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Leading When You Don’t Know: The Power of Negative Capability 

When New Zealand faced the first wave of COVID-19, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern didn’t rush to over-promise or posture certainty. Instead, she leaned into transparency, regularly updating citizens with what was known—and, critically, what wasn’t. Her leadership was marked not by decisive bravado, but by a calm willingness to wait, listen, and act when the path became clearer.

This isn’t just a story of pandemic response. It’s an example of leadership at the edge—where accumulated knowledge and traditional decision-making frameworks fall short. In such moments, what matters is not just what a leader knows, but their ability to hold space for not knowing.

This is where the concept of Negative Capability becomes both urgent and transformative.

What Is Negative Capability?

First coined by Romantic poet John Keats, Negative Capability describes the capacity to remain “in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” While Keats was reflecting on literary genius, modern scholars and leadership theorists have found in his words a valuable metaphor for navigating complexity and uncertainty.

In leadership, Negative Capability refers to the ability to tolerate ambiguity, suspend judgment, and resist the impulse to impose premature certainty—especially when the stakes are high and the path forward unclear. It is a form of reflective inaction—the deliberate choice to pause, absorb, and wait for the right insight, rather than react defensively or default to what has worked before.

Why Leaders Struggle with Negative Capability

Leadership, especially in Western corporate culture, is often measured by decisiveness, clarity, and confidence. The leader is expected to know, to act, and to inspire trust through their ability to lead from the front. Traditional leadership development prioritizes “positive capabilities”—attributes like visioning, planning, and execution. These are vital in stable environments.

But what happens when the environment is not stable? When the actors are unfamiliar, the rules have changed, and the old playbook no longer applies?

In today’s VUCA world—marked by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—leadership often unfolds in “radical uncertainty.” Here, the demand to act collides with the reality that we simply don’t yet know the right strategy. Leaders face a paradox: the very qualities that earned them their positions—experience, expertise, confidence—can become liabilities when they prevent them from not acting long enough to sense what is really needed.

The Costs of Premature Action

Consider a common scenario: a tech company begins to lose market share to a disruptive competitor. The board demands a turnaround strategy. The CEO, feeling the weight of expectation, announces a reorganization, lays off staff, and pivots the product line. Six months later, nothing has improved. Why?

Because the leader responded with positive capability—decisive action—before taking the time to understand the deeper dynamics at play: shifting customer expectations, employee morale, and the subtleties of emerging technology trends.

In contrast, a leader drawing on Negative Capability would have paused to reflect more deeply. They might have resisted the urge to act immediately, choosing instead to convene diverse voices, sense the complexity of the situation, and consider new possibilities. This is not indecision—it’s discipline.

Negative Capability in Action: Practical Strategies for Leaders

So how can leaders cultivate Negative Capability? Here are a few grounded strategies:

1. Practice the “Pause”

Create structured pauses in your decision-making process. Before responding to a crisis or making a strategic pivot, ask yourself: What if I waited just a little longer? Create a discipline of pausing, not just for analysis, but for reflection—cognitively and emotionally.

“Don’t just do something, stand there.” — White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland

2. Adopt a Meta-Perspective

When immersed in a high-stakes situation, practice the “balcony view” — observe yourself and the system neutrally, like looking down from above. What patterns emerge? Who’s reacting from fear or habit? What isn’t being said? This neutral observation disrupts automatic responses and allows for deeper insight.

3. Create Containers for Not-Knowing

Establish spaces—retreats, strategy offsites, or peer dialogue groups—where not knowing is acceptable. Frame these sessions as opportunities to explore complexity rather than solve problems. Psychological safety is key here; people must feel free to admit uncertainty without fear of appearing weak.

4. Normalize Ambiguity in Leadership Culture

Shift your team’s expectations. Instead of always seeking “quick wins,” model tolerance for ambiguity. Share your own moments of uncertainty and how you worked through them. This humanizes leadership and builds collective resilience.

5. Balance Positive and Negative Capabilities

Negative Capability is not the absence of action—it is the capacity to wait until the right action reveals itself. Leadership is often about knowing when to hold back, and when to move decisively. Mastery lies in balancing these twin forces.

Final Thoughts: Leading into the Unknown

We live in an era where no amount of experience can guarantee the right answer, and where the illusion of control is constantly being shattered by unpredictable change. In such times, perhaps the most courageous act of leadership is not to speak, but to listen. Not to act, but to reflect. Not to know, but to stay with the not-knowing.

