Future Proofing Your Business Next Steps and Practical Tools

This final session will concentrate on practical tools and techniques that you can use to anticipate future change, test strategic options and respond with confidence in an uncertain environment.

It will also feature the ACS Group’s business growth journey, exploring how they have proactively responded to emerging trends and opportunities in their market.

This free session will:

• Introduce practical futures tools and techniques used by leading organisations
• Help you turn insight into action
• Explore real world examples of transformative change
• Support longer-term strategic thinking and resilience

The webinar will be introduced by Ewan Mearns of Scottish Enterprise.

The webinar will be led by Alister Wilson of Waverley Management Consultants and author of the UK Government’s Futures toolkit. Alister will discuss practical approaches to futures thinking.

The speakers

Michael Cusack is Chief Sustainability Officer at ACS Clothing Ltd, Europe’s leading circular fashion infrastructure provider and the highest-scoring B Corp ever certified globally. A chartered engineer with over two decades’ experience, Michael works at the intersection of manufacturing, technology, and social impact, helping organisations anticipate and respond to transformative change driven by climate risk, resource scarcity, digitalisation, and shifting social expectations. At ACS, he has helped lead the transition from a traditional hirewear model to a fully circular, AI-enabled system spanning rental, repair, resale, refurbishment, and textile recovery. Michael regularly collaborates with governments, universities, and industry to translate megatrends into practical, scalable solutions aligned with Net Zero, skills development, and inclusive growth.

Alister Wilson, is Director, Futures at Waverley, a strategic foresight consultancy working with governments, public agencies, and industry to navigate long-term change and uncertainty. Alister specialises in horizon scanning, scenario development, and technology foresight, with particular expertise in helping organisations move from futures insight to practical strategic decision making to support organisational resilience. Recent and current projects include developing scenarios for the decarbonisation of the global steel industry, examining the opportunities for UK industry in emerging technologies and facilitating stakeholder workshops for UKRI to support its refresh of the UK’s research and innovation roadmap.

Ewan Mearns is a Strategy Team Leader in Scottish Enterprise, Scotland’s largest economic development agency. Ewan has wide experience in economic development over 30 years with interests in strategy implementation, sustainability and futures thinking. He leads SE’s futures work, building the organisation’s capabilities in analysing megatrends and external change, and translating that into Scottish Enterprise’s business and project support.

Who should attend

This session is ideal if you’re looking to prepare your organisation for future change, including

Those responsible for strategy, innovation or long-term planning

Anyone looking for practical ways to prepare their organisation for future change

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