Being able to anticipate future threats, obligations, and opportunities is an essential skill for all innovators and business professionals alike.

The laws of physics dictate the fundamentals of any marketplace. Although in times of rapids change, such as the features of the fourth industrial revolution, it becomes difficult to anticipate how a market, competitors, employees, and colleagues will reach to a constantly changing landscape.

Depending on fundamentals, those behaviors that are immune to change, can be instructive for designing new strategies, offers, products, services, and business models.

Although it's difficult to assess the specific moves competitors and marketplace actors will make, assuming they will act in their own best interests to take care of their concerns is rational. Based on these assumptions, a narrow range of options can emerge.

Additionally, having time to prepare for future scenarios is mission critical. Without time to design new offers, counter-measures, and responses to the moves of marketplace actors, organizations and individuals aren't able to adequately prepare. Having more time to compete is always a competitive advantage - it's the difference between play in the first quarter versus the final minutes of a football match.

But, how do organizations, innovation and growth teams, and individuals anticipate future threats, obligations, and opportunities?

Specific moves are difficult if not impossible to predict. Simply knowing a new offer, product, or service is in development is table steaks.

Taking care of threats, obligations, and opportunities - in that order - are also instructive. It's impossible to exploit new opportunities without first taking care of obligations. Adequately addressing obligations without first neutralizing threats will almost certainly produce breakdowns.