Negative Capability is not a replacement for action-oriented leadership—it’s the precondition for wise action in uncertain times. It invites us to become more attuned to the present moment, more accepting of ambiguity, and more open to emergence.

Because sometimes, the answer doesn’t come from what you do next. It comes from what you don’t do yet.

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Cooperation vs. Competition: Resolving Workplace Conflict

Imagine a common workplace hurdle:  two colleagues—Alex from Sales and Priya from Marketing—are jointly preparing a spreadsheet for an upcoming quarterly business review. Late one evening, Alex revises the structure of the spreadsheet, reorders the data, and adds projections. The next morning, Priya logs in and discovers her inputs have been moved or removed. She feels her contributions have been disregarded. Alex believes he improved the document for clarity.

What starts as a simple task quickly spirals into conflict. Communication becomes strained. Collaboration deteriorates. This type of conflict is not uncommon—but how it unfolds depends significantly on the perceived nature of the relationship between the parties involved.

This scenario serves as a practical illustration of psychologist Morton Deutsch’s influential theory of cooperation and competition, a foundational framework in the field of conflict resolution.

Deutsch’s Theory of Cooperation and Competition

In the 1940s, psychologist Morton Deutsch developed a powerful framework for understanding conflict, centered on the crucial concept of interdependence—how our goals are linked to others. According to Deutsch, the way individuals perceive the relationship between their goals determines whether conflict is approached cooperatively or competitively.

He identified two types of interdependence:

  • Positive: Goals of two people are linked in such a way that the probability of one person’s success in achieving the goal is positively correlated to the attainment of the other person’s goal. In other words, the two people sink or swim together. 
  • Negative: In a negative linkage, if one person wins the other loses. 

These perceptions shape the actions individuals take in conflict situations. Actions can be effective (improving the chances of reaching a goal) or bungling (ineffective or even detrimental, worsening those chances). 

When interdependence and actions interact, they give rise to three important relational dynamics that shape the tone and trajectory of conflict:

  1. Mutual Support (Substitutability): How much one person’s actions help or hinder another. In essence, are you working together or against each other? In a cooperative setting, effective actions by team members support each other as they contribute to a shared outcome. In a competitive setting, a bungling action by one might be helpful to the opponent as they look better in comparison. In the spreadsheet example, if Alex’s late-night edits were useful and if Priya perceived the situation as cooperative, she would see the changes as supportive. 
  2. Openness to Influence (Inducibility): This is the willingness of individuals to listen to and be influenced by one another. When people view each other as partners, they are more likely to adapt their ideas and consider alternative perspectives. In contrast, competitive dynamics create defensiveness and resistance to input. In the spreadsheet conflict, if Priya and Alex trust each other’s intentions, they’ll likely integrate feedback and co-create a better result. If they view each other as rivals, they’ll resist collaboration and retreat to siloed efforts.
  3. Attitudes and Emotions: These are the feelings and judgments people hold about each other—such as trust, respect, suspicion, or resentment. Positive interdependence fosters goodwill, patience, and empathy. Negative interdependence breeds anxiety, frustration, and hostility. Over time, these emotional patterns solidify and influence the workplace culture as a whole.

These dynamics—mutual support, openness to influence, and the feelings between team members—are constantly shifting. They’re deeply influenced by how individuals view their interdependence and the actions they take. Deutsch’s research clearly showed that when people are skilled and their actions are effective, a cooperative approach consistently leads to stronger relationships, greater trust, and ultimately, better outcomes than a competitive one.  

Cooperation vs. Competition in Action

Returning to the example of the spreadsheet, let us consider two potential outcomes—one cooperative, one competitive:

Cooperative Resolution: Alex and Priya, guided by a shared understanding of their mutual goal (a successful business review), approach the situation with curiosity. Priya calmly voiced her concerns, and Alex explained his rationale. They agree to jointly review the document and integrate both sets of inputs. Their actions are effective, attitudes remain positive, and each is open to being influenced by the other’s suggestions. Substitutability is high—they both contribute to the same goal—and the relationship is strengthened. In addition, they set new norms on how to make changes to each others’ sections so as not to create confusion. 

