by Someone asked me recently for my elevator speech on “what is a futurist?” Basically, if someone asks you what a futurists is, what’s your 30-second response. [And we require our students in the futures studies program to do one.] I’ll confess that I am not consistent, and that there are a whole bunch of calculations I make depending on who’s asking and how interested they appear to be. Nonetheless, here is my current take (coming in at 33 seconds when spoken).
“Historians study the past; futurist study the future. The future(s), actually. We believe there are many ways that the future could play out, and that since there so many factors involved, we don’t try to predict the right one. Instead, we forecast a range of plausible options or scenarios, and then we identify and track indicators to tell us which way the future is heading. We don’t just guess. We have a rigorous set of concepts, methods, and tools that have been developed over the last 50 years. And the whole purpose is influence the decisions we make in the present, so we work towards the futures we would like to see happen and work against those we would like to avoid. ” Andy Hines
I was searching for this, and will use it tomorrow for a potential client 🙂