Dinis Guarda interviews Rupert Hofmann, Chief Foresight Strategist at Audi Business Innovation and founder of the Foresight Academy, in his YouTube podcast. In this episode, they discuss the founding of the Foresight Academy and collaborative efforts to reshape the industry through technology and strategic foresight. They highlight the importance of cross-industry partnerships and the transformative potential of AI in driving future innovations. The podcast is powered by Businessabc.net and citiesabc.com.
Rupert Hofmann is a prominent foresight practitioner and author known for his innovative trend-receiver methodology. He combines his artistic talent as an observational draftsman with a deep understanding of people’s motives and desires, creating linear drawings that capture modern life.
As a Strategic Foresight Practitioner, Rupert works for Audi Business Innovation where he started the cross-industry platform, Foresight Academy. During the interview with Dinis, Rupert shares:
“It has always been important for us to innovate in a cross-industry way and in a way where we have dialogues with many different people and have different angles of view. That's what brought up the Foresight Academy.”
Audi business Innovation brings new technological implications, especially in the digital and AI world to the company. Audi created the business Innovation and the framework to make that possible with the first partners which were Hornbach, Ikea, Adidas, and many more.”
Foresight Academy: Collaborative exploration of future trends
During the interview, Rupert highlights that the Foresight Academy is a collaborative initiative that brings together industry leaders to explore future technological and societal trends.
“Foresight Academy is a collaboration of major companies innovating together responding to the question ‘how do we want to live in 10 years?’. We are researching and exchange around that question and try to respond to that because the partner companies use that to influence their strategy, their product development, and so on.
We have a joint budget, we have research questions which all the partners bring up because that's interesting to see where the overlaps are between the most interesting research questions of Ferrari, of Allianz, of Porsche, and McDonald's. So, you have a very broad view and then we build hypotheses together. We work on that, we have exchange meetings. So, it's really a kind of an exchange and research journey which we're doing together, so that we have the strategy.
The innovation, the business development, and the product development people from the different industries working together is how we do that and then we visualise it. We have a legacy that does the major part of the research and visualisation and we use all the material to spark innovation and good foresight knowledge in and its application in our diverse companies.
So, it's three things: the exchange, research and of course, transfer how to bring the knowledge about potentials, about what makes sense, what people want to make out of these shifts, how to use that to spark the development of the products and services and to position the brand in the right way. So, the basic question is who we want to be as a brand in a few years.”
Balancing AI integration with human sensibilities
Dinis discusses with Rupert the significant findings and insights derived from Foresight Academy's extensive research and collaborations with major global brands. To this, Rupert explains:
“We have 30 reports and many movies. We see that collaboration makes much sense in foresight because we get a broader view, and we get more credibility from the learnings.
What we learned from one of this research is the importance of Europe being at the forefront of smart regulation to bring AI in the race in terms of climate change. People will now have tech and the tremendous opportunities of AI embedded in a huge way. So, to say it simply in a way that fits our senses and our physical limitations as well which enhances that but not by becoming cyborgs but more subtle humanely.”