Competitive Breakdown: Priya reacts defensively, assuming Alex is trying to take over the project. Alex feels unappreciated and digs in. Communication becomes guarded, and each begins working on their own version of the report. Substitutability disappears, attitudes harden, and inducibility vanishes. The final presentation is disjointed, and leadership notices the lack of cohesion. The competitive breakdown not only damaged the report but also left lingering resentment between Alex and Priya, impacting future collaborations.

These contrasting outcomes underscore the value of Deutsch’s insights: conflict is not inherently destructive. The determining factor lies in how individuals interpret their interdependence and choose to act.

Strategies for Leaders

Leaders have a critical role to play in shaping the environment that determines whether conflicts become constructive or destructive. Below are three evidence-based strategies drawn from Deutsch’s theory:

1. Reframe Conflicts to Highlight Positive Interdependence Help team members view their goals as interconnected rather than opposed. Facilitate discussions that highlight how each team member’s contribution is essential. In the spreadsheet example, a manager could emphasize that both Sales and Marketing bring vital perspectives to the business review and that their input is complementary.

2. Design Incentives to Reinforce Cooperation Audit reward structures to ensure they do not unintentionally foster competition. Avoid systems where individuals are pitted against one another for limited recognition or rewards. Instead, design performance metrics that reward collaborative outcomes, knowledge sharing, and collective success.

3. Establish Norms and Processes for Constructive Dialogue Promote group norms that encourage respectful disagreement, active listening, and open communication. Use structured meeting formats with clear roles and turn-taking to ensure all voices are heard. Leaders should model openness to influence and reinforce norms that make it safe to express dissent without fear of reprisal.

Conclusion

Morton Deutsch’s work offers a powerful lens through which to understand and transform workplace conflict. By implementing Deutsch’s principles, leaders can transform their workplaces into hubs of collaboration and innovation. In doing so, even the most routine workplace conflicts—like a disagreement over a spreadsheet—can become opportunities for greater trust, innovation, and shared achievement.

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The Middle Way to Innovation: Lessons from Ancient China

One of the defining aspects of Emperor Taizong’s reign in the 7th century, was his approach to governance through remonstrances—open criticisms offered by his ministers. Unlike many rulers who dismissed or punished dissent, Taizong actively encouraged differing perspectives, seeing them as essential to wise decision-making.

At one point he had 36 advisors whose job was to tell him when he was wrong. When the critiques were too harsh to be delivered in person, Taizong had them posted on his walls! His closest advisor, Wei Zheng, was so brutally honest that Taizong would sometimes rage and threaten to fire him, but he never did. Taizong is claimed to have said, “If I want to see myself, I need a mirror. If I want to know my faults, I need loyal ministers.”

This wasn’t just for show. Taizong really listened. He changed his mind about big decisions and small, even overturning punishments he’d ordered. But he wasn’t a pushover either. One time, a sharp memo from a magistrate made him so mad, he wanted the guy put on trial! This gives us a glimpse into Zhong-Yong thinking, a philosophy of finding balance and avoiding extremes.

This gives us a glimpse into Zhong-Yong (Golden Mean) thinking—a philosophy of finding balance and avoiding extremes.

What is Zhong-Yong Thinking?

Zhong-Yong, deeply rooted in Confucian philosophy, is often translated as the “Doctrine of the Mean.” It emphasizes finding a balanced approach to problem-solving, avoiding extremes, and considering multiple perspectives before making decisions.

The concept consists of two main components:

– Zhong (中): Staying neutral, without inclination to extremes.

– Yong (庸): Maintaining consistency and appropriateness in action.

At its core, Zhong-Yong thinking promotes equilibrium and harmony, encouraging individuals to process information holistically, remain flexible in their cognitive strategies, and adapt their actions based on situational context. This ability to balance different viewpoints and integrate diverse information sources is invaluable in today’s fast-moving business landscape.

How Zhong-Yong Thinking Enhances Innovation

Innovation is often portrayed as radical and disruptive, yet sustainable and impactful innovation requires balance—between creativity and feasibility, risk and stability, autonomy and collaboration. Here’s how Zhong-Yong thinking provides an edge in fostering innovation:

Holistic Information Processing for Better Decision-Making

Research suggests that high Zhong-Yong thinkers are more adept at global cognitive processing. Eye-tracking studies have shown that these individuals tend to scan a broader field of information and integrate details more effectively than low Zhong-Yong thinkers.

