Individual Foresight and Fund Management Expertise

Expertise is commonly understood to comprise two key elements, domain expertise and adaptability. In the context of fund management, corporate knowledge and industry experience are critical for achieving positive investor outcomes. However, expertise becomes especially valuable when applied to non-routine, changing or unexpected scenarios. In such cases, fund managers could benefit from Individual Foresight (IF), the ability to imagine future scenarios by drawing on past experiences, planning future actions, and assessing these actions to determine future success. Importantly, IF is not developed in isolation. While it draws on a fund manager’s personal knowledge, experience and intuition, it also requires engagement with collaborative learning, reflection, and both formal and informal social networks. Cognitive strategies such as future-thinking further enhance this capability. By examining the unique skills and processes involved in IF, traditional competencies such as stock selection, prior analyst experience, group decision-making and market timing, can be better understood and integrated into future fund management development initiatives. This chapter explores how fostering IF can enhance adaptability and decision-making in dynamic investment environments.