Forget About Future Proof. Make Your Organization Future Fit.

In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, there is no such thing as a “future-proof” strategy. Too many variables are in constant flux. Instead, aim to be future-fit by adopting an adaptable, resilient, futurist mindset.

The Gartner Tapestry Framework equips executive leaders to monitor a range of variables across seven distinct areas to enhance strategic decision making. It helps you position your organization to successfully compete in the AI race and prosper in this age of uncertainty.

Leaders should document any change variables they see in one of the following forms:

• Forces: An influence that has the potential to cause or drive change

• Trends: The direction in which something develops or changes over time

• Macrotrends: Large-scale, long-term shifts that impact multiple sectors and geographies across multiple domains

• Signals: Indicators or signs that suggest a particular trend, force or disruption may be in play — or will be soon

• Disruptions: Significant disturbances or alterations that shake up existing methods, markets or technologies

• Predictions: Claims that particular events will occur at certain points in the future, or that trends will continue to happen until certain points in the future

The impact of these catalysts varies across contexts — or worlds — in which organizations may operate. These worlds include:

• Earth: The world we live in

• Space: The world we are exploring as part of the industrialization of space, defined by exploration, commercialization and militarization

• Spatial: The world we are building by blending the real and virtual world through the metaverse, digital overlays, information from spatial computing, and geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI)

• Synthetic: The world we are generating through AI and automation

Change variables can originate from a single influential category of public life, or they can span multiple areas, such as these seven:

• Technology

• Politics

• Economics

• Social/cultural

• Trust/ethics

• Regulatory/legal

• Environmental

Together, these areas make up the tapestry (TPESTRE) of potential sources of change that could upend your business and the context in which it operates.

Using the Tapestry Framework, Gartner analysts have identified seven macrotrends we believe will have the most impact on your organization’s future — one macrotrend for each of the seven categories listed above.

In the environmental category, for example, Gartner has identified “electricity at the edge” as a prevailing macrotrend. Electricity at the edge means power generation and distribution shift to local microgrids and private networks. Enabled by distributed energy resources, batteries, AI and IoT, this decentralized model improves efficiency, stabilizes costs and delivers reliable access to power to maintain operations in an increasingly volatile world.

Explosion in energy demand resulting from AI adoption at scale is the force driving this trend. Energy consumption is poised to increase so much that by 2030, energy-related commodity demand will spark at least 10 geopolitical conflicts, escalating business operational costs.

To learn about all seven macrotrends and how to plan for them, and how to apply the Gartner Tapestry Framework, talk to us about becoming a Gartner client.