by Yikes! Futurist has been my only professional job. I finished the Foresight (then Future Studies) program in 1990 and have been working as professional futurist ever since. I’ve 
worked as a consulting (Coates & Jarratt, Social Technologies, Hinesight), organizational (Kellogg’s and Dow Chemical), and academic futurist (U of Houston). The highlights and lowlights of each.
Consulting: highlight is the variety of topics, organizations, and people — you rarely get bored; lowlight for me in my later days was all the travel.
Organizational: I’m surprised how much I liked this role in that I took it on somewhat reluctantly because I wanted to see why my consulting clients were always complaining about how difficult it was to do the work. I learned why, but found the challenges quite fascinating. I also really enjoyed being a part of multi-client consortia such as the old GBN Worldview program.
Academic: Love working with students and doing the student-faculty research projects. It is also cool to reflect on and study (ha ha) what we’re doing as futurists. Lowlights should be no surprise — surviving in a bureaucracy.
A few significant changes I’ve seen in the field.
- From content to process: I believe that good futures work has both, but there has been an undeniable shift away from producing primarily content to a much great emphasis on process today.
- From outside to inside: I think the ideal is a balance but I have seen a shift in the composition of the field away from it’s consultant-heavy days towards more organizational insider futurists.
- [Almost] a profession: I really, really enjoyed helping get APF off the ground in the early 2000s and have always devoted some of my time to profession-building — we’re making progress!
One personal shift that more or less emerged rather than being strategically developed is an increasing emphasis on introducing people to the future. It reflects my academic role to some degree, but in our project work and my “side” consulting work, I’ve gravitated toward and enjoyed roles in helping people with the first or early use of foresight.
I could wax on for a while, but I’ll keep it short and sweet. — Andy Hines
I felt like travelling with you as a companion, feeling the same narrative and evolution. Thanks for sharing!