Summary: 20|20 Foresight: Review and Analysis of Courtney's Book

By BusinessNews Publishing

The must-read summary of Hugh Courtney's book: "20|20 Foresight: Crafting Strategy in an Uncertain World".

This complete summary of the ideas from Hugh Courtney's book "20|20 Foresight" helps the reader to distinguish between the information that can be known about a company’s future, and what cannot. When planning a company’s future, one must be able to account for a certain degree of uncertainty. By doing so, one can make more sensible and cautious decisions, and be more prepared for eventual changes in the market. This summary presents a four-step problem solving process, and explains useful decision-making models, to help you arrive at the best solutions to the key strategic questions facing your company. Through constant monitoring and updating, you will be able to develop a more robust and flexible business strategy that is advantageous in present and future markets and is able to change direction quickly in anticipation of new threats or opportunities which may arise.

Added-value of this summary: 
• Save time
• Understand the key concepts
• Increase your business knowledge 

To learn more, read "20|20 Foresight" and discover useful problem-solving processes and decision making models. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Business Book Summaries
• Release date: Feb 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9782806222497

Book preview

Book Presentation

20|20 Foresight by Hugh Courtney

Book Abstract

MAIN IDEA

Understand and allow for the level of uncertainty you face in any business situation and you will always make better, more informed strategic choices.

By their very nature, winning business strategies are always forward-looking, seeking to position a business or organization advantageously for future marketplace developments. Yet in practice, very few executives can ever separate what can be known from what can’t. As a result, most business strategies are based on a combination of extrapolating previous trends, partial information, personal intuition and guesswork.

A better approach is to identify the level of residual uncertainty faced in every situation, and to incorporate that degree of uncertainty into the strategic decision making process itself. In practice, this is a four-step process:

Note these four steps are really centered around developing good answers to the three key strategic questions:

Under what circumstances is it better to attempt to shape the industry rather than simply react to the changes which occur?

Should companies postpone or stage major commits over time or would they gain more by making an immediate commitment?

Is it better to craft strategies that will work across a range of potential outcomes or would it be better to focus more?

In total, there are never any easy answers when deciding on the most appropriate business strategy for a rapidly changing business world, but if you genuinely want to make better strategy choices, you have to understand and allow for the level of uncertainty which is present. Uncertainty should be embraced and harnessed rather than buried in meaningless base case forecasts. Achieve that and you’ll enjoy 20/20 foresight – you’ll see the future as clearly as possible.

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