The Coast Guard: Foresight in Action
Two full-time employees and $500,000 annually transformed 50,000-person Coast Guard from world-class responders into anticipators—less than one penny per $100 budget delivering 23 years of structural impact. Post-9/11 realization: reacting isn't enough when the world rewrites rules faster than playbooks update. Discover Project Evergreen's alternative futures methodology—not predictions but strategic sandboxes where hundreds immerse in four divergent "what if" worlds, identifying cross-scenario strategic needs that hold up whether Arctic geopolitics or cyber warfare dominates. Learn how scenarios stress-tested billion-dollar investments, requiring every budget request prove resilience across multiple futures before approval. Concrete outcomes: Deployable Operations Group creation, Force Readiness Command establishment, undersea infrastructure protection before vulnerability became obvious. The multiplier effect: 1,000+ participants became strategic thinking evangelists, spreading scenario insights throughout organization. FEMA and Port Authority adopted methodology because structure beats short-term anxiety. Imagination costs little; ignoring futures proves catastrophically expensive through wrong capabilities and missed opportunities. 00:00:36 Post-9/11 Coast Guard question: "What if we'd been planning for wrong future?"—sparked 23-year foresight transformation 00:02:40 Alternative futures scenarios: strategic sandboxes, not predictions—immerse hundreds in divergent worlds, identify cross-scenario strategic needs 00:04:59 Scenarios stress-tested major expenditures: every budget request proved resilience across multiple futures, not convenient assumptions 00:06:01 Concrete impacts: Deployable Operations Group created, Force Readiness Command established, underwater infrastructure protection prioritized before obvious 00:08:09 Two full-time employees, $500K annually—less than one penny per $100 in $12B budget for transformative impact
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