IM & Innovation Tool

Kevin McDermott & Peter Kennedy

Kevin McDermott founded Collective Intelligence in 1996 to help clients shape new ideas into businesses. CI has since earned a reputation for the range of its capabilities in support of change management, knowledge transfer and continuous innovation for such clients as Booz & Co., Futures Strategy Group, Guaranteach, Korn-Ferry International, McKinsey & Co. and United Way of America. CI’s earliest ambition to reinvent the communications function—described recently in “Notes on Discernment” for InnovationManagement—evolved directly out of McDermott’s earlier career as a reporter covering international business and economics for publications including The New York Times, The Economist, The Atlantic Monthly and The Washington Post.

Peter Kennedy is a founding principal of the Futures Strategy Group (FSG), a consultancy dedicated to helping clients make superior decisions in the face of future uncertainty and change. For more than 20 years, Kennedy and FSG partners have supported Fortune 500 companies such as IBM, 3M, Deloitte, the Ford Motor Company and the ACE Group in scenario planning, risk analysis, emerging market evaluation, and new product planning. In the public sector, FSG has applied scenario analysis to new mission development, capital investment decisions, and R&D strategy for organizations such as the US Coast Guard, NASA, and the Panama Canal Authority.

All articles by Kevin McDermott & Peter Kennedy:

Overcoming Opportunity Blindness and Path Dependence: How To Think Your Way to Multiple Futures

May 4, 2011 | In: Strategies

3 Comments

In the age of permanent uncertainty there is a resurgent interest in scenario planning. Executives that have witnessed high profile decline of strong companies know that past success is no guaranteed guide to the future. Kevin McDermott & Peter Kennedy argue that scenario planning can be lifted out of its conventional uses in strategy development and risk management and used instead to avoid “opportunity blindness”.