By Wayne Pan, IFTF Research Director It seems likely that we are in a renaissance for futures thinking. There is more genuine interest, widespread and general, in futures and foresight work than at any point during the ten-plus years in which I’ve had direct experience in the field. …

By Dr. Jake Dunagan, Research Director, IFTF Governance Futures Lab The city of Dubai rose to prominence as a crossroads of continents, and any trip to Dubai creates an intersection of feelings. I was invited to give a talk on experiential futures with my longtime collaborator and friend, Dr. Stuart…

By Ayça K. Güralp, IFTF Project, Research, and Community Manager The small, compact city of San Francisco was hosting a large conference. People were flying into the foggy city from all over to attend the event. Hotels were filling up with eager occupants, and the late planners were being left…

By Ilana Lipsett, IFTF Senior Program Manager In December 2020 we spoke with Aarathi Krishnan, when she was months into a new foresight role at the UN Development Program (UNDP). At the time, it was a brand new role for the organization. We talked about her approach to futures, including…

By Ben Hamamoto, IFTF Research Director Signals are evidence of the future that we can find in today’s world. They are concrete, compelling observations about how the world is changing that give us a hint at where we might be headed. Think specific products, policies, events, experiences. Finding signals is…

By Susanne Forchheimer, IFTF Emerging Media Lab Research Manager As a futurist I often get the question: What really is “futures thinking” and why should I care? As someone with an engineering background, “futures thinking” or “foresight” is not something a lot of us are exposed to throughout our academic…

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…