FUTURE INNOVATION
How to Work and Think Like a Futurist
Tomorrow is ours to shape and define
A few years ago Cisco’s resident futurist, a man by the name of David Evans, shared the following facts:
- Human knowledge has doubled every century until the 1900s, but nowadays it is every two to three years
- Some 70 percent of all information has been created since the internet began
- The 21st century “will be equivalent to 20,000 years of human progress” (Evans, 2012)
Evans also predicted:
- In 50 years’ time, 95 percent of everything humans know will have been discovered in those 50 years
- We have about two devices per person now (c. 2012) and in the next decade that will rise to seven
More recently, IBM Marketing Cloud research said that “90% of today’s data was created in the last two years” and every two years after that.
Think about that for a minute.
In two years' time, 90 percent of the data in the world today will represent just 10 percent, in 24 months — Incredible!
This my friends, is what futurists do. They predict.
This article will drill down into the world of futurists, what they do, how they do it so you can do the same if you choose.
The Future
Evans said that in 2008 or 2009 “we crossed a line where there were more connected devices online than people”. He predicted that by the end of the decade, i.e. 2020, “there will be 50 billion “things” online — things that can communicate with each other.”
His statement was a little ambitious … we’re not quite there yet.
That said, IoT devices are growing rapidly, 12% year on year from “27 billion in 2017 to 125 billion” by 2030 (Semiconductor Digest, 2017).
What is Futures Thinking?
The term is commonly associated with authors, consultants, business leaders, and people who engage in the discipline of systems thinking to advise both public and private organizations on matters like global trends, potential scenarios, risk, product development, and market opportunities.
Futures thinking, or foresight is a set of principles and practices that can be applied to solve complex problems.
The skill combines trends, predictive data analysis, pattern recognition, intuition, and imagination to envision a desirable and sustainable path.
Best described as the immune system for our civilization.
By examining and testing possible outcomes, like threats, new ideas, and exciting opportunities “we strengthen our collective capacity” to deal with what reality might look like when it does transpire (Evans, 2012).
The 2020 Futurist
The term futurist applies to entrepreneurs, visionary leaders, innovators, creative thinkers, consultants, writers, thought leaders. Those who “look to the future” and frequently “provide analysis of the future” (Cascio, 2009).
Strategic imperative
Multinational corporations (MNCs) employ qualified people who scan the environment to plan for political, economic, social, technological, and ecological trends — they always have an eye on the future.
The futurists' function is to observe and extrapolate so that MNCs are prepared for challenges, risks, opportunities that may arise. If nothing else, the aim is to prepare an organization for future competition or unseen events.
Leadership
Business leaders today need to be equipped with critical knowledge about emerging trends to navigate real-time change, regardless of the source, technology, competitors, customers, or global economic shifts.
Developing the ability to anticipate the future, in the face of ambiguity, means that disruption and chaos have now become an essential part of a leader's skill set for the 21st-century.
Strategy
Complex and ever-shifting trends must be evaluated and integrated into a business strategy when required. By understanding potential future trends, business leaders today can unlock strategic opportunities.
A flexible strategy means that business leaders must probe, and do so frequently, asking lots of questions, like:
- How can customer demographics impact business strategy?
- What business processes and emerging technologies will shape a competitive advantage?
- What new opportunities exist outside our traditional market?
- How will future economic trends affect markets?
- What role will globalization play in the future?
- What are the essential strategies to build an agile organization that can navigate uncertainty with confidence?
The answers are rarely obvious or immediate, but if leaders don't ask then risk or opportunity can arrive unannounced. By then it’s too late.
The futures thinking process
Jamais Cascio described what the futures thinking process looks like through four methods:
- Asking the questions
- Scanning the world
- Mapping the possibilities
- Scenario development
Each can be used in isolation or all four in combination, the choice is yours, but let’s take a look at each one:
№1 — Asking Questions
Futures thinking is rarely a case of asking what will the future look like? In most cases, the exploration process looks at different futures of concern.
