Background

Enfad is a London-based technology research firm specialising in helping institutions think differently about emerging futures. We identify new ways to serve people's everyday needs and wants for new information, services and products – particularly relating to the development of new technology products and services. In turn, helping to forge practical strategy and enhance institutional resilience under conditions of high uncertainty and discontinuous change. 

Why

"We believe that powerful shifts spreading from the impact of new technologies, are reshaping industry structures, triggering new business models and fundamentally redefining the customer".

For this reason, we have been engaged in a wide range of studies, analyses and fact-finding to help make sense of these shifts and discover what they mean to business and society. Our aim, put simply, is to bring exceptionally promising insight and fresh perspectives to the fore. With our passion for new ideas, our goal is to rethink how firms can create new value for customers in a digital age.

A New Frame Of Reference

Enfad is where human-centered and design-based approaches meet technology, business and invention. We fill the void that exists in the marketplace between conventional technology research firms that typically lack business rigour and strategy competency – and strategy consultancies and analyst research firms that lack the deeper understanding of the technology world. In this context, we bill ourselves very clearly as a new breed of advisory and research boutique that understands the subtleties of how technology and the Internet are changing the business landscape. 

A Fresh Approach

Technology’s growing capacity combined with the development of new business models has vastly expanded the variety of offerings a company can create today. However, conventional strategy houses and analyst research firms are proving less reliable as a compass in today’s environment in which consumers have a multitude of options. The growing gap between companies’ knowledge of how to create offerings, and decreased understanding of the patterns of daily life, has left executives uncertain about what their future offerings should be. We believe our way of working brings a breath of fresh air, and the key to seize opportunities in new ways, particularly during times of significant change like the current period, through meeting customer needs.

Dealing with Change

Forces of change–such as converging technologies, ubiquitous connectivity and changing environments–are creating possibilities to satisfy new markets. What’s more, this unprecedented opportunity is truly becoming pervasive – reaching out across boundaries to enable sustainable participation, growth and potential prosperity on a previously unimaginable scale.

All of this, of course, intensifies the pressure on companies to invent more quickly, efficiently and effectively than ever. With product life cycles shrinking every year and increasingly technology-savvy consumers demanding higher performance in a continual stream of meaningful offerings, growth now hinges on a company’s ability to generate bold and compelling new ideas.

At Enfad we help firms bring together multidisciplinary teams, collaborating with a peer network of business and technology thought leaders, designers, academic scholars, thinkers and external provocateurs to discover and develop opportunities, which has an immediate and significant impact on new growth, boosting profits, and setting new standards in the digital era.

Enfad reaches beyond adjacent opportunities and helps firms uncover areas where change is creating substantially different circumstances from those in the past. This means searching in environments where new technology and consumer change is creating challenges for customers.

People

Enfad operates and draws upon a distributed network of highly seasoned specialists and senior professionals –with a belief that the best people have now become self-reliant and left their jobs to become ‘hired guns’ or consultants. Bringing together multidisciplinary teams of specialists, technologists, designers, business thinkers, academics and external provocateurs – we’re convinced that a broad network of players can do far more than an individual firm or agency working in relative isolation. Allowing us to augment and combine the efforts of a network of multiple practitioners into a fully collaborative, outcome-focused effort. We think it is the R&D 'model' that is waning, not R&D itself and that both technology research firms and strategy-houses need to adopt a new way of thinking in order to survive, as clients have already adapted to new ways of working. What this gives a client are the best people, with a small, scrappy teams - because throwing more people at a research problem is one of the most common productivity traps that you can fall into.

(Soon, we will publish the full list of affiliates and partners.)

Raheel Naqvi  - Principal, Enfad

My Story: Two Truths and a Lie

Raheel Naqvi (doer of good works, excellent good friend to the famous and not) is the Founding Principal at Enfad, a London based advisory boutique. At Enfad Raheel is dedicated to helping clients and partners benefit from thinking differently about emerging futures by identifying new ways to serve people's everyday needs and wants for new information, services and products, – and reduced risk in their decisions to evaluate, select, design, develop, implement, and support key innovation resources.

Prior to founding Enfad, Raheel spent over a decade climbing the greasy corporate pole in the moneymaking field of Finance. Being in the City since a fresh-out-of-university graduate, he led a wide range of engagements. (please don't tell his Mother. She secretly still thinks he's a Marine Biologist!). In that time, he was a provider of highly regarded real-time economic analysis and information to top-50 bulge-brackets such as Central Banks, Goldman Sachs, ex-Lehman Brothers, E-brokers, Internet Companies, and the like.

But with pleasure came the pain. The money was great – but to be still earning it all these years later wasn’t part of the plan. Joining the City was a means to an end – the end being to cash in while we were still young enough to spend it and have fun. So secretly after plotting his escape (and clicking his heels three times) he chucked in his day job (and the moonlighting in other, largely creative industries) to start work on specific entrepreneurial projects, and other creative endeavours. This marked the first time the he ever really worked hard at something, using his intellect for development rather than destruction.

Hieroglyphics indicate that Raheel holds a Degree and MBA from Manchester and Newcastle University and strives to never again be seen near campus, as long as he is breathing and mobile. Raheel also earned a Gold Arrow and a Cub Scout Outdoor Activity Paw Pin for aluminium recycling and food collecting.

Keep in Touch

rnaqvi[at]enfad[at]com

 @raheeln