: This approach ensures breadth of knowledge, speed, and collaborative thinking, making the insights more actionable and relevant.
By integrating AI and human intelligence, Shaping Tomorrow offers a powerful tool for organizations to anticipate, prepare for, and respond to future changes effectively.
Shaping Tomorrow - Performance and Accuracy
Performance
Shaping Tomorrow’s performance is highlighted by its innovative use of both Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human Intelligence (HI). Here are a few key aspects:
- Speed and Efficiency: Their AI system, Athena, continuously scans over 80,000 reputable internet and social media sources, significantly reducing the time required for strategic foresight and scenario planning. This allows decision-makers to create policy and strategy briefs extremely rapidly, which would otherwise take weeks, months, or even years.
- Global Reach: Operating globally across all continents and in more than 30 countries, Shaping Tomorrow serves over 20,000 members and partners. This extensive reach indicates a high level of performance in meeting the needs of a diverse client base.
- System Uptime: The system has maintained an uptime of over 99.9% in the past year, ensuring minimal disruptions and high reliability.
Accuracy
The accuracy of Shaping Tomorrow’s analytics tools is supported by several factors:
- Data Sources: Athena extracts evidence from a vast number of reputable sources, ensuring that the data used for analysis is credible and comprehensive.
- AI and HI Integration: The combination of AI and HI provides a broad and accurate perspective on emerging trends and developments. This hybrid approach helps in capturing a wide range of insights that might be missed by either AI or HI alone.
- Strategic Foresight Tools: Shaping Tomorrow uses well-established strategic foresight tools to analyze plausible, probable, and preferable futures. This methodological approach enhances the accuracy of their forecasts and scenario planning.
Limitations or Areas for Improvement
While the information provided highlights several strengths, there are a few areas where more detail would be beneficial:
- Specific Case Studies: While Shaping Tomorrow mentions receiving several awards and working with a large number of clients, specific case studies or detailed success stories from their clients would further validate their performance and accuracy.
- Client Feedback: More direct feedback from clients regarding the effectiveness and accuracy of Shaping Tomorrow’s services would provide additional insights into their performance.
- Technical Details: While the system uptime is impressive, more technical details about the AI algorithms, data processing methods, and any potential biases or limitations in the AI system could offer a more comprehensive evaluation.
Conclusion
In summary, Shaping Tomorrow’s performance and accuracy are supported by its efficient AI-driven system, global reach, and high system uptime. However, for a more complete evaluation, additional specific case studies and client feedback would be valuable.
Shaping Tomorrow - Pricing and Plans
Pricing and Plans
- The primary offering is the private site subscription, which is geared towards organizations.
- Private Site Subscription: This plan starts at $19,800 for 10 licenses. This cost is highlighted as being less than the expense of a full-time researcher, making it accessible even for small organizations.
Features
- Customization: Private sites can be branded with your organization’s colors and logo.
- Tools and Services: Subscribers can create customized news feeds, newsletters, reports, and conduct real-time surveys. The platform also supports strategic thinking and action planning through an extensive toolkit.
- Updates and Improvements: Clients benefit from free business and service developments and improvements made during the subscription period. Clients can also suggest additional developments, although significant upgrades may require separate financial discussions.
Setup
- To set up a private site, you need to provide the website address for branding, the email address of the principal contact, and your subscription details. The site will be created within seven days of receiving this information.
Free Options
- Partner Sites: Shaping Tomorrow offers customized, open sites at no charge to academic institutions, schools, associations, and small not-for-profits. These sites extend services to their students, faculty, and members.
There is no detailed tiered pricing structure mentioned beyond the base private site subscription, but the features and benefits are comprehensive and aimed at supporting organizational needs in strategic foresight and planning.
Shaping Tomorrow - Integration and Compatibility
Integration Capabilities
Shaping Tomorrow seamlessly integrates with a wide range of applications, allowing users to sync survey responses and other data to their preferred tools. This integration enables organizations to incorporate the insights and strategic intelligence provided by Shaping Tomorrow into their existing workflows and systems.
Data Sources and Scanning
The service uses its AI, named Athena, to continuously scan over 80,000 reputable internet and social media sources. This data is then integrated into various tools and reports, which can be easily distributed and shared in formats such as dashboards, slide presentations, and Excel files. This integration helps in making strategic foresight choices and policy briefs more accessible and actionable.
Compatibility Across Platforms
While the specific details on device compatibility are not extensively outlined, Shaping Tomorrow’s web-based nature suggests that it can be accessed and used on various devices with internet connectivity. The service is accessible through web browsers, making it compatible with a range of devices including desktops, laptops, and mobile devices.