In business, this means leaders who practice Zhong-Yong thinking are more likely to step back and see the whole picture before making strategic decisions. This ability to synthesize diverse information sources is particularly valuable in product development, market analysis, and customer insights.

Flexibility in Adapting to Complexity

A study on perceptual processing capacity revealed that high Zhong-Yong thinkers possess supercapacity processing, meaning they can efficiently handle multiple streams of information simultaneously. In contrast, low Zhong-Yong thinkers process information in a more linear, limited-capacity manner.

In the context of innovation, this translates into an ability to handle complex projects involving cross-functional teams, multiple stakeholder interests, and shifting market dynamics. Entrepreneurs and executives who embrace Zhong-Yong thinking can navigate ambiguity with greater ease and make more nuanced, balanced choices.

Balancing Risk and Stability in Business Strategy

One of the most challenging aspects of innovation is knowing when to push forward aggressively and when to exercise caution. Many companies either go all-in on radical change (often leading to failure) or become overly risk-averse, stifling creativity.

Zhong-Yong thinking helps leaders avoid these extremes by assessing risks from multiple perspectives and making decisions that balance short-term stability with long-term growth. For example, Apple’s approach to innovation—incremental improvements combined with occasional bold moves—aligns closely with this philosophy.

Encouraging Interpersonal Harmony and Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration

Innovation thrives in environments where diverse teams collaborate effectively. Zhong-Yong thinking emphasizes maintaining interpersonal harmony, which can foster a culture of trust and open communication within organizations.

This approach is particularly useful in global companies that operate across different cultural contexts. By encouraging middle-way thinking, businesses can bridge the gap between individualist and collectivist cultures, facilitating smoother collaboration and more inclusive innovation processes.

Applying Zhong-Yong Thinking in Business

To cultivate Zhong-Yong thinking within an organization, consider the following practical strategies:

Encourage Perspective-Taking: Before making key decisions, ensure teams analyze problems from multiple angles. Use structured brainstorming techniques that require employees to explore opposing viewpoints.

Adopt a Gradual Approach to Change: Instead of implementing radical shifts, test innovations through pilot programs, iterative design, and phased rollouts.

Promote Cognitive Flexibility: Train employees in adaptive thinking skills, encouraging them to switch between big-picture (global) and detail-oriented (local) processing modes.

Foster a Culture of Harmony: Create an environment where diverse opinions are respected, and team members feel comfortable voicing dissent without fear of conflict.

Develop Leaders with Balanced Decision-Making Skills: Provide leadership training that emphasizes the importance of balancing bold vision with pragmatic execution.

Conclusion: The Future of Balanced Innovation

As businesses grapple with unprecedented challenges—from digital transformation to global competition—embracing Zhong-Yong thinking offers a strategic advantage. By integrating this middle-way philosophy into leadership, innovation, and decision-making processes, companies can achieve sustainable growth, navigate complexity, and foster an environment where creativity and practicality coexist harmoniously.

Just as Emperor Taizong’s balanced strategies helped sustain and expand a great empire, Zhong-Yong thinking can help modern businesses thrive in an unpredictable world. The key is not to choose between extremes but to skillfully navigate the space between them—leveraging equilibrium as a catalyst for innovation.

Image: Portrait of Emperor Taizong of Tang from a Ming dynasty hanging scroll. Credit: Wikipedia

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Make Waves: A Design Thinking Workshop on Inclusion and Innovation

A company’s competitive advantage comes from its ability to innovate in a changing environment, and employee innovation plays an essential role. Many highly successful ideas, like Gmail or Post-its, were not mandated from the top but came from passionate employees who saw opportunities that leaders missed. 

However, fostering employee innovation is challenging, especially when you consider the effect of gender and other biases. While women are just as innovative as men, their ideas often get devalued or dismissed, which can be costly for companies. As one study conducted on a large energy corporation noted, “The potential for innovation stemming from women generating ideas in this organisation seems to be largely unexploited, and women’s ideas are less frequently implemented than those of men.” 

To understand and address how gender bias impacts women in the workplace, we recently collaborated with Maureen Carrol from Lime Design to create a new design thinking workshop, with the generous support of Guidewire. 

The rest of the post talks about how we designed the workshop and what we learned from it. 

