Let’s have a brief look at brands using foresight. Today, it’s Decathlon.

Many large and forward-thinking companies have established capacities specialising in strategic foresight, scenario planning, and trend analysis. These teams or individuals are responsible for identifying emerging trends, potential disruptors, and long-term opportunities and threats, actively contributing to the corporate long-term strategies. While it’s challenging to provide an exhaustive list, we present a series of examples of companies known for their investment in foresight activities helping them to achieve long term goals and desired futures.

Decathlon is one of the world’s largest sporting goods retailers, with more than 108,000 employees in more than 70 countries. One of the traditional Decathlon deliverables every 2 or 3 years had been to produce a book of macro trends for the world, where people from inside the company could write and share about their own vision. Then in 2018 they took the gamble to open up the creative writing and envisioning process expanding it to a much wider ecosystem. 

Seeking to evolve beyond its prior Vision 2026, Decathlon embarked on a collective endeavour to craft a new vision for 2030 alongside its collaborators. Over a seven-month period, Decathlon engaged its 92,000-strong workforce, along with customers and partners, in a co-writing process. Beginning with internal teams exploring themes such as the Future of Living, Future of People, and Future of Sportspeople, the dialogue expanded to include external stakeholders in January 2020, facilitated by extensive communications outreach. This inclusive, hybrid approach spanned physical workshops worldwide and a multilingual digital platform, Decathlon Vision 2030. These efforts delineated Exploration Territories—shaping the vision’s foundations around themes like humanity’s future, technological shifts, and transitioning from individual to collective perspectives. Despite facing unexpected challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Decathlon persevered with 100% digital writing workshops. Ultimately, Vision 2030 had to get transformed to Vision 2021 due to the pandemic and action required here and now. Charlie Felgate, the visionary leader driving the Decathlon Vision movement, played a pivotal role in orchestrating this transformative journey.

See Decathlon’s innovations!