Interactive and Collaborative Tools
Shaping Tomorrow offers interactive tools such as the Modeller tool, which allows for collaborative exploration of trends and technologies. These tools can be accessed through a web interface, ensuring that users can engage with the service from different platforms without needing specific software installations.
Conclusion
In summary, Shaping Tomorrow integrates well with various applications and tools, and its web-based interface ensures compatibility across different devices. However, detailed information on specific device or platform compatibility is not provided in the available resources.
Shaping Tomorrow - Customer Support and Resources
Shaping Tomorrow: An Overview
Shaping Tomorrow, an AI-driven horizon scanning and strategic foresight service, offers several customer support options and additional resources to support its users effectively.
Customer Support Options
- Phone Support: You can contact Shaping Tomorrow’s customer service team via phone at 44 1273 832221 for any inquiries or assistance.
- Email Support: Customers can reach out via email, and the team typically responds within a short timeframe.
- Contact Form: There is a contact form available on the website where users can submit their queries and receive a response.
- Live Chat: Although not explicitly mentioned for Shaping Tomorrow, this feature is common in similar services, but for Shaping Tomorrow, it is not specified.
Additional Resources
- Workshops: Shaping Tomorrow provides both online and face-to-face participatory workshops that utilize over 120 best practice strategic foresight, change management, and forward competitive intelligence methods. These workshops help users interpret and act on the insights provided by the service.
- Surveys: The platform offers pre-prepared foresight survey templates that allow stakeholders to share their views and opinions. The results are auto-aggregated, making it easier to analyze and act on the feedback.
- Network Collaboration: Users can engage in network collaboration, which facilitates sharing and discussion of findings among stakeholders. This helps in creating a collective intelligence approach to strategic foresight.
- Support and Training: Comprehensive guides and support are provided by the specialist team, including training via a chatbot. This ensures that users can effectively use all aspects of the foresight tools and services.
- Project Management: The online service includes a built-in project management process that allows users to tailor their specific briefs and conduct deep dives. This process operates to Prince 2.0 standards, ensuring minimal project risks and high system uptime.
AI-Driven Tools and Services
- Athena AI: Shaping Tomorrow’s AI system, Athena, continuously scans over 80,000 reputable internet and social media sources to identify emerging trends and developments. This AI dramatically reduces project costs and increases strategic thinking time by producing summaries and visualizations of possible future outcomes instantly.
- Strategic Foresight Tools: The service includes a full set of well-established strategic foresight tools that help users access plausible, probable, and preferable futures. These tools enable users to analyze and publish scan findings easily in slide or Excel format.
Conclusion
By leveraging these resources and support options, users of Shaping Tomorrow can effectively inform their strategy, make better decisions, and stay ahead of emerging changes in their respective fields.
Shaping Tomorrow - Pros and Cons
Advantages of Shaping Tomorrow
Strategic Intelligence and Horizon Scanning
Shaping Tomorrow offers a powerful AI-driven horizon scanning service that identifies emerging trends, weak signals of change, and wild cards from over 100,000 reputable sources. This capability helps organizations anticipate and prepare for future changes, making it invaluable for policymakers, businesses, nonprofits, and research institutions.
Scenario Planning
The tool provides scenario planning tools that enable organizations to examine various future scenarios, make informed assumptions, tackle challenges, and capitalize on opportunities. This feature is crucial for medium to long-term planning and enhancing resilience to emerging changes.
Integration and Automation
Shaping Tomorrow integrates with over 1,000 other tools and supports real-time response analysis and scheduled automations. This integration capability streamlines processes and enhances operational efficiency.
Human-AI Collaboration
The service uses a unique collective intelligence approach combining both Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human Intelligence (HI). This collaboration ensures breadth of knowledge, speed, and collaborative thinking, making strategic foresight choices faster and more accurate.
Global Reach and Recognition
Headquartered in the UK, Shaping Tomorrow operates globally across more than 30 countries and has received several prestigious awards, including ‘Global Knowledge Platform’ and ‘International Gamechanger of the Year’ awards. This global presence and recognition highlight its reliability and effectiveness.
Comprehensive Suite of Services
The platform offers a wide range of services, including horizon scanning, analysis, publishing of scan findings, workshops, surveys, and network collaboration. These services are supported by comprehensive guides and a chatbot, ensuring users have all the tools they need to make informed decisions.
Disadvantages of Shaping Tomorrow
Dependence on Data Quality
The accuracy and usefulness of Shaping Tomorrow’s insights depend heavily on the quality of the data it scans. If the sources are not reputable or the data is incomplete, the strategic intelligence provided may be flawed.
System Uptime and Availability
While the system uptime has been over 99.9%, any downtime could potentially disrupt critical operations for organizations relying on real-time data and analysis. This risk, though minimal, is still a consideration.