Our Process

Our first step was to understand the real challenges women were facing in the technology industry. We interviewed many women — ranging from senior leaders to junior employees — to hear their stories about setbacks and frustrations they face in doing their jobs. We then coded the interviews to identify some common themes like communication, relationship building and recognition. The data from the interviews gave us insights on how to design the rest of the workshop. 

Double-bind Situations and Janusian Thinking

Our interviewees shared many double-bind situations they face, in line with research over the last few decades. As an example, women often face backlash for asking probing questions, but sometimes you need to ask the right questions to surface flaws in a design to do your job effectively. So this creates a paradoxical situation driven by two opposing forces – one pushing you to question, while the other holding you back. One of our interviewees shared how she found a way to navigate this situation. Instead of asking direct questions, she would move the discussion to the whiteboard to list out the assumptions they are making and the data they have. The whiteboard serves to take the focus away from gender while also providing an avenue to capture relevant information about the problem. 

The prevalence of such scenarios naturally led us to the theme of our workshop – double-bind situations. Solving such situations is quite tricky because, from the face of it, there doesn’t seem to be a good way out. This is where a creative thinking technique, called Janusian thinking, can be useful. Janusian thinking, named after the two-headed Roman God, Janus, required holding two contradictory thoughts in view at the same time. One way to solve paradoxes using Janusian thinking is by finding another dimension to add and change the nature of the problem. In the double-bind example above, adding the whiteboard to the situation retained the ability to ask tough questions while also removing the threat of any backlash. We shared this technique with the participants to use in their brainstorming phase, if they are able to. 

Personas and “How Might We…”

After we identified the overall theme, our next step was to create personas for our workshop that would resonate with our audience. In our interviews, we realized that challenges that women face early in their career can be different as they rise up higher in the organization. So, we used three different personas – senior leader, mid-level manager and entry level employee to capture the different phases of women’s careers. To craft our personas, we relied not just on our interviews but also studies from gender research that quantified and validated what our interviewees had experienced. Finally, we put together empathy boxes that included the persona description, different artifacts related to the persona (like college stickers or hobby materials) and also research highlights.  

Finally, we created “How Might We…” (HMW) questions that participants got after they had a chance to go through the empathy boxes and had round-table discussions as they went through each artifact. Each of the HMW corresponded to the persona that the unique challenges that the persona faced.  

Participants

While most of our participants were women already working in the tech industry, we also worked with d.Tech High School and invited a few high school girls to participate in the workshop. These students are already learning design thinking in their high school curriculum so the workshop gave them a real-world exposure to using the concepts to solve problems. In addition, we thought that these students would bring new perspectives to the problem solving process. This turned out to be a really good idea in the end.  Many of our participants commented on how much they appreciate the students in their teams and how valuable it was to include student voices into the solution. 

Solutions

Since this was a half-day workshop, we had to move through the process fast. Despite that, we were impressed with the solutions that teams came up with. Each team had to pick one of their ideas and produce a low-resolution prototype in any format they wanted. Some chose to do a role-play approach while others built simple cardboard prototypes. One of the things we realized is that all teams came up with ideas that would improve onboarding or team culture for everyone, not just women and minorities. So while they might disproportionately help women and minorities, they were useful ideas applicable more broadly to everyone. Here are some of the ideas at a very high level that teams came up with (interestingly, some teams independently came up with similar ideas to each other indicating a real need to solve some of these challenges):

  • Improving the onboarding process to allow new employees to quickly build relationships with peers and mentors, using AI to facilitate this process
  • Improving group discussions with assistance from AI that tracks different aspects, including individual emotions
  • Creating better norms to celebrate not just outcomes but how results are achieved

While teams generated many ideas, we did not have time to go through all of them due to time limitations. In a longer workshop, we could also find ways to look at potentially great ideas that might have been discarded while picking the top one. Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed the process of creating and running the workshop, and many of our participants shared that they were really energized working in their teams! 

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Using Futures Thinking To Navigate Disruptive Shifts

After the release of the world’s first mass-market ‘personal navigation device’ in 2004, TomTom’s stock soared, reaching a peak of $65/share in 2007. However, the landscape shifted dramatically when Google launched its Maps app in 2007, effectively transforming every smartphone into a personal navigation device. Within 2 years, TomTom’s stock fell below $3. While TomTom was eventually able to pivot and change their business model, their initial dismissal of the threat posed by the rise of smartphone based navigation apps was very costly. This failure was not due to a lack of technological capability but rather a lack of strategic foresight to anticipate and adapt to disruptive technology.

