Rehearsing the Future
Predicting the future is a fool’s errand. But debating what the future might look like is vital for any organisation with long term aspirations.
That’s why we conducted extensive research, interviewing internal and external stakeholders about eight global drivers that we feel will have a big impact on our world going forward. We then projected forward our thinking for these eight drivers to allow us to develop three scenarios of the world in 2025 in order to spur debate and test our strategy against different plausible versions of the future.
In the coming weeks we’ll be publishing each scenario individually culminating in our report “The world in 2025 – Three scenarios for the future of the packaging industry” with a video for each of the three scenarios.
These scenarios are not meant to be predictions, but raise for discussion in an interesting way a number of the major developing trends most relevant to the future of our industry.
For example, we can all see the progress of e-commerce in our everyday life, but how will it play out for our customers, the retailers, and our own business? And what happens to the ‘last-mile’ delivery? Do UBER and autonomous vehicles make it cheap and easy for everyone? Or does increasing urbanisation and insufficient infrastructure investment make the last mile the most difficult?
These are fascinating questions with radical ramifications for our own business, and the supply cycle that we serve. There are both risks and opportunities. We don’t pretend to have all of the answers but these scenarios allow us to “rehearse the future” and stress-test our corporate strategy to ensure that we succeed whatever the future throws at us.
You are invited to join the conversation. Perhaps we’ll provoke you to ask new questions, or inspire ideas of your own. Either way, we’d love to hear from you at scenarios@dssmith.com or on twitter with #rehearsingthefuture because we intend to be one of the companies that will not only thrive in the future but to be one that shapes it too.
In the coming weeks we’ll release each of the three scenarios individually on our website:
“Caring convenience” on November 14th
A world where the growth of e-commerce creates consumer pressure to rethink packaging and logistics.
“Everything is an experience” on November 24th
Looks at what could happen when consumers demand ever-more exciting experiences from brands.
“Asian new deal” on December 5th
A possible future state, where the world’s governments, led by China, are driven to create a data-driven circular economy.