Cost and Accessibility
There is limited information available on the pricing model of Shaping Tomorrow. For some organizations, especially smaller ones or those with limited budgets, the cost of using this service might be prohibitive, making it less accessible.
Technical Requirements
To fully utilize the features of Shaping Tomorrow, users may need to have a certain level of technical expertise or invest in training. This could be a barrier for organizations without the necessary technical resources or knowledge.
In summary, Shaping Tomorrow offers significant advantages in terms of strategic intelligence, scenario planning, and global reach, but it also has potential drawbacks related to data quality, system uptime, cost, and technical requirements.
Shaping Tomorrow - Comparison with Competitors
When comparing Shaping Tomorrow with its competitors in the AI-driven analytics and foresight category, several key features and distinctions emerge.
Unique Features of Shaping Tomorrow
- Horizon Scanning and AI-Driven Intelligence: Shaping Tomorrow stands out with its AI, Athena, which continuously scans over 80,000 reputable internet and social media sources to identify emerging trends, weak signals of change, and wild cards. This collective intelligence approach combines artificial and human intelligence to provide comprehensive and timely insights.
- Scenario Planning and Strategic Intelligence: The platform offers tools for scenario planning, allowing organizations to examine various future scenarios and make informed decisions. It also provides strategic intelligence on external forces driving change, enabling medium to long-term planning and resilience.
- Cost and Time Efficiency: Shaping Tomorrow’s use of AI significantly reduces project costs and increases the time available for strategic thinking. It generates summaries and visualizations of future outcomes quickly, which can be easily distributed and shared.
Competitors and Alternatives
HYPE Innovation
- HYPE Innovation focuses on innovation management across various business sectors. It offers software and consulting services to help organizations manage innovation processes, but it does not have the same level of horizon scanning and AI-driven foresight as Shaping Tomorrow.
Fibres
- Fibres specializes in strategic foresight and futures intelligence, particularly in the technology and consulting sectors. While it provides tools for building trend databases, it may not match the breadth of sources scanned by Shaping Tomorrow’s Athena.
Futures Platform
- Futures Platform offers a suite of tools for understanding future trends and scenarios across industries like automotive, finance, and healthcare. It provides access to a comprehensive database of foresight intelligence, but its scope and AI capabilities may differ from Shaping Tomorrow’s extensive horizon scanning.
BloombergNEF (BNEF)
- BloombergNEF operates as a strategic research provider in global commodity markets and disruptive technology sectors. It offers expert coverage but is more specialized and may not provide the same level of AI-driven foresight and scenario planning as Shaping Tomorrow.
Prediki Prediction Services
- Prediki Prediction Services utilizes collective intelligence for market research and trend prediction. While it shares some similarities with Shaping Tomorrow in terms of collective intelligence, it may not have the same depth of AI-driven horizon scanning and strategic foresight tools.
Key Differences
- Scope of Sources: Shaping Tomorrow’s ability to scan over 80,000 sources sets it apart from competitors, providing a broader and more comprehensive view of emerging trends.
- AI Integration: The integration of AI (Athena) in Shaping Tomorrow is unique in its ability to continuously scan and extract evidence of emerging trends, making it highly efficient and cost-effective.
- Scenario Planning: Shaping Tomorrow’s scenario planning tools are more advanced, allowing organizations to make detailed assumptions about the future and capitalize on opportunities or mitigate threats.
In summary, while competitors like HYPE Innovation, Fibres, and Futures Platform offer valuable services in strategic foresight and innovation management, Shaping Tomorrow’s unique combination of AI-driven horizon scanning, scenario planning, and strategic intelligence makes it a standout in the field of AI-driven analytics and foresight.
Shaping Tomorrow - Frequently Asked Questions
Here are some frequently asked questions about Shaping Tomorrow, along with detailed responses to each:
What is Shaping Tomorrow and what does it offer?
Shaping Tomorrow is an AI-driven continuous horizon scanning and foresight service. It provides organizations with strategic intelligence to shape policy, seize opportunities, mitigate threats, and enhance resilience to emerging change. The service includes tools for horizon scanning, scenario planning, and strategic intelligence.
How does Shaping Tomorrow’s horizon scanning work?
Shaping Tomorrow’s horizon scanning identifies emerging trends, weak signals of change, and wild cards from approximately 100,000 reputable sources. This is achieved through an AI system named Athena, which continuously scans internet and social media sources to extract evidence of emerging trends and developments.
What are the key features of Shaping Tomorrow?
Key features include horizon scanning to identify emerging trends, scenario planning to examine various future scenarios, and strategic intelligence to gain insights into external forces driving change. The platform also offers summaries and visualizations of possible future outcomes, and a specialist team for reviewing findings and conducting workshops.