Innovation is not just about responding to current needs but also anticipating and preparing for disruptive shifts, like the rise of generative AI. However, preparing for disruptive shifts is a very tricky problem because the mental models we use to make decisions in normal, predictive times don’t work in disruptive times. Product planning in such times has to go beyond predicting the future (which often turns out to be incorrect), to planning for multiple plausible scenarios. This is where futures thinking can be a useful tool. 

Futures thinking is a strategic approach to uncovering multiple possibilities, with the aim of creating a preferred future. It ties closely to innovation – once we identify a desirable (and plausible) future, we have a clearer roadmap of the problems we need to solve in order to reach that future. 

So how do you develop futures thinking? It starts with first figuring out (or even deciding) a vision for the future and then understanding what forces enable or thwart that vision. Depending on how likely and how important certain trends for a particular vision, one can arrive at plausible scenarios of the future. These scenarios can then guide what kinds of ideas and products to invest in. 

Future Archetypes

When it comes to our vision of the future, we all hold one or more of common archetypes which  dominate our imagined future thinking. Below are the five common future archetypes viewed through the lens of AI:

  • Progress: A tech-driven world with humans at the center, emphasizing rationality and innovation. AI in this future enhances human productivity, creativity, and decision-making.  
  • Collapse: A darker vision where AI exacerbates inequality, destabilizes jobs, and concentrates power, pushing society to a breaking point.
  • Gaia: A partnership-driven future where AI helps repair damage to the planet and fosters inclusive, harmonious systems between humans, nature, and technology.
  • Globalism: A borderless, interconnected future where AI powers collaboration across economies and cultures, breaking down barriers to knowledge, trade, and innovation.
  • Back to the Future: Nostalgia for simpler times, where AI’s rapid advancements are rejected in favor of human-centered, low-tech solutions to protect societal stability.

Trends

There are several key market, technology and social trends that impact the development of AI in both positive and negative ways. Here are a few sample trends:

  • Technology Improvements: The AI hardware market, encompassing GPUs and specialized AI accelerators, is projected to grow significantly indicating growth of computational power. AI models are expected to continue improving with more enhanced reasoning skills and capabilities. 
  • Regulation Focus: The number of AI-related regulations in the U.S. has risen significantly, with 25 AI-related regulations in 2023, up from just one in 2016, reflecting a growing focus on responsible AI development.
  • Computational Costs: Training large AI models is resource-intensive, requiring significant computational power, energy, and financial investment. OpenAI’s GPT-4 used an estimated $78 million worth of compute to train, while Google’s Gemini Ultra cost $191 million for compute.
  • Public Trust: People and companies may be hesitant to adopt AI due to various reasons like biased algorithms, privacy concerns, or fear of widespread job losses. 
  • AI Investment: Despite a decline in overall AI private investment last year, funding for generative AI surged, nearly octupling from 2022 to reach $25.2 billion, highlighting increased investment in AI technologies.

Each of these trends can either contribute to a future or become a barrier. The likelihood of each trend plays a part in which of the futures are more plausible. 

Future Scenario Planning

To determine plausible future scenarios, leaders need to evaluate trends against each vision of the future. For example, consider the future archetype of “progress” where AI leads to greater productivity and innovation. Improvements in technology, like better models or better GPUs, clearly push us towards this future. However, issues like algorithmic biases or security concerns can erode trust in the technology and slow down adoption rates. If this is a preferred vision of the future, then actively addressing these barriers during the development process can ensure that we keep marching in the right direction. While this was an overly simplified example, a more thorough analysis that incorporates additional relevant trends can start to reveal the plausibility of different scenarios.  

One challenge in future scenario planning is that given the complex nature of the problem, there is no good way to accurately determine the likelihood of each trend and its contribution to each future archetype. This is where swarm intelligence might be useful. Groups of people are often better at predicting than relying on experts. Training employees on futures thinking and tapping their individual unique insights might provide better signals on what scenarios are more likely to happen in the future. 

As artificial intelligence redefines industries, businesses must integrate strategic foresight into their innovation frameworks to thrive in uncertain and fast-changing landscapes. By explicitly using future archetypes and integrating them with current and expected trends, we can start to identify what scenarios are most likely to play out in the future. These scenarios can then help create more efficient product innovation roadmaps.