In the 1920s, the average lifespan of an S&P 500 company was 67 years. Today it is 16.

Strategy, foresight and disruption have always been inextricably linked. Foresight practices (either formal or informal) have provided insight to organizations about potential future disruptions (and opportunities) and organizations have reinvented their strategies to make themselves better prepared and resilient to change. Yet all is not well. Survival rates for small and young businesses are grim. Former market leaders such as Kodak, Blackberry and Nokia have failed despite having had vast strategic and financial resources at their disposal. And many other companies and industries are also in line for potential demise. With rapidly compressed timelines to develop and build profitable products and services, the speed at which an organization embraces and responds strategically to disruption is increasingly becoming a determining factor in whether it succeeds or dies. Based on an extensive literature review and primary research completed for this paper, the author surmises that this shifting market interplay between disruption, strategy and foresight is being amplified by 4 recognizable market disruption patterns: 1) Tomorrow Today: the collapse of organizational and product development timelines, 2) Fast-Fast: the inability of leadership to make faster yet effective decisions in the face of rapid market shifts, 3) The Idea Monopoly: the absence of a more organizationally diverse set of ideas available to leadership in strategy development, and 4) The Disenchanted Forest: a high level of employee disengagement which can significantly impact strategy buy-in and speed of strategy execution. The insights gained from this research paper has resulted in the development of a new and adapted strategic foresight tool in the form of a market disruption simulation game prototype. This game incorporates learnings from the 4 market disruptive patterns and aims to help time-strapped companies to better embrace a more rapidly emerging future to become more organizationally and financially resilient to increasingly volatile market environments. At the same time, the game allows foresight to begin to realign itself from a solely “long view” focus and expand into a practice that is more agile, dynamic and better suited for shorter-term futures, strategy development and execution.