Who can benefit from using Shaping Tomorrow?
Shaping Tomorrow is beneficial for various types of organizations, including policymakers, businesses, nonprofits and NGOs, and research institutions. It helps policymakers shape policy and respond to emerging change, businesses to monitor trends and adapt strategies, nonprofits and NGOs to anticipate challenges, and research institutions to stay informed about external forces.
How does Shaping Tomorrow assist in scenario planning?
Shaping Tomorrow’s scenario planning tool allows organizations to examine various scenarios to make assumptions about the future, tackle challenges, and capitalize on opportunities. This helps organizations prepare for different potential futures and make informed decisions.
What is the role of AI in Shaping Tomorrow?
AI plays a crucial role in Shaping Tomorrow by continuously scanning a large number of sources to identify emerging trends and developments. The AI system, Athena, reduces project costs and increases strategic thinking time by providing quick and comprehensive insights.
How does Shaping Tomorrow enhance strategic intelligence?
Shaping Tomorrow enhances strategic intelligence by providing insights into external forces driving widespread change. This enables organizations to engage in medium to long-term planning and build resilience against emerging changes.
What formats are the findings and reports available in?
The findings and reports from Shaping Tomorrow are available in various formats, including dashboard, slide presentation, and Excel format, making it easy to distribute and share the information.
Can Shaping Tomorrow be used for specific domains or sectors?
Yes, Shaping Tomorrow can be used across multiple domains, such as policy considerations, education and training, process optimization, and technology application. The platform provides options that can be interactively explored in depth through its Modeller tool.
Is there any support or additional services provided by Shaping Tomorrow?
Shaping Tomorrow offers support from a specialist team with long-standing experience in writing futures briefs, conducting research, and running participatory workshops. This team can review findings and assist in deeper analysis and strategic planning.
How cost-effective is using Shaping Tomorrow?
Using Shaping Tomorrow is cost-effective because the AI dramatically reduces project costs and increases strategic thinking time. The platform provides robust strategic foresight choices and policy briefs quickly, which can be more economical than traditional methods.
Shaping Tomorrow - Conclusion and Recommendation
Final Assessment of Shaping Tomorrow
Overview and Key Features
Shaping Tomorrow is an AI-driven horizon scanning and foresight service that provides organizations with strategic intelligence to shape policy, seize opportunities, mitigate threats, and enhance resilience to emerging changes. The platform utilizes a unique collective intelligence approach combining Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human Intelligence (HI) to scan over 80,000 reputable sources for emerging trends and developments.
Key Features
- Horizon Scanning: Identifies emerging trends, weak signals of change, and wild cards from a vast array of sources.
- Scenario Planning: Allows organizations to examine various scenarios to make assumptions about the future and capitalize on opportunities.
- Strategic Intelligence: Provides insights into external forces driving widespread change, enabling medium to long-term planning and resilience.
Use Cases and Beneficiaries
Shaping Tomorrow is highly beneficial for several types of organizations:
- Policymakers: Utilize strategic intelligence to shape policy and respond to emerging changes.
- Businesses: Monitor trends and changes to adapt strategies and seize opportunities.
- Nonprofits and NGOs: Anticipate challenges and plan effectively to enhance resilience.
- Research Institutions: Stay informed about external forces and their impact on various sectors.
Recommendation
Given its comprehensive suite of services, Shaping Tomorrow is an invaluable tool for any organization seeking to stay ahead of the curve in a dynamic and constantly changing environment.
Who Would Benefit Most
Organizations that need to make informed, strategic decisions based on future trends and developments will benefit significantly from Shaping Tomorrow. This includes businesses looking to adapt their strategies, policymakers aiming to create forward-thinking policies, nonprofits and NGOs seeking to enhance their resilience, and research institutions needing to stay updated on external forces impacting their sectors.
Engagement and Factual Accuracy
The platform’s ability to integrate with over 1,000 other tools and provide real-time response analysis ensures high engagement and factual accuracy. The continuous scanning of reputable sources and the production of summaries and visualizations in various formats make it easy for decision-makers to use the findings immediately or review them with specialist teams.
Global Reach and Reliability
Shaping Tomorrow operates globally, serving more than 20,000 members and partners across over 30 countries. The system’s uptime has been over 99.9% in the past year, ensuring minimal project risks and high reliability.
Conclusion
Shaping Tomorrow stands out as a leading innovator in delivering strategic foresight. Its unique approach, combining AI and HI, makes it an essential tool for organizations aiming to inform their strategy and make better decisions for the future. With its comprehensive features, global reach, and high reliability, Shaping Tomorrow is highly recommended for any organization seeking to stay informed and proactive in the face of emerging changes.