With only 365 days until we arrive at the 1989 hit film Back to the Future’s future time of October 21st 2015, Lachlan Hastings of MX News has already begun the search to find out what we might have invented in the last few decades and whether Marty McFly will be flying hoverboar.

For boards and executive teams, Where’s our Hoverboard raises practical questions about where authority sits, how trust is maintained under pressure, and which decisions genuinely require human judgment. Organisations that surface these questions before a crisis are far better prepared than those that discover them in one.

The most important question is not whether Where’s our Hoverboard will matter, but how quickly it will matter in your specific context. Leaders benefit most from mapping the ripple effects early — not just the direct impact but the second and third-order consequences that arrive later and hit harder. That is the practical work of foresight.