Why Chief Sustainability Officers need to understand strategic foresight

In today’s corporate environment, the CSO must be a visionary and a strategic partner, tasked with navigating the complexities of climate change, resource scarcity, and evolving regulatory landscapes while driving long-term value for organizations.  CSOs are increasingly responsible for embedding sustainability into business models, fostering innovation, and driving transformation across the organization.

To succeed, this role requires forward-looking methodologies to anticipate future trends, disruptions, and opportunities. This evolution aligns with a broader shift in how businesses view sustainability: not as a cost center, but as a driver of resilience, competitive advantage, and growth. 

Strategic foresight is the practice of systematically exploring future possibilities to inform present-day decisions. It is not about predicting the future but about identifying its building blocks and understanding how they might emerge or be assembled to shape a range of possible futures.

Modern foresight approaches, including Big Data- and AI-supported horizon scanning, crowdsourced intelligence, dynamic scenario simulations, participatory scenario planning, anticipatory design, and design fiction, enable organizations to map uncertainties, develop strategies resilient across multiple futures, and actively shape the future toward desirable outcomes.

For CSOs, strategic foresight provides the capability to align corporate strategies with long-term sustainability targets like Net Zero, circularity, or regenerative business practices. It provides tools to detect early signals of emerging disruptions, empowering them to proactively craft adaptive strategies.

By employing approaches such as scenario planning, trend analysis, and stakeholder engagement, CSOs can turn potential challenges, like supply chain vulnerabilities or resource scarcity, into opportunities for resilience, including advancing circular economy initiatives, investing in robust infrastructure, and creating new markets.

Strategic foresight ensures that short-term actions are aligned with broader, long-term objectives, such as achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or transitioning to a circular economy. Innovation is a critical lever for sustainability. Strategic foresight allows organizations to explore new business models, identify emerging technologies, and create solutions that are future-ready.

For instance, foresight can highlight opportunities in biobased materials or predict shifts in resource availability, guiding R&D investments. A foresight-driven approach enables organizations to stress-test their strategies against various scenarios. This is particularly relevant for CSOs, who must ensure that sustainability initiatives are resilient to external shocks, such as policy changes or supply chain disruptions.

Early recognition of emerging trends, such as advancements in renewable energy storage or the rise of carbon markets, allows organizations to act ahead of the curve. By crafting alternative futures, CSOs can prepare for best-case, worst-case, and most-likely scenarios, ensuring their strategies remain robust.

Foresight fosters a holistic view, helping to understand the interconnectedness of environmental, social, and economic systems and how interventions in one area may affect others. From the EU Green Deal to emerging carbon border taxes, policy landscapes are shifting rapidly. Strategic foresight helps anticipate these changes and integrate them into long-term planning. Foresight encourages cross-sector collaboration, enabling CSOs to engage stakeholders in co-creating sustainable futures and effectively align their strategic measures.

KONE, a global leader in elevators and escalators, collaborated with VTT to explore future scenarios for sustainable and resilient urban living through strategic foresight. By identifying trends such as smart cities, circular economy principles, and resilient infrastructure, KONE sought new search fields for user-driven, sustainable innovation. As a result, the company has innovated products and services to align with emerging urban needs while strengthening its market position and driving sustainability in the industry. [Case KONE: Better urban living decision-making with foresight]

Cargotec employed VTT’s “Future Radar” foresight methodology to proactively align its long-term technology strategy with the global shift towards sustainable development, focusing on trends such as electrification, automation, and circular economy practices. This strategic approach enabled Cargotec to innovate sustainable cargo handling solutions, strengthen its market leadership, and contribute to a greener logistics ecosystem. [Case: Cargotec – Proactive technology strategy and sustainable development]

Transport solutions company VAK partnered with VTT to integrate advanced sustainability practices and digital innovations into its operations, focusing on energy efficiency, lifecycle optimization, and reducing environmental impact. This collaboration has positioned VAK for future-proof, sustainable growth by enhancing its competitive edge and meeting increasing demands for greener logistics solutions. [Strategic partnership sets VAK on the path toward sustainable growth]

Despite its potential, strategic foresight is underutilized by CSOs. Common barriers include a lack of familiarity with foresight methodologies, resistance to long-term thinking in profit-driven corporate cultures, challenges in integrating foresight insights into actionable business strategies, and limited collaboration between sustainability and strategy teams.

To leverage strategic foresight effectively, CSOs should equip themselves and their teams with foresight skills through workshops and professional development programs. Building cross-functional teams can bridge the gap between strategy and sustainability. Using AI and big data can enhance trend analysis and scenario development. Engaging diverse perspectives, including policymakers, communities, and industry peers, can help co-create future strategies. Integrating foresight processes into corporate planning and decision-making cycles can institutionalize the practice.

As businesses navigate an era of unprecedented change, the CSO’s role is more critical than ever. Strategic foresight empowers leaders to look beyond immediate challenges, anticipate future opportunities, and drive transformative change. By embracing foresight, CSOs can ensure that their organizations are not only prepared for the future but are actively shaping it. The question is no longer whether CSOs need strategic foresight but how quickly they can adopt it to lead their organizations toward a sustainable and resilient future.