Many companies right now are in business planning mode, thinking about what’s next. My recent conversation with Katie Dreke, founder of strategy consultancy, DRKE - an acronym for “Deep Record Knowledge Exchange” - felt especially timely. She shared her strategic approach that meaningfully honors the past, prototypes the future and centers knowledge exchange as the connective tissue between the two.

Deep Record is a concept that stretches time out. DRKE takes a long view and seeks to learn from the deep record of the past in order to leave meaningful marks upon the deep record of the future.

Knowledge Exchange is a concept that transforms strategy from a narrow individual mastery, to a multi-player constellation of co-conspirators, infecting and being infected by each other's ideas, models, modes and visions. 

Together, this approach not only prototypes what might or could happen, it prototypes what we prefer to happen, and how we decide, act and start building together – today.

Prototyping the Future Through Story

In my conversation with Katie, one of the most fascinating examples she shared was how she leverages science fiction, not in the escapist sense, but in its original form: a thought experiment. She described the genre as a way to stretch time and contexts backward and forward to provoke a leader’s imagination around what’s possible next.

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“Science fiction is simply a thought experiment. The author is making an educated projection as to what could be coming… especially when there’s genuine science in the story (vs. made up science or magic). These narratives extend beyond what is currently known and understandable and takes the reader into a space of tangible speculation and viable possibility. 

These types of narratives imagine what might be possible, how we might evolve culturally, socially, sometimes across incredibly dramatic timescales, which can illuminate the ways our everyday choices extend into a nearly imperceptible future, or into the Deep Record. 

Science fiction books have profoundly changed my mind about things, which is oddly similar to the humble power of a 30 second ad. In both, the author is trying to open a new possibility pathway into a person's opinion, their perspective or bias around a situation. In the end, it’s all story, it’s all narrative.”

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In 2014, Katie was tasked to help Nike senior leadership imagine the future of consumer engagement in 2020. She recalled a short sci-fi story that she read online about a future athlete training for a marathon that had been relocated from Los Angeles to Oslo due to rising temperatures. The main character’s apartment mimicked high-altitude conditions while she slept, passively giving her a performance enhancement for her heart and VO. Her shower analyzed her biomarkers in real time, and her training compression suit could simulate hitting “the wall” mid-run. This inspired Katie to reach out and hire a completely different science fiction author, designer and instructor, Bruce Sterling, to collaborate on a bespoke piece of content for the executive team under former Nike CEO, Mark Parker. With Bruce, they combined the brand’s strategic pillars, innovation agenda, consumer insights, and 80 real-world commercial examples in the crafting of a film, book and executive presentation that looked 6 years back and 6 years forward.

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‍“If this is what hyper personalization looks like today, and this is only just the beginning, then how might it progress, accelerate, and become even more sophisticated and competitive over the next 6 years? Even in 2014, tech advancements were placing culture and business on completely new rails and was quickly taking us all to different places. The word of the day was “disruption”: of the taxi industry (Uber), of the hotel industry (Airbnb), of the entertainment industry (Netflix), and so on.

Through this work we introduced the leadership team to a new concept called “transference”, which is basically the idea that when you have an experience in one place — like hailing a taxi cab with your mobile phone through an app — that single experience will now paint your expectations for every other experience you have, everywhere else, and all the time. The bar in 2014 had been severely rattled and raised through personalized tech enabled service design. We couldn’t just sit this one out, we had to jump into these waters too.”

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Her approach brought narrative structure and foresight principles into strategic planning. It created leadership resonance and future fluency, shaping both brand and product. When you can feel a sense of what’s possible, it can shift an entire strategic cycle. 

And in this case, it certainly did. The Nike team imagined how they could be more ecosystem oriented as opposed to singularly focused on the physical product, inspiring more diverse entry points for people to engage in sport, progression, and wellness. This method helped leaders across the entire enterprise, prototype the future, in ways that immediately informed actions across the globe.

Prototyping Decisions through Knowledge Exchange

Strategy defined at the leadership level eventually needs to be pulled down and out, into decisions and actions. And what is strategy, if not a bet on your successful future? But when the future is framed solely by institutions, external “futurists,” or leaders at the top, it can feel imposed, abstract, intimidating, or irrelevant. Sometimes it can become hard to connect with, let alone act on. You’ve likely felt this in the room when top leadership unveils a new direction and you, as a regional or functional lead, can’t find yourself within it. That dissonance signals something deeper: the strategy may be clear, but it isn’t yet shared. It hasn’t traveled through lived experience, through conversation, through contradiction. That’s where knowledge exchange becomes not just a value, but a method to prototype decisions.

Knowledge exchange, as DRKE defines it, invites:

• High vulnerability
• Low barriers to interaction
• Radical generosity

This becomes especially powerful when applying global strategy in a local context. Participation accelerates mutual orientation, helping teams locate themselves culturally and emotionally before projecting forward.

When Katie was posted in Nike Japan to localize and pilot Nike Plus - a membership offering focused on service beyond the product - the proposition had only just been launched in North America. With the 2020 Olympics swiftly approaching, Nike chose to focus the program's next wave of expansion into Tokyo.

