Every now and then, perhaps more than I care to admit, I defer reading a book that attains some degree of popular …
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2016 APF Most Significant Futures Works Winners
One of my favorite things to do each year is to coordinate the APF’s Most Significant Futures Works program. Each year, …
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What is successful foresight?
I explored this question as part of my dissertation research a few years back from the perspective of the organizational …
Trends in Foresight Methods
I came across a very nice paper posted to the APF list: Emerging Practices in Foresight and Their Use in STI Policy, by …
Your ideal keynote….
…to new audiences to get them interested in using futurists and foresight If we think about the market for futurists, …
News Flash: Futurists Are Dying Again
Almost on cue, after a few days of saying nice things about Alvin Toffler, the NY Times pointed out the demise of …
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Indicator: “Mainstream” economist embracing uncertainty
Okay, I’m sure there are economists out there embracing or at least acknowledging uncertainty about the future. But a …
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Artificial Intelligence: It Depends
Futurists pretty regularly get asked about artificial intelligence, often along with robots, and perhaps some …
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Graphic of Houston Foresight Scanning Process
Our design expert on the Houston Foresight team, student Maria Romero, is at it again. After doing a beautiful job with …
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Help Disseminate Foresight Market Survey
Most of you know that the market for foresight is still pretty murky. As part of my work on the APF …
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Indicator Alert: The Swiss Say No to Basic Income
We have been keeping an eye on new economy concepts. The passage of a guaranteed basic income would be an indicator of …
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Foresight Classics: Earth Might Be Fair
My journey into classic views of the future recently turned up an expected gem – unexpected in the sense of my not being …
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Is better better?
What’s on my mind here is the potential perniciousness of ubiquitous feedback/performance rankings/predictive …
Historians & Futurists: More Alike than Not
A few weeks ago, we explored a few thoughts around the history of the foresight field. APF colleague Ruben Nelson …
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Foresight Value Proposition
We were discussing the value proposition last week, as we often do on the APF listserv. I thought we’d discuss a couple …
Next Economy Additions: Zero marginal cost, metaspace, conscious, and Blockchain
A couple of years, I started collecting and posting concepts or names for the next economy as part of my scanning (which …
Observations from tracking mentions of futurists in media
The Houston Foresight program initiated a project to track, collect and analyze mentions of futurists in the media back …
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Foresight for changing the world
We’re always exploring new things to teach at the Houston Foresight program. One topic that has come up a lot in recent …
Roots of foresight: When (and how) do you say it started?
We had a great discussion last week at APF on the origins of the foresight field. I was not sure whether to even start …
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Personal Futures Planning
Our ProSeminar class had a visit last week from a dozen Norwegian students studying under futurist Derek Woodate. We did …
Can I get a job as a futurist?
Yes, but it ain't easy! It’s the number one question on the mind of prospective foresight students. Futurists are …
Adding some wow to our projects
Every now and then I like to scan the home library and see if anything I hadn’t read deserves to be promoted, or if …
Exploring the Future…with MISC
The bonds are strengthening between foresight and design. I’ve just received the first physical shipment of beautiful …
Transformative scenario planning
I finally got to Transformative Scenario Planning by Adam Kahane. It’s one of those books that stayed too long in my …
The Aspirational Archetype
I’ve written previously about the scenario archetype technique. A few years ago, In World Futures class, we started …
Can we all get along? The key role of group norms
Getting along is pretty important in all walks of life, including it turns out, if you want to have a high-functioning …
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What is a futurist?
Last year my grad assistant Maria Romero produced a series of short videos (none more than two minutes) about the …
Mastery and Foresight Practice
Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment does not quite fit in with the foresight classics I’ve been …
Second edition of Thinking about the Future
An updated second edition of Thinking about the Future is now available on Amazon. The foreseeable depletion of the …
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Foresight Classics: Rescuing All Our Futures
Rescuing all our Futures: The Future of Futures Studies was edited by Zia Sardar and published in 1999. It makes a …
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