Trends and Futuring Analyst

Ford • Dearborn, MI

5d • $86,600 - $166,200 • Hybrid

About The Position

The Trends + Futuring team is a specialized market research team within Ford that analyzes consumer trends and future scenarios to provide direct insights and implications on Ford’s business, products and services. This team supports strategic planning by helping to expand perspectives, challenge assumptions and anticipate uncertainty to define and occupy future opportunity spaces with greater confidence. They power up innovation by examining the deeper role played by emerging patterns, trends and signals. They also stress-test Ford’s future by building up the resources and confidence to explore and navigate uncertain and ambiguous future scenarios. We are looking for curious, creative, and strategic colleagues to help facilitate the growth of futures thinking throughout Ford Motor Company. You will lead research, communicate insights and facilitate exploration of the future across our business to ultimately prepare ourselves for the uncertain future ahead. Your efforts will focus on making our business and strategies robust and resilient to the various shifts taking place in the world - from consumer trends (next 2-5 years) to the macro trends (next 15 years) shaping the world and our industry. Self-directedness, resourcefulness, comfort with ambiguity and the ability to draw compelling insights from an array of signals, trends and information are essential.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree (social science, psychology, marketing, business, informatics / data science, technology, law or related field)
• Experience in the field of strategic foresight or utilization of foresight tools
• Strategic thinking with a future-forward intuition
• Excellent problem-solving and analysis skills and strong business judgment – able to translate strategic plans into executable actions
• Experience designing and/or facilitating group collaboration workshops
• Ability to frame and explain sophisticated ideas and concepts in accessible language and formats
• Ability to collaborate well with cross-functional teams to develop agreement and consensus that drives progress and results

Nice To Haves

• Miro, mTab, S&P Global, SharePoint

Responsibilities

• Conduct scanning to analyze emerging signals, trends, and drivers in order to understand and anticipate changes taking place at the core, adjacency, and periphery of a business; these inputs inform a hypothesis about potential impacts, risks, or opportunities for Ford.
• Research shifts in the automotive industry and its consumer base with trusted internal and external data sources such as sales data, vehicle buyer surveys, and market reports.
• Research the contextual business environment, keeping a pulse on emerging signals and trends in the STEEP categories - Social, Technological, Environmental, Economic and Political factors / dynamics.
• Authoring data-driven trends, reports and scenarios that focus on the shifts impacting the future of the auto industry and its consumers.
• Leading and facilitating collaborative workshops with cross-functional teams by providing insightful trends to support program workstreams.
• Acting as the voice of the customer beyond the confines of the industry - you are the primary resource and window into the consumer world outside of the automotive market for partner teams.
• Integrating scenarios / futures into organizational strategy/project work through facilitating strategic workshops / conversations with teams for various ends including: Developing insights into future markets, Surfacing, assessing and choosing options that are most resilient to potential future uncertainties, Stress-testing strategies, plans or strategic hypotheses.
• Developing communication assets that socialize and introduce future scenarios with key internal audiences.
• Challenging partners to think critically about a range of futures and how to build robust strategies to prepare for Ford’s place in them.

Benefits

• Immediate medical, dental, vision and prescription drug coverage
• Flexible family care days, paid parental leave, new parent ramp-up programs, subsidized back-up child care and more
• Family building benefits including adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, fertility treatments, and more
• Vehicle discount program for employees and family members and management leases
• Tuition assistance
• Established and active employee resource groups
• Paid time off for individual and team community service
• A generous schedule of paid holidays, including the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day
• Paid time off and the option to purchase additional vacation time.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level