- Concern about strategic choices that a company needs to make
- Potential changes to an operating environment
- Gaining a better understanding of emerging technology, markets, competitors, customers, and other stakeholders
№2 — Scanning the World
When questions are formed, the next step is to start looking for the big impact drivers of change that will shape how you arrive at conclusions. Also known as environmental scanning in the field of futures studies according to ESMA.
Scanning the world is a strategic approach to gather information to stay current. In doing so futurists look at emerging trends and external factors that may influence or impact the decision-making process.
№3 — Mapping the Possibilities
Coming up with innovative solutions to complex problems is as much an art as it is a science. Here practitioners engage in ideation, brainstorming, visioning, and mapping out concepts to arrange and construct ideas in new ways.
During the ‘mapping’ stage, futurists employ a variety of tools and techniques like ‘design thinking’ to enhance creativity, with an open mind throughout.
“At the core of futures thinking is the notion that there is no one determined future.” — Jamais Cascio
№4 — Scenario Development
This is one of the more popular tools that organizations use to consider future outcomes when designing products, services, or strategies. Scenario development typically meets a minimum of three criteria:
- Preferable
- Probable, and
- Possible
Scenarios can range from an optimistic ideal version to a pessimistic disaster scenario or even a future that’s not that much different from the present.
Either way, fleshing out potential conditions across all three environments is a powerful mechanism to formulate a shared vision of the future.
Methods
A futurist employs various methods. Like intuition, visioning, design, logic, research, policy, planning, culture, marketing, sales, strategy, forecasts, data modeling, trends, surveys, operations, environmental scanning, risk analysis, and management insights, to name but a few activities.
The point is, applying a hybrid of methods adds variety to the predictive modeling process, mitigating but not eliminating risk.
Are you ready for the future?
Are you learning, innovating, and preparing to meet the challenges in your organization for the future?
Are you thinking differently?
Final Thoughts
To conclude allow me to share 12 common types of futurists, foresight thinkers, according to Future Watch.
Six Social Types
- Preconventional — One who thinks about the future in relation to self (ego-driven), without concern for social norms.
- Personal — They use foresight to solve problems primarily for themselves, within the conventions of society.
- Imaginative — People that habitually develop future visions, expectations, scenarios, and plan in relation to self and others. They occasionally break social norms.
- Agenda-driven — Those who create or focus on top-down ideals, religious, or organizationally-preferred agendas (with rules) and their problems, for the group.
- Consensus-driven — People who create or work on a bottom-up approach, so group, communal, or socially-preferred futures.
- Professional — Those who explore change for a client or audience. They seek to describe and advance possible, probable, or preferable future scenarios while avoiding undesirable outcomes
Six Methodological Types
- Critical — A person who genuinely deconstructs and critiques future visions. They explore perspectives, valuing others, not motivated to advance an agenda, secure consensus, “or for payment, but as a methodology of understanding.”
- Alternative — These explore and propose an array of possibilities. Imagined futures that include possibilities beyond their personal, cultural, or organizational views.
- Predictive — Forecasters of probable futures, processes, or events that they expect are “likely to occur, in a statistical sense, both as a result of anticipated personal and social choices and for autonomous processes that appear independent of human choice.”
- Evolutionary developmental— Explorers of evolutionary possibilities to predict developmental outcomes. They aim to differentiate between evolutionary (chaotic, unpredictable) and developmental (convergent, statistically predictable) processes of universal change.
- Validating — One who seeks to evaluate, systematize, and validate completeness for alternative futures with accuracy.
- Epistemological — They investigate “how we know what we know” (epistemology) about the future, seeking to improve the paradigms of scholarly foresight in practice.
The future has yet to be defined. It’s unwritten. So make the most of what you can influence instead of worrying about what you can't change.
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
References
- Accelerationwatch.com. 2020. Futurist (Definition): Common Types Of Futures Thinking. [online] Available at:
- Cascio, J., 2009. Futures Thinking: The Basics. [online] Fast Company. Available at:
- Sst.semiconductor-digest.com. 2017. Number Of Connected Iot Devices Will Surge To 125 Billion By 2030 | Semiconductor Digest. [online] Available at:
