Envision

The Envision programme helps participants anticipate divergent futures and spot emerging signals that others may miss. Using structured frameworks, they explore multiple innovation pathways, stress-test opportunities, and translate insights into actionable concepts and plans. Participants also develop the skills to balance foresight with decisive present-day action, shaping the future they want for their organisations.

Overview

Supported by Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF), the Entrepreneurship Centre has been researching opportunity recognition for innovative solutions to complex problems in increasingly uncertain environments. Over the last 2 years, our pilot programmes have explored how entrepreneurs and corporate innovators can meet the dual challenge of anticipating future possibilities and taking actions that help create the future – not just a plausible one, but a preferred future that is sustainable and ethically sound.

Asking how we can shape the future before the future shapes us.

Our pilot studies have curated a methodology that blends strategic foresight with design thinking to leverage weak signals from the Cambridge ecosystem as the building blocks of a systematic approach to futures thinking. This approach is designed to provoke creative and imaginative responses while developing advanced capabilities for innovation and entrepreneurship.

2026 Envision programme

The first programme, launching in 2026, targets leadership and management teams seeking to anticipate plausible futures and actively shape them.

Learn more about the inaugural Envision programme

For more information on Envision programmes and how to engage with the programme, please contact: a.davidson@jbs.cam.ac.uk

Envision programmes

Going forward the Entrepreneurship Centre can provide Envision programmes across the following key areas:

Entrepreneurial training programmes

Challenge the traditional approach to recognising opportunity and learn:

how entrepreneurs think systematically and imaginatively about the future,
to create disruptive but sustainable future value along with a present-day action plan and
to develop a compelling narrative to drive opportunity forward in the ecosystem.

Delivered at both undergraduate and post-doc level.

Training programmes are also suitable for researchers looking to validate the commercial potential in their research and/or identify new fundable research areas.

Corporate Training Programmes

Expanding on the methodology used in the entrepreneurial training programmes by:

providing a deep dive into building innovation pathways across divergent futures and
stress testing against existing business models, product and service offerings and current/planned resource allocations.

Typically, these 3-day programmes build organisational capacity to anticipate and design the future, using the Envision methodology to drive future-focused differentiation and sustainable value in existing and new markets.