---
title: "The wind-tunnel exercise | Averise"
url: https://www.averiseglobal.com/en/fetp/wind-tunnel
description: "A two-minute exercise in Foresight-Enhanced Transfer Pricing: sort a fictional company's arrangements as robust, contingent or a big bet across four futures."
publisher: Averise Management Consultancies LLC
contact: ajit@averise.org, +971 50 732 7395
note: Markdown version of the page above, generated from its published HTML. General information, not advice.
---

FETP · a two-minute exercise

# The wind-tunnel exercise

In FETP, each position is tested against several futures. A position that holds in all of them is robust. One that holds in some is contingent. One that holds in a single future is a big bet. Try the sorting on a fictional company.

The company

Northwind Instruments

A fictional maker of industrial sensors, with a head office, two factories and sales companies in several regions.

Four futures

- A Steady course The business grows much as it does today.
- B Software leads Most value moves from devices to software and data services.
- C Local supply Customers ask for local production and local teams.
- D Automated decisions Planning and pricing are run by systems managed from one central team.

Sort each arrangement

- 01 Shared services such as finance and HR are charged to group companies at cost plus a small margin.
- 02 The group lends to its factories on ordinary commercial terms.
- 03 Sales companies are rewarded as routine distributors.
- 04 Local teams decide prices and stock levels, and are rewarded for that risk.
- 05 One purchasing hub buys all components and sells them on to every factory.
- 06 Device designs are treated as the group's only valuable intangible.

Sort all six to continue.

A learning exercise with a fictional company and simplified futures. Reasonable people may sort these differently. It is not advice and says nothing about any real arrangement.