Acute Foresight Consulting's focus on preserving Western civilization from collapse already makes us distinctive. However, there are other factors that differentiate us, both from other consulting firms in general, and even from other strategic foresight consulting firms.

We are specifically a strategic foresight consulting firm. This means two things: (1) we focus on different sorts of things than the typical management consulting firm (MCF), and (2) we proceed from a different basic assumption than the typical MCF. 

Our differences in focus look like this:

• With our governmental clients, we focus on improving effectiveness in performing the organization's mission, especially with regard to functions that have an impact on the survival of Western civilization. The typical MCF might focus on improving efficiency--a worthy concern, to be sure, but one that is less important for us than effectiveness,

• With our corporate clients, we focus on developing goods and services that will make a profit from improving the likelihood that Western civilization survives. The typical MCF might focus on improving short-term profitability, regardless of the effect on society overall.

The difference in our basic assumption looks like this:

• As a foresight consulting firm, we proceed from the assumption that some particular state of affairs that we could call "The Future" does not exist. That's right: "The Future" does not exist. Rather, it is as if we were on a ship adrift upon a sea with a vast number of islands, each one a different future, some inviting, some devastating. Our challenge is to identify a potentially hospitable destination, and then deliberately navigate under power to reach it, avoiding the treacherous reefs that lie along the way.

• By contrast, the typical MCF might assume that there indeed is something called "The Future," to which we are being led by a multiplicity of trends and societal forces. Discerning that future is what forecasting is about, and the MCF's task is to help an organization to take advantage of that future.

• In brief, the typical MCF jumps from forecasting to planning to take advantage of that trend-determined baseline future. By contrast, we at Acute Foresight Consulting take the baseline future as a mere point of departure, as we help our clients to make something better. That's our tagline: We build futures.™

Although we have a great deal in common with other strategic foresight firms, Acute Foresight Consulting stands out in a number of ways:

• We incorporate perspectives from various specialties within the field of human psychology. As one of our firm's maxims goes, "Everything is psychology." Human reward hierarchies have an impact on climate change. Cognitive biases influence many aspects of social change, social trends, and domestic politics. Human motivational structures, developmental psychology, and cognitive biases all affect geopolitical realities. All of this knowledge is highly useful in our work, both in terms of identifying the causes of societal problems and trends, and identifying ways to implement efforts to solve these problems.

• We are enthusiastic supporters of Team Quantitative. We find quantitative analysis crucial to understanding the nature of the problems and challenges that our clients face. And, as another of our firm's maxims go, "A clear understanding of the problem prefigures the lines of its solution" (attributed to Margaret Mead).  Yes, we use the qualitative analysis tools that other strategic foresight firms use--but we find great value in understanding the issues from a quantitative perspective, as well.