By Brent Stockwell, ICMA-CM for the Alliance for Innovation

The Alliance for Innovation’s Strategic Foresight Research: Innovation in Public Services conducted for the City of Fort Worth, Texas, is more than a report about innovation in 2044. It models a leadership discipline that managers of communities of all sizes can apply today.

The strategic foresight process outlined in the report involves scanning 300+ signals, synthesizing them into drivers, identifying their time horizon, grouping by category, and rating them based on impact, plausibility, novelty, and credibility (pp. 11-14).

The work moves intentionally from Drivers of Change (pp. 9-26) to Alternative Futures (pp. 27-44) to Strategic Options (pp. 45-62) not to predict one outcome, but to strengthen decisions across multiple plausible futures.

In this article, I’ve focused on three groups of insights for local government leaders.

1. Workforce and AI Are Enterprise Strategy Questions

Two major drivers, AI Workforce Transitions (p. 15) and Who’s Gonna Do the Work? (p. 24), highlight converging pressures: automation, retirements, labor shortages, and evolving workforce expectations.

The report emphasizes that AI brings both opportunity and risk. Automation can improve productivity, but without investment in reskilling, governance, and cultural adaptation, cities risk reinforcing business as usual.

For local government managers, that reframes AI from a technology tool to a leadership decision:

• Are our AI automation gains building our innovation capacity?
• Are we investing in workforce transition as intentionally as we invest in software automation?
• Do we have governance structures to evaluate emerging technologies responsibly?

Foresight here is not about prediction. It is about preparation.

2. Resilience Is Now Cross-Enterprise

The report identifies Climate-Ready Infrastructure (p. 22) and CyberEmergency Management (p. 16) as critical drivers shaping public services.

Extreme weather, aging infrastructure, digital dependency, and cybersecurity risks are increasingly interconnected. Resilience now spans physical systems, digital systems, and workforce readiness.

Key questions for your team:

• Do we have any single points of failure?
• Are we testing our capital infrastructure investments against multiple climate and cyber futures?
• How have we aligned departments around enterprise resilience?

Resilience is no longer a planning concept. It is an enterprise operating principle.

3. Innovation Is a Governance Choice

Using the Houston Archetype Technique (p. 28), the research outlines five plausible futures (p. 29): a baseline (“Shifting Sands”) (pp. 30-32), collapse (pp. 33-35), new equilibrium (“Moratorium”) (pp. 36-38), and two transformational paths, Participatory Governance (pp.39-41) and Safest City in the USA (pp. 42-44).

The embedded leadership question is simple:

Which transformation do we prefer, and which path are we currently on?

In the baseline future, innovation emphasizes efficiency and incrementalism. In the transformational futures, innovation reshapes governance—through resident co-creation or integrated investments in safety and resilience.

The difference is not circumstance. It is alignment of culture, strategy, and sustained investment.

How can you use these insights in your community

If you want to apply this work locally, start by discussing this article or the report with your leadership team, starting with these questions:

• Which three drivers will most shape our city over the next 20 years?
• If we stay on our current trajectory, which scenario feels most plausible?
• Where are we efficient—but not adaptive?
• What “no-regrets” actions would strengthen us across multiple futures?

The value of this research is not the scenarios themselves. It is the disciplined process: framing a focal question, scanning signals, synthesizing drivers, building archetype-based scenarios, and identifying strategic options that succeed across futures.

That capability can be built with intention and discipline.

If your city is ready to move beyond reacting to trends and toward intentionally shaping its future, the Alliance for Innovation can partner with you—whether to explore workforce transitions, resilience, governance innovation, or another critical issue entirely.

Foresight is not about having a crystal ball.

It is about building leadership habits that ensure your city is ready, no matter which future unfolds.

Want to apply the insights to your organization? Contact Hauson Le at hausonle@transformgov.org