The Future is an Ecosystem Challenge
1.9.2026 Kirsimarja Blomqvist
Most organizations invest in foresight. They monitor trends, analyze technologies, assess regulatory changes, and explore future opportunities. Yet ecosystems rarely make sense of the future together.
The biggest opportunities and challenges of our time, from the green transition and energy systems to digitalization and industrial transformation, cannot be solved by any single organization. The knowledge required is distributed across companies, universities, technology providers, public organizations, and customers. However, while expertise is distributed, effective mechanisms for bringing these diverse perspectives together are often missing.
As a result, organizations frequently conduct foresight activities independently, develop different interpretations of emerging developments, and struggle to align investments, capabilities, and actions. Ecosystems often lack a trusted environment where participants can share knowledge, interpret signals, develop a shared understanding of emerging opportunities and challenges, and coordinate their efforts.
In the FORECO research project, we ask:
How can ecosystem partners make sense of the future together and translate that shared understanding into action?
To address this challenge, we are developing the concept of an Ecosystem Futuremaking Space (EFS). EFS is both an organizing form and a trusted online space that brings together human expertise, data, and AI-supported analysis to support collective sensemaking about possible futures. By enabling ecosystem actors to share perspectives, combine distributed knowledge, interpret emerging signals, and co-create new insights, EFS helps transform fragmented foresight efforts into shared understanding and coordinated action (Blomqvist et al. 20261).
The future will increasingly be shaped by ecosystems rather than individual organizations. The key question is therefore how diverse actors can develop a shared understanding of the future and act on it together.
Why is LUT Business School part of this project?
LUT University has a strong tradition of addressing complex societal and organizational challenges through collaboration with industry and other stakeholders. The Ecosystem Futuremaking Space builds on research on Fast Expert Teams, an online organizing model developed at LUT Business School. The project extends this work by exploring how digital environments can support knowledge co-creation, collective sensemaking, and coordinated action across organizational boundaries.
- Blomqvist, K., Siemon, D., Valkokari, K. and Paasi, J. (2026). Ecosystem Futuremaking Space. Problem definition and Design objectives. PRO-VE 2026, Padova.