What is Horizon Scanning?

The K2 Advisory methodology

There is currently a gap in the analyst market for providing future-facing work around the development of professional roles and organisational departments and what should be put in place to plan for those changes.

This forward-looking advice is of particular interest to higher level executives with a strategic remit and who are concerned about their own career development and the direction to set for their team or department. For this reason the chosen K2 Advisory methodology is Horizon Scanning.

It is a form of research analysis tasked with working out what might well happen in the future. By its very nature it cannot be empirical because that is an approach rooted in the present or the past, or to put it another (rather clichéd) way it is like trying to drive by looking in the rear view mirror.

The basic methodology

Horizon Scanning requires analytical skills in:

Sifting - reviewing literature, scanning data and information, monitoring and engaging with communities

Understanding - reviewing the drivers in operation and establishing normative values

Inference - development of possible scenarios and back-casting to the present to see what action might need to be taken in the near-term

Why bother with Horizon Scanning?

Organisations need to plan for the future and in order to do that they need:

plausible insights into what may happen

influence to help change current habitual thinking

The K2 approach to analysis is underpinned by its links into the professional communities run by parent company, Sift Media. This eco-system of professionals and senior executives in Financial Services, Public Sector and Human Resources provides us with unrivalled connections into the end user community. In addition, K2 is networked into the broader CIO community via our Executive Leadership Briefing series, advising upon and debating what matters most to them.

In this way K2 Advisory provides a differentiated approach combining analytically rigorous findings rooted within professional communities, with the ability to help shape business conversations in those communities around our chosen research areas. K2 Advisory is thus in a unique position to provide insight from these communities, as well as to help influence thinking in those communities.