Strategic Foresight: Rethinking Growth Strategy Assumptions

Despite bold ambition, many mid-market organisations are still making strategic bets based on yesterday’s market logic. The result? Growth strategies that look good on paper—but falter in execution. In today’s dynamic, interconnected environment, the biggest risk isn’t choosing the wrong path—it’s moving confidently in a direction that no longer makes sense.

Strategy vs. Strategic Foresight

Traditional strategy often begins with a fixed goal and works backwards from there. But what if the goal itself is out of date? 

Strategic Foresight takes a different view. It doesn't attempt to predict the future, but rather prepares organisations to test decisions against multiple plausible futures. This matters because:

• Markets are nonlinear. Sudden shifts in regulation, buyer behaviour, capital flows, or technology adoption can upend well-laid plans.

• Assumptions age quickly. Strategies built around static personas, competitive benchmarks, or linear revenue models can become obsolete within months.

• Mid-sized firms feel it most. Without the buffers of scale or capital, bad assumptions hit harder and faster.

• Foresight helps uncover these brittle assumptions early—and offers leadership teams structured tools to rethink what good strategy looks like.

How Outdated Assumptions Sneak In

Most assumptions aren’t consciously made—they’re inherited. Common traps include:

• Copying competitors’ playbooks, assuming their model fits your context

• Believing past customer preferences will shape future behaviour

• Anchoring forecasts to old baselines, especially in volatile categories

• Planning inside silos, where teams optimise parts but miss the system-level view

When leadership doesn’t regularly challenge these assumptions, strategy becomes fragile—optimised for a world that may no longer exist.

Consider the example of Zoom. After its explosive growth during the pandemic, the company assumed that remote-first work would continue to expand at the same pace. However, as hybrid work patterns emerged and enterprise clients consolidated tools into platforms like Microsoft Teams, Zoom's growth decelerated significantly. By fiscal year 2024, revenue growth had slowed to just 3%, reaching $4.53 billion. The company's valuation also plummeted from a peak of $139 billion in October 2020 to around $18 billion by mid-2024. This highlights the dangers of overreliance on short-term trends without strategic foresight.

Foresight as an Executive Discipline

Strategic Foresight isn’t about hiring futurists—it’s about instilling an executive habit: continuously pressure-testing what you believe to be true.

That means asking questions like:

• What signals might indicate our growth model is under stress?

• What changes in buyer behaviour could render our channel strategy ineffective?

• If a new market entrant rewrote the rules tomorrow, how prepared are we?

High-performing firms increasingly make foresight part of their operational rhythm—embedding it into strategic planning, investment prioritisation, even product development.

And while some organisations miss the mark, others are quietly applying foresight to stay ahead. 

Take Nestlé, for example. The company aggressively expanded its plant-based meat portfolio, anticipating robust consumer demand. However, the market did not grow as expected. In 2023, Nestlé reduced its plant-based offerings, including scaling back its Sweet Earth brand, due to slower-than-anticipated adoption and challenges in achieving taste and price parity with traditional meat products. This scenario underscores the importance of testing market assumptions against diverse consumer behavior scenarios. Strategic Foresight could have guided more measured investments and product rollouts aligned with actual market readiness.

A Better Path Forward for Mid-Market Leaders

For CEOs and Boards in mid-sized organisations, the challenge is balancing decisiveness with adaptability. Strategic Foresight offers a way to:

• Improve decision quality by exposing blind spots early

• Avoid rework costs from delayed pivots

• Spot growth inflection points ahead of competitors

• Rebuild confidence in strategy under conditions of uncertainty

It’s not about pausing to overanalyse—it’s about acting with clearer logic and broader context. 

Final Thought

If your strategy hasn’t been tested against emerging signals, it may already be out of sync. Strategic Foresight helps leaders avoid false confidence and create plans that survive contact with change. In today’s market, that’s not a luxury - it’s a leadership imperative.

At bdxp, we help mid-sized organisations embed Strategic Foresight into real-world growth decisions. If this perspective resonates, let's have a conversation or explore our Strategic Foresight services further.