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Arthur D. Little (ADL) Executive Visioning Workshops were high level events where key industry leaders networked with each other and defined milestones they wanted to achieve to meet a positive future.

As a marketer, I loved these events. I began by taking the future our industry experts envisioned and somehow making it real. One way was to develop a future newscast. Imagine the 6 pm news 20 years in the future. For our energy forum, we did just that with energy stories highlighting the evening broadcast. Hypothetical company newsletters were distributed with their main focus on a future event as though it had already happened—a pipeline built, a new energy source found, a spike in energy requirements in a different part of the world. Each of these scenarios was based on research of what could be. Other visioning forums focused on other industries or key technologies that could have a major impact on business.

ADL facilitators took this future and, working with participants, built the events that had to have occurred for the future we depicted. The events were rich in discussion including thoughts on technology development, public policies, and global trends.

At the conclusion of the event, we wrote up our discoveries, provided the information back to participants and discussed the interplay with industry media. The events defined leadership and helped us gain strategy and technology work with major market players. Some of our participants enjoyed the events so much that we developed, for a fee, visioning workshops for their individual company and executives.

Below are the covers of two event conclusion documents.  The video at the top of this post was created to start a workshop by setting the stage in the future.