Foresight Portfolio
The Incubator leads forward-looking work designed to help leaders anticipate and prepare for global risks.
The U.S. Chamber Foundation’s Incubator engages public- and private-sector leaders in structured simulations that explore future disruptions, uncover systemic vulnerabilities, and identify early-stage strategies for resilience. These scenario planning sessions are designed to catalyze cross-sector collaboration, improve crisis response, and drive strategic investments across sectors and geographies.
Tools and Methodologies
Each session is grounded in strategic foresight methodologies that bring complex risks to life and uncover actionable insights. Common tools deployed by the Incubator include:
- Future wheels to explore the first-, second-, and third-order implications of change events
- Risk and opportunity maps to prioritize decisions based on the severity and likelihood of risks and opportunities
- PESTEL analyses to assess the political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal implications of risks
- Shell’s bow-tie method to evaluate the early warning indicators, root causes, and amplifiers preceding risks, and the actions, contingencies, and effects succeeding risks
War Games
The Incubator convenes senior leaders from business, government, philanthropy, and academia for high-level war games on global threat scenarios. Born out of crisis response efforts during COVID-19, this work has evolved into a flagship series within the U.S. Chamber Foundation’s Global Threats Initiative.
Inspired by real cyber intrusions into U.S. infrastructure, this simulation examined how stealthy, state-sponsored attacks could compromise water systems—particularly in small, under-resourced communities.
Latest Content
- Our Global Threats Initiative aims to mobilize whole-of-society solutions to whole-of-society problems. Senior Manager Kelsey Margey and Innovation Scholar Charlie Edwards share more insights and connect the dots from our latest research.U.S. businesses operate in a world of evolving international policies and heightened geopolitical tension. Our analysis of corporate financial reports and earnings calls reveals accelerated concern.This report provides a data-based assessment of how U.S. companies perceive geopolitical risk and articulates a recommended decision-making process and framework to manage such risk.In recognition of World Quantum Day, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, in partnership with the Boston Consulting Group, shares a high-level summary of significant findings from a war game conducted with U.S. public and private sector leaders.The world is facing a "polycrisis" of interconnected challenges, including economic instability, geopolitical tensions, and extreme weather.