In Japan, where service is deeply embedded into everyday life - from dry cleaners to grocery stores - focusing just on marketing a product feels noticeably and oddly out of sync. While in the U.S., paid service may feel like a premium offering, in Japan, it is basic brand/product hygiene. So the Nike Japan Membership team adapted the model to include paid, one-on-one service experiences at local running stores. While the global strategy celebrated that sport should be free and accessible, the Japanese consumer perceived “free” as “not good”. When they piloted a paid service that communicated to the Japanese consumer that they were buying a personal, high touch experience with a Nike trainer, only then did “membership” feel earned and the consumer-brand connection became meaningful and hyper engaged.

What happened wasn’t just local adaptation, it was prototyping decisions through knowledge exchange.

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‍“You have to start at the end, the desired consumer experience, then back your way into the work protecting that humanist outcome at every turn. There’s often a macro level enterprise strategy with big concepts and goals influencing the work from the top down, and then there’s the experience of the human customer when they engage with what you created. We’ve all felt things that don't pop, or function properly when it gets pulled too much towards the consumer, or if it gets pulled too much to the needs of a macro trend, or to a CEO's desires, or hitting a business quarterly goals. It’s a subtly nuanced dance filled with feedback loops.”

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She hadn’t codified this yet, but her philosophy was clearly visible at its core tenets:

• High vulnerability to challenge a global default.
• Low barriers to interaction by bringing local experience into the fold.
• Radical generosity in sharing what worked with the wider organization.

Having worked across multiple countries, finding tools and tactics that enable mutual orientation is key. And when the future is co-owned, not handed down, strategy sticks. This knowledge exchange gives each team agency to think about the future and not let people “future all over you”. It motivates, resonates and accelerates.

Because co-authorship builds:

• Resilience through shared narrative
• Motivation through emotional investment
• Accountability through participation

Sounds basic, but surprisingly so few actually do the work on the client/brand side to create mutual internal orientation. To enable teams to move from projection to participation.

‍“I haven't seen as many clients with an incredibly strong instinct to do the internal ‘alignment and excitement’ work. More often than not teams become distracted by the consumer facing expression, and the timelines/deadlines associated with that work. But brands and teams that are especially driven to weave the narrative into their internal tapestry, into their organizational cultures and routines will always reap the outsized rewards that come with this strategic effort."

Strategic Prompts to Help You Prototype the Future:

Prompt #1: Back & Forward

SIX MONTHS AGO

• What was different in January? 
• Cite 1 thing.

SIX MONTHS FROM NOW

• What will be different (next) January? 
• Cite 1 thing.

Prompt #2: Directional Elasticity 

The word attention comes from the Latin attendere — to stretch toward. We are always stretching toward some vision and straining away from some discomfort.

• What are you currently stretching toward?
• And what are you currently straining to avoid?

Prompt #3: Reverse Oracle 

Not all questions need answers right now. Some are more powerful when left open.

• What 3 questions are we intentionally keeping open?
• What do we gain by resisting the urge to resolve them?

Prompt #4: Extreme Questions

We’re blinded by our daily work: No forest, all trees. But the below questions can help jostle you out of instinctive thinking. Each stretches some dimension of reality to an extreme. So extreme that it is nearly nonsensical. 

Different camera angles reveal distinctly new ideas. And in times of reinvention, disruption, unknown-unknowns — it’s certainly worth a go, so let’s go:

1. 10x Prices: If we were forced to increase your prices by 10x, what would we have to do to justify it?
2. Only One Thing This Year: What if you could only ship one thing this year? What’s so impactful that it would actually be OK if we shipped nothing else?
3. Complete Rip-Off: If our biggest competitor copied every feature we have, how would we still win?
4. No Customer Contact: If we could never talk to our customers again, how would we figure out what to build?
5. Mortal Wound: What externality has the potential to kill the entire company? Can you think of a breech so significant, most of the customer base leaves within a year?

In short…

Futures thinking helps businesses think and prepare for what’s next, exploring how the future might unfold and why. Yet future readiness is tricky when the future is filled with uncertainty and surprises. 

As Katie was tasked to think 6 years in the future in 2014, never could she or the team imagined that in 6 years - 2020 - there would be a global pandemic. Yet, as we reflect and also build strategies for the future, Katie gives us systems and tools to build towards our preferred future. Honoring the past, prototyping the future and including knowledge exchange as the connective tissue, grounding you in psychological safety. This psychological safety allows you to then feel expansive to imagine, experiment and discover a future that people want to be a part of. 

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Some of Katie’s Favorite Science Fiction Books:

Planet of Exile, Ursula K. Le Guin

Seveneves, Neal Stephenson

‍The Broken Earth Trilogy, N.K. Jemisin

Aurora, Kim Stanley Robinson

‍Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel

This Is How You Lose The Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

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Follow Her:

DRKE.co

https://www.instagram.com/drke_co

https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiedreke/

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