By Quinault Childs, IFTF Research Director Climate change is one of the most urgent future–and present–issues to consider in any foresight project. It will continue to be a major driver of change over the coming decades, and as such it can serve as the foundation for powerful forecasts or provocative…

By Daria Lamb, IFTF Ambassador to the Future If you’ve taken IFTF’s Foresight Essentials training, you have encountered this image showing the cycle of Prepare, Foresight, Insight, and Action. It is a powerful framework for producing and using foresight systematically. The insight and action portions of the cycle are guided…

By Wayne Pan, IFTF Research Director If you’ve done any amount of futures work you’ve inevitably had experiences with skeptics. The doubt can come in the form of snide comments about plausibility, subtle questions about data, or outright rejection of any possibilities that don’t fit into a comfortable, already-held narrative…

By Ayca K. Guralp, Manager, IFTF Foresight Essentials Think of the last time you visited a museum. What kind of experience was it for you? Did it lead you to interrogate ideas we hold of the past, present, or future, or push you to imagine new ideas altogether? As is…

By Lyn Jeffery, Director, IFTF Foresight Essentials The Reverend Lorenzo Lebrija is the founding director of TryTank, a laboratory for innovation in the Church (particularly the Episcopal church) and an alumnus of IFTF Foresight Essentials. He is based in Palm Springs, CA with offices at both of the seminaries that…

By Quinault Childs, IFTF Research Director In the realm of food futures, we often joke that if you follow any foresight process far enough, you inevitably end up predicting the same tired future scenario about drone-delivered meal kits personalized to the customer’s genetics. That vision isn’t a particularly ridiculous or…

By Ilana Lipsett, IFTF Senior Program Manager Since Covid-19 flipped our world upside down almost 2 years ago now, I have observed conversations about challenges — Covid, inequity, climate — take on a new level of depth, with a broader, more systemic view of these overlapping and cascading crises. Among…

By Ayça K. Güralp In ideal circumstances, we all would have been mapping out pandemic scenarios and worked out robust action plans. After all, the whole point of futures thinking is to explore possibilities so that we take action in advance. That way, when the future arrives, we’re prepared. But…

We asked three of IFTF’s senior staff members to respond to the question: “What’s a common mistake you see from rookie foresight practitioners?” Here’s how they responded: Mistake #1: “Show Me the Numbers” One critical mistake made by rookie practitioners is what I call the ‘show me the numbers’ syndrome, or seeking out definitive quantitative data. …