How futures thinking can help Indian businesses navigate uncertainty

In 2019, few could have predicted that a virus would disrupt our lives and halt industries worldwide. As India builds domestic chip manufacturing capabilities and transitions towards clean energy, businesses must recognise that dependencies on foreign supply chains expose them to unforeseen disruptions. Management consultants everywhere responded with copious, often well-researched slides detailing trends that businesses and sectors needed to navigate, ever bigger and more complex market and financial forecasting and modelling software, and inspirational speakers that ensured the word “agile” joined the business lexicon. In our experience, for business to really thrive into the long term, Futures needs to be applied in a way that: Considers a wider range of trends more seriously: Twenty, even ten years ago, it was easy to understand why the typical business leaders often paid more attention to economic, political and legal trends than they did to the social or environmental. The 2019 water crisis in Chennai shutting down manufacturing units, and the 2022 heatwave’s impact on wheat production and subsequent ripple effects on domestic food price inflation, supply chain disruption and trade relations are two of many clear examples where environmental and social trends are core to business.