The AI Revolution is here. How we can adapt our nervous systems to deal with the pace and scope of the changes around us? Charlie Warzel’s Galaxy Brain newsletter from The Atlantic is among the best venues for insights into the cultural issues associated with technology. Warzel’s astute observations and commentary on not just what …
Strategic Foresight can do more than help us to see what might come, it can help us to live better lives today. Using the example of well-being we look at how design with foresight can help us create a better present while shaping our preferred future. What if we could live in the future today? …
Foresight can be an enormously powerful vehicle for shaping strategy and nurturing innovative thinking if used properly. The problem is that it is rarely ever used. Strategic foresight combines trend research and design together to help envision possible futures and help guide our strategy in the process. It’s an attractive proposition. Here’s what it looks …
At the time of this writing, Russia has just invaded Ukraine, protesters have just left a 3-week occupation of the Canadian capital, and we’re leaving the most devastating wave of COVID. Foresight and futures work was unhelpful in all cases and that says a lot about the field and the humans using it. The Russian …
Strategic innovation is not immune to the same trends in consumption and use as we see in products and services. What does it mean when the way we approach our work is more curation than an event? Let’s look at how drips might be the new drops for strategic innovation. I recently read an article …
Only by understanding our past can we properly design for a future that’s different from it. When we think about the past there’s a tendency toward thinking about things that are often unpleasant, even old-fashioned. Future-thinking is exciting, filled with possibility, and is characterized more by optimism, technology, and ‘shiny things’ at its most cartoonish. …
The time to bring together three fields of practice focused on shaping the future with evidence and imagination is here. Design thinking is about problem-finding, solution-seeking, and creating the things — programs, products, services, and policies — that contribute to the solution. Futures and Strategic Foresight are about examining trends and patterns in a context …
Beforetimes were different than now and what’s next will be different, too. The difference is that one we can design for. The carefree days of standing out in public admiring the possibilities is what attracted me to this picture. There’s no digital things, the man is dressed up, there are flowers, yet he’s also mostly …
Turbulence offers a chance to put into place new, better habits, behaviours and structures if we know which ones to freeze into place. Turbulence is a word suited to the times for many markets, human service situations, and communities. The massive jostling of our way of life and the effects on social life and the …
How do we think about the journeys through complex situations when we are unsure of a destination? There is a saying that the journey is the destination which speaks to the value of learning by doing — praxis — and how much it means to those who seek to create things. What happens when we …
