When the market direction is still unclear

Uncertainty does not remove the decision

Management teams often postpone a choice because the external picture is unsettled. A regulation may still be under negotiation. Customer expectations differ by segment. A technology is promising but immature. Competitors have announced ambitions without revealing how they will deliver them. The evidence does not support one confident forecast.

In such conditions, delay can feel like neutrality. It rarely is. Existing product roadmaps continue. Capital is allocated elsewhere. Supplier relationships deepen. Data structures become more difficult to change. Sales teams make promises based on the current offer. Each ordinary decision reinforces one view of the future, whether or not leadership has made that view explicit.

The useful test is whether today's choices remain sensible across the futures that could plausibly matter.

Foresight makes the uncertainty around those choices visible before a product, investment or market decision becomes difficult to reverse. It informs strategy; it does not replace it.

Sustainability change moves on several clocks

Sustainability-related change is particularly easy to misread because it does not advance on one timetable.

Law has its own process. Technical standards may develop at a different pace. Major buyers can tighten procurement conditions before regulation takes effect. Lenders, insurers and channel partners may alter their expectations for reasons of risk or reputation. Customer interest can move quickly while buying behaviour changes slowly. Technology may become technically viable before it becomes affordable, available at scale or easy to approve.

These developments also interact. A reporting requirement can increase demand for product data. Better data can expose a design weakness or make a stronger claim possible. A customer commitment can move through the supply chain and become a procurement condition. A material constraint can change the economics of a product before any rule requires a redesign.

Management therefore needs to understand which combination of developments could alter the commercial conditions around a particular decision. Simply monitoring more signals will not answer that question.

For a packaging investment, the relevant future is more specific than a general story about circularity in 2035. It consists of the plausible conditions under which customers will approve the format, materials will be available, evidence will be trusted and the economics will remain supportable during the life of the investment.

A single forecast conceals the choice

Most business cases require a central assumption. Volumes, prices, costs and adoption rates need to be entered somewhere. The resulting model can create an impression of precision that the external environment does not deserve.

A base case is useful for calculation. It is a weak basis for commitment when several external conditions can change the outcome. A product may succeed under rapid customer adoption and fail if demand develops slowly. The same investment may be unnecessary under a light regulatory regime and inadequate if procurement requirements move ahead of the law. A premium proposition may work when evidence creates customer value, but not when the market treats the same evidence as a standard cost of entry.

Foresight introduces several plausible operating conditions alongside the base case. Management can then examine what each would mean for the decision, without having to nominate one scenario as the forecast.

Some choices will remain attractive across the range. Others work only when a particular assumption holds. A third group may become attractive only after a signal reaches a defined threshold. These distinctions are more useful than a general agreement that the future is uncertain.

Start with the decision, not the trends

The quality of a foresight exercise depends heavily on how it begins. An open request to explore the future of sustainability can produce an impressive collection of trends and very little guidance for management.

A stronger starting point is a consequential choice. Should the next product platform be designed for requirements that are not yet standard? How much evidence capability should the company build before customers demand it consistently? Should a market entry proceed now, be staged or wait? Which innovation themes deserve protected funding when customer adoption remains uncertain?

The decision creates boundaries for the work. It clarifies the relevant time horizon, the markets and actors that matter, the commitments that could become difficult to reverse and the evidence management needs.

This also keeps the exercise commercial. Signals are selected because they could change demand, cost, access, investment or the ability to execute. A development may be important in the world and still be too remote from the decision to deserve management attention today.

Starting with the decision gives the exploration a purpose. It also makes it easier to distinguish an insight that could change the choice from information that is merely interesting.

Separate momentum from uncertainty

Not every part of the future is equally uncertain. Some changes already have considerable momentum. Others depend on political choices, technology performance, customer behaviour or the response of competitors.

A business may be reasonably confident that demands for more product evidence will continue, while remaining uncertain about the exact fields, assurance level and systems through which the evidence will travel. It may expect materials to become more traceable without knowing whether customers will pay more for them. It may see tighter scrutiny of claims as durable while the acceptable language continues to evolve.

This distinction matters for investment. Directional certainty may justify building a basic capability even when the final specification is unknown. Uncertainty about value capture may argue for a modular offer, a staged commitment or a narrower pilot. Uncertainty about timing may make monitoring and supplier options more valuable than immediate scale.

Teams should also make their own assumptions explicit. Which customers are expected to move first? What price effect is built into the case? How quickly can a supplier adapt? Which requirement is assumed to become common? What would have to be true for the current strategy to remain attractive?

Once assumptions are visible, disagreement becomes useful. Sales, finance, operations, product, procurement and sustainability may not hold the same view of the future. Management needs to identify which of those differences could change the decision, rather than forcing an early consensus.

Test choices against plausible conditions

Scenarios become valuable when they place a real choice under different external conditions.

Consider a company deciding how far to redesign a product platform. One plausible condition may combine firm buyer requirements with limited willingness to pay. Another may feature uneven regulation but strong demand from a small set of valuable customers. A third may bring rapid technology improvement and lower transition cost. A fourth may combine slower market movement with expensive materials and weak customer adoption.

The team examines how each condition affects the product, the evidence required, the cost structure, the route to market and the timing of investment. Selecting the most appealing scenario would defeat the purpose.

This exercise often exposes choices that look attractive only in one future. It can also reveal capabilities with value across several conditions. Better product data may support compliance, customer qualification, claim control and offer development. A modular design may reduce the cost of later adaptation. A supplier option may preserve access to a material without requiring immediate volume commitment. A targeted customer pilot may test willingness to change before the full platform is redesigned.

The result should be a better choice in the present. If the scenarios remain as descriptions of the future, the work is unfinished.

Decide what to commit, preserve and monitor

A useful foresight process separates three forms of action.

The first is a commitment that makes sense across most plausible conditions. This might include clarifying evidence ownership, improving the portability of product data or removing a design constraint that is already causing customer friction. These moves do not need one precise future to justify them.

The second preserves an option. The company may qualify an additional supplier, design a component so it can be replaced later, reserve space in a data architecture or stage capital expenditure. An option has a cost, but it can be considerably cheaper than discovering that the business has locked itself into the wrong configuration.

The third waits for a signal. Waiting is legitimate when the investment depends on an uncertainty that can be observed over time. The discipline lies in agreeing what evidence would move the decision. A named customer requirement, a threshold in material cost, the adoption of a standard, a competitor launch or a change in qualification rates can all serve as decision triggers.

This is more precise than keeping the issue under review. It gives management a reason to act, wait or change course and reduces the risk that an old assumption survives simply because no one has been asked to challenge it.

Signals need owners and consequences

Many organisations already receive more external information than they can use. Regulatory updates, customer requests, market reports, competitor announcements and technology news circulate through different functions. The harder task is converting that material into a reason to revisit a decision.

A signal matters when it changes an assumption behind a decision. That connection should be explicit. If several major customers begin requesting the same evidence, what investment moves forward? If a proposed rule is delayed, which capability remains justified for commercial reasons? If material economics improve, which product concept should be ready to accelerate? If adoption remains weak, which commitment should stop?

Each important assumption needs an owner, a small number of observable indicators and a review date. The owner's task is to bring relevant evidence back into the decision while the organisation can still respond economically, not to predict the future.

This is where foresight becomes part of management rather than an occasional workshop. It enters portfolio reviews, product gates, market plans and capital discussions. The external picture is updated, but so is the decision.

Foresight does not automatically improve judgement

Research on corporate foresight supports a measured view. A longitudinal study linked future preparedness with stronger subsequent firm performance. A 2025 study of 400 managers in large European and US companies found that internal foresight activity supported strategic conversations and the consideration of multiple viewpoints. It did not find that strategy conversations alone reliably challenged the status quo or improved decision-making.

That distinction is important. A wider conversation about the future can still reproduce the organisation's existing beliefs. Scenarios can be written around assumptions senior leaders already prefer. A workshop can create energy without changing a budget, specification or market choice.

Foresight earns its place when it affects what the organisation does. It should expose a vulnerable assumption, change the design of an option, alter the timing of a commitment, identify a trigger or stop an investment whose case depends on one narrow future.

The practical test is whether the business can act before the direction becomes obvious and adapt when the evidence changes. Imaginative scenarios have little value if the decisions remain untouched.

Six questions for a decision under uncertainty

Leadership teams can bring a future perspective into a current sustainability-related decision by answering six questions.

1. What decision could become expensive to reverse?

Name the product, investment, market, supplier or capability choice. Avoid beginning with a broad topic when the business needs to decide something specific.

2. Which external conditions could materially change the case?

Focus on the customer, regulatory, technological, resource and competitive developments that could alter demand, cost, access or feasibility.

3. What are we already assuming about the future?

Make the assumptions in the current plan visible. Include timing, customer behaviour, willingness to pay, supplier readiness, internal capability and the likely response of competitors.

4. Which choices remain sensible across several plausible conditions?

Identify robust moves and capabilities with more than one use. Separate them from commitments that rely on a narrow set of assumptions.

5. Where should we preserve flexibility?

Consider staged investment, modular design, supplier options, bounded pilots and other ways to learn without locking the business into one outcome too early.

6. What evidence would cause us to act or change course?

Define the signals, thresholds, owners and review dates before the decision fades into normal operations.

Prepare before certainty becomes expensive

Sustainability-related market change will rarely arrive as one clear instruction. Requirements, technologies, customer behaviour and economics will continue to move at different speeds. Some expectations will strengthen. Others will stall, fragment or be replaced.

Management can respond intelligently without a confident prediction. It needs a clear decision, an honest view of the assumptions behind it and several plausible conditions against which to test the choice.

The result may be an early investment, a smaller experiment, a design option, a supplier relationship, a monitoring threshold or a deliberate decision to wait. What matters is choosing consciously, before today's plan hardens around an unexamined future.

The direction may still be unclear. The business can still be better prepared.