There is a new initiative based at the University of Glasgow - the new Futurecast Centre for Marketing & Management.

I am highlighting this exciting new service at this early stage to seek supportive companies and organisations that would wish to assess the possibility of engaging with the Centre and utilise its resources and knowledge to better map out and shape their competitive future.

This new initiative offers supporting and collaborating partner organisations a radical new robust and practical science - Futurecasting - with a world-class Centre that offers a forum to acquire more knowledge about future developments facing business and society and will increase alertness amongst managers of future scenarios comprised of multiple environmental factors (e.g. technology advances, internationalisation, market structures, patterns of consumption, social changes etc) and help to transform those insights and predictions into key management tasks - anticipation, planning, exploiting and even influencing future happenings.

These new insightful areas will have a great deal of impact on future management decision-making. Indeed, they will shine a welcome new light on how Marketing should evolve, enhancing our ability to prepare for future profit-making.

The Centre will draw upon the various interests and diverse areas of expertise in the collaborating institutions worldwide, and from knowledge and studies of trends in management processes to enhance marketing and competitiveness for collaborating organisations.

There has already been marked interest from around the globe from potential academic collaborators and organisations, and although the growth of Futurecasting will include many new 'Centres' from abroad, the 'centre of gravity' will be in Scotland. I do hope that you would consider this opportunity and would like to know more about the Centre and what it could do for you, or your clients, partners and other contacts. The University has now given its backing to this initiative, and with your support, we can make it a major source of competitiveness for companies in the UK and Europe.

If you'd like to discuss the Centre and how it will help you in more detail, please email me on davidh@themarketingleaders.com or call me on 0131 202 6310.

(The Futurecast Centre for Marketing and Management, Futurecasting and Futurecast are trade marks, owned by Professor Luiz Moutinho at the University of Glasgow)