A strategy with one future has no backup

Your company is a successful competitor in its industry. But behind the numbers, you are disconcerted. The current corporate strategy is actually just a projection of prior success. This is risky – and it raises the question: “What would better planning look like?” At a minimum, there should be a backup in a time of great turbulence.

In the epic battle between Kodak and Fujifilm in the early 2000s, it is fashionable to focus on the loser’s story. Kodak’s narrative covers its invention of digital photography in the 1970s, but it ends badly when the company ignored it until it was too late. How could well-funded, smart C-suiters and board members be so wrong? Were they being reckless?

Here in Jamaica, Cable and Wireless (C&W) made a similar mistake. When Digicel entered the market in 2001, it was no surprise. In retrospect, we marvel at C&W’s lack of foresight, but they were led by highly trained professionals with decades of experience across national telecom markets.

Consider this counterexample

Facing the same facts as Kodak, Fujifilm foresaw that its dominant category would not continue to pay the bills. As such, Fujifilm didn’t simply build a better camera or a longer-lasting film.

It moved into healthcare, cosmetics, and advanced materials – businesses that shared its underlying chemistry but answered completely different customer questions. Fujifilm’s move illustrates the difference between innovating a product versus a category. One improves an answer. The other asks a new question.

It is remarkable that Fujifilm declined to redefine its future using a variation of an existing product or service.

A few years later, Blockbuster and Nokia failed to learn from Fujifilm’s experience when their categories were displaced by streaming video and smartphones, respectively. The same thing happened to C&W, whose business model of offering premium TDMA phones to privileged Jamaicans was entirely replaced within days.

In retrospect, none of them had backup plans

Today, in 2026, market conditions have changed. Arguably, companies still don’t think of long-term consequences – if a result won’t show up within three to five years, they tend not to see it at all.

In this context, Fujifilm’s multicategory approach merits consideration. Should your organisation, regardless of industry, pursue a similar line of defence? While most companies wait, plan around a single legacy category, and avoid looking long term, how can yours stand out?

These are difficult questions to answer. They require a modern, AI-powered approach.

Just the challenge of imagining a future 15–30 years hence defeats most leadership teams who don’t even try. Considering multiple long-term futures at once is definitely harder. In the past, it was a project for external consultants or academics who produced long-winded reports that ended up gathering dust on shelves.

Today, AI tools can help. To illustrate, imagine planning for a future of generative AI back in 2021, when GPT-3 only hinted at the advent of ChatGPT a year later. Like most companies, your organisation probably missed the opportunity to work the new technology into its long-term plans.

With a tool like Preempt.live, you don’t need to fall behind. It lets you weigh thousands of industry-relevant scenarios in a few hours.

But this commitment to evaluate multiple categories at once, alongside their likely triggers, is not altogether new. IBM’s Horizon 3 Program held 17 candidates simultaneously back in 2000. Samsung named five similar categories in 2010.

In both cases, many listed opportunities did not bear fruit. But some did – and that was enough. This may look like no more than a betting game. The point is not their hit rate but the fact that they had a portfolio. In other words, they created and maintained a range of backup categories. Presumably, they actively monitored and updated their insights into this portfolio as the environment evolved.

Fortunately, if your team already thinks in multiple long-term categories, the next steps are easy.

Name a handful of candidate categories, with the help of AI and the C-suite/board.

Manage each new category rigorously

To create the right ownership, don’t simply assign them to departments. Appoint internal champions for each category who genuinely care about its future.

Teach champions to use AI to monitor faint signals regularly.

None of this requires certainty – only candidates, champions, and attention to weak signals likely to mature over the next fifteen to thirty years. A strategy with a single future has no backup. Start building the second one this quarter while the first still funds the business.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search his prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.