Study: Peace Operations 2025

"Peace Operations 2025" is the result of a collaboration between ZIF (Centre for International Peace Operations) and Z_punkt. An international and interdisciplinary group of practitioners and scientists met up over a period of one-and-a-half years for a scenario process on the future of international peace operations. In the course of three workshops, in Berlin, Addis Ababa and New York, four plausible and consistent scenarios were developed.

Study: Economic Risks of Globalization

In the study entitled "The Economic Risks of Globalization", produced in cooperation between the Bertelsmann Foundation and Z_punkt, the focus is on the interlinked effects of global trends and risk areas. The approach adopted by the study is an expression of the increasingly interlinked, dynamically changing and complex world, in which people's living conditions are shaped in diverse ways by the existing, macroeconomic imbalances.

Press Release: One bin for everything?
The future of UK waste in four quantified scenarios

Brits want to know exactly who will be producing waste in the future and how much, where it should go and what to do about it. The report Scenario-Building for Future Waste Policy produced by Z_punkt The Foresight Company on behalf of Defra, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, provides some answers. The report has now been published, and describes, in four visions of the future and quantified scenarios, how the UK can react to the growing mountains of waste.

Article: Quantified scenarios

The parallel development of qualitative scenarios and quantitative modelling (system dynamics) is becoming increasingly important for our consultancy work. Scenarios are the ideal tool for thinking through alternative future paths and strategy options. Quantification and modelling help us make these future paths vivid, tangible and, consequently, useable at planning level.

Z_punkt follows a pragmatic modelling approach as part of an integrated scenario and strategy process that represents a compromise between scientific modelling and ad-hoc trend extrapolation. This means the approach can be applied to a large number of strategic issues.

In: Zukunftsmanager 4/2012

Quantified scenarios for the long-term development of waste volumes in the UK

How much waste will be produced, by whom, when, where it should go and what should be done with it. Z_punkt provided possible answers as part of a project on ‘Scenario-building for Future Waste Policy’ commissioned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). The project focused on the mountains of rubble stemming from the construction and demolition industry, as well as the waste produced by households, industry and commerce. Recycle it? Incinerate it? Or send it to landfill? The scenarios considered all three methods.

Four scenarios were produced, each looking at future developments in economic growth, commodity markets, consumption patterns, waste treatment technology and waste policy. The scenarios and quantified analyses provide inputs for the British Government’s review of waste policy and guidance for long-term policy-making in this area.

October 2012

Article: Businesses on course for collision!

Most companies believe it is important to consider potential external shocks and disruptive deviations from the norm. In practice, however, they often neglect to look at destructive futures, preferring to concentrate their corporate foresight efforts on deriving opportunities from trends or scenarios. This is a pitty because, as the ‘Iceberg Session’ workshop format shows, delving into the potential negative aspects of a corporate future is particularly helpful for developing really new strategies, business areas and products away from the corporate future mainstream.

In their article for the F.A.Z. Institute’s Zukunftsmanager magazine, Vanessa Watkins and Marnie Müller present Z_punkt’s ‘Iceberg Session’ workshop format – a participative method for identifying disruptive futures.

In: Zukunftsmanager 5/2012

Article: Health 2030
The key trends in healthcare

Progress in medical technology is fast-paced. Only a few years ago, the humble X-ray was the norm. Today we have computed tomography procedures that show the entire body in detail. Biotechnology and genome decoding mean that personalised treatments are already possible. In the healthcare industry, products and services are merging into hybrid system offerings.

In the third part of the Zukunftsmanager series on the future of value creation in Germany, Z_punkt authors Klaus Burmeister and Bert Beyers show how one of the most important markets of the future is taking shape. Zukunftsmanager is an online magazine published by the F.A.Z. Institute.

In: Zukunftsmanager 5/2012