Thinking about the Future UAE | Hinesight....for Foresight

I am very pleased to announce that I’ve reach an agreement with the Future Foresight Foundation to translate the 2^nd edition of Thinking about the Future into Arabic.

It is truly amazing to witness the explosion of interest in the future in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), particularly within Abu Dhabi and Dubai. It reminds me of Singapore a few decades ago. When they committed to learning about the future, they sent people to practically every futures meeting on the planet (there always seemed to be two people from Singapore attending no matter how obscure the meeting). Fast forward to the present, and I would say that the Singapore government is the most futures-oriented in the world.

The UAE is poised to be next! They have been at it for a while. My sense of a key event was the 2010 announcement of the UAE Vision 2021. Most of my learning came from the great work that futurist colleague Noah Raford was doing in advising the Prime Minister. He is now the COO of the Dubai Future Foundation. In the last few years, the work has become much more public. The amazing Museum for the Future proposal won an APF MSFW prize in 2015.

Indeed, I have done a few projects with colleagues in the UAE and our Houston Foresight program collaborated with the FFF to do a project for the GDRFA. Sulaiman Alkaabi came to our week-long foresight boot camp (much like the Singaporans once did) and became a big champion for the future within the Abu Dhabi police. He then founded FFF and began translating futures work into Arabic. I am honored that he chose Thinking about the Future.

If you haven’t been watching developments in the UAE, tune in! Andy Hines.

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About Andy Hines

Dr. Andy Hines is Program Coordinator at the University of Houston’s Graduate Program in Foresight, bringing together the experience he earned as an organizational, consulting, and academic futurist. He is also speaking, workshopping, and consulting through his firm Hinesight.

Before that, he was Managing Director of Social Technologies/Innovaro, and served as an Adjunct Professor with the university since 2004. Hines enjoyed earlier careers as a consulting and organizational futurist. He was a partner with Coates & Jarratt, Inc., a think tank and consulting firm that specialized in the study of the future. He was also Futurist & Senior Ideation Leader at Dow Chemical with a mission of using futures tools and knowledge to turn ideas into new business opportunities. Before that, Hines established and ran the Global Trends Program for the Kellogg Company.

Hines is motivated by a professional hunger to make foresight practical and useful, and he believes that foresight can help deliver the insight that is so needed in today’s organizations and the world. His goal, he says, is to infect as many change agents as possible with this message. Thus, he has honed a skill set designed to make foresight more actionable in organizations.

In this pursuit, he has authored five books: Teaching about the Future: The Basics of Foresight Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); ConsumerShift: How Changing Values Are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape (No Limits Publishing, 2011); Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight (Social Technologies, 2007); 2025: Science and Technology Reshapes US and Global Society (Oak Hill, 1997); and Managing Your Future as an Association (ASAE, 1994) and has another in the hands of publishers: Teaching about the Future: The Basics of Foresight Education. He has also authored dozens of articles, speeches, and workshops, including the 2003 Emerald Literati Awards’ Outstanding Paper accolade for best article published in Foresight for “An Audit for Organizational Futurists” and the 2008 award for “Scenarios: The State of the Art.” He has appeared on several radio and television programs, PBS Houston, KRIV-26 News, and the CBS “Early Show.” He also co-founded and is former Chair of the Association of Professional Futurists.

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Frank Spencer says

August 16, 2017 at 10:51 am

Great Andy! This could be very helpful to us soon as we are beginning a big project in Dubai in conjunction with both university and corporate partners.

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