Speaking

I have several regular talks on futures topics in which I focus the implications for the audience as well doing customs talks on specific topics. Some of my favorite regular topics  are:

Imagining After Capitalism

It’s a new one, but I’ve been working on this topic for almost a decade now. The books is getting close to being done. I have lots of posts on it in my blog. What’s the gist? The game is ending for capitalism. It may be 10-20 years away, but it’s disintegrating. What’s next? We really don’t have good positive guiding images … until now. This one is fun!

A Dozen Tips for Thinking about the Future

This presentation delivers concrete, practical suggestions on how applying foresight can add value to your organization. It originated with the Thinking about the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight, a book by the presenter that draws upon the collective wisdom of three dozen foresight professionals. I continue to update it with new ideas and insights from teaching and professional practice. This session is designed to be very much about inspiring action. Participants will walk away thinking “I can do that!”

ConsumerShift: How Changing Values Are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape

The old approaches to consumer understanding no longer work. This presentation explores broad-scale patterns in changing values that will reshape the consumer landscape over the next decade. It introduces the New Dimensions of Consumer Life model to help systematically sort out and categorize the myriad influences on consumer decision-making and behavior. It concludes that values, defined as an individual view about what is most important in life that in turn guides decision-making and behavior, is the single best predictor for gaining insight into how consumers may change in the future.

A Dozen Surprises about the Future of Work

This presentation takes a provocative approach in suggesting potentially surprising outcomes regarding the future of work. It builds upon existing trends and covers a wide spectrum of topics that will stretch the audience’s thinking on how work might be different in the future. The session concludes with some strategic implications designed to encourage a lively Q&A and things to do on “Monday morning.”

Which Energy Future? You Decide

Mini-scenarios of possible energy futures are introduced and outlined. We then explore the assumptions underlying each of them, so that participants can see “what would have to happen” in order for each scenario to occur. This approach will enable participants to see a provocative set of potential future outcomes and provide the opportunity for them to make their own assessment on which seems most likely to occur.

“An Organizational Foresight Audit: 10 Questions for Building a Foresight Capability”

What do you need to think about to create or build a foresight function inside today’s organization? It takes time and patience, but armed with a plan and strategy, it can be done. The presenter will discuss a 10 question issue audit that gets at the key issues that need to be considered.

The Future of Youth Happiness

This presentation explores the pathways 12 to 24 year olds will be pursing in their quest for happiness. Like most people, they pursue happiness with a combination of three strategies: the pleasure of the moment, relationships with family and friends, and the long-term search for meaning and purpose. After probing more deeply, though, we found that more than any generation that has come before them, today’s youths recognize that happiness is something that can and should be achieved or worked toward, in essence, a practical approach to happiness. We’ll explore 13 forecasts about the future of happiness and bring these forecasts to life in the form of 7 happiness personas, and share our overall findings that we developed in partnership with project sponsor MTV.

Need Innovation? Try Foresight

Rarely does a discussion of business issues or a CEO speech take place without several mentions of the need for innovation. Equally rarely does the idea of foresight appear in the same context. That’s a shame — and an opportunity — because the two go together quite well. The presenter will share his experiences and insights about applying foresight in support of innovation and discuss ways for audience members to apply it in their particular situations.

On the Road to 2025: The Role of Forecasting in Understanding the Emerging Science and Technology Landscape.

This presentation explores the role of forecasting in understanding the emerging science and technology landscape. The presenter will review how the forecasts he and his colleagues made in their 1996 book, 2025: Scenarios of US & Global Society as Reshaped by Science and Technology, are tracking. He will then describe the lessons learned for forecasting and how he would adjust the forecast….if at all.

I have also talked on a wide range of other topics, including the future of libraries, beverages, food, credit unions, the environment, social media, work, insurance, etc.

Workshops

My workshops are short-term learning experiences that encourages active experiential learning by using a variety of learning activities. Most can be customized to participants busy schedules, with versions ranging from a half-day, full-day, or two days. (More details of each below)

Thinking about the Future workshop
Scenario Planning Revisited
New Business Exploration Workshop
Scanning Workshop
The Organizational Foresight Audit

For a near complete list of workshops that I have run visit here.

Thinking about the Future workshop
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Even the best run organizations can get into trouble by not paying attention to the future and relying on products and services at odds with emerging trends — whether gas-guzzling SUVs, sub-prime loans to debt-ridden consumers, or even film-based photography in the digital era – they all caught up short because what has worked well yesterday may not necessarily work well tomorrow. Employing a foresight perspective can help individuals and organizations anticipate and prepare for the future in a way that identifies and avoids risks and uncovers a wide-range of potential opportunities.

This workshop delivers concrete, practical suggestions on how applying foresight can help position your organization for success in the future. It is based on  Thinking about the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight, a book edited by the workshop leader that draws upon the collective wisdom of three dozen foresight professionals. Participants will learn about a framework for organizing foresight based on the six principal activities of strategic foresight:

• Framing: identifying the problems clearly and understanding their cost as well as the cost of solutions
• Scanning: understanding what’s going on out there; the relevant information and trends
• Forecasting: considering a range of future possibilities; plugging into a meaningful view (pictures) of the future
• Visioning: deciding what the organization wants to be in the future and determining if the organization is working forward or avoiding it.
• Planning: creating a pathway to the future
• Acting: translating foresight into real action on an ongoing basis

In this hand-on workshop, participants learn by doing. We will go through the six activities and practice with an example topic. Participants will learn a variety of ways that they themselves can apply the foresight guidelines to bring practical benefits to their organization in the years ahead.

Scenario Planning Revisited
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Scenarios are an essential part of any foresight toolbox. Scenarios are data-based stories about plausible futures. They are a powerful way to build understanding of possible futures, spark dialogue, and create change. Although scenario planning has become increasingly mainstream, it has also become increasingly stale. This workshop shares ideas for reinvigorating this powerful tool, such as:

• Using technology to get the right people involved at the right time, for the right amount of time
• Customizing the technique based on what the data reveals
• Maximizing the productivity of scenario planning sessions
• Communicating and tracking scenario results to get and keep attention

This hands-on approach will teach participants the essentials of how to set up and run a scenario planning project.

For individual participants, the objectives are to:

• Understand the fundamental concepts and tools of scenario planning
• Understand the key steps and processes involved in a scenario planning project
• Become familiar with several techniques for doing scenario planning
• See how scenario planning can help identify and respond to threats or provide opportunities for the organization

For the organization, the objectives are:

• To help the organization build its internal capacity for scenario planning, using proven tools and techniques that may be applied to diverse business needs now and in the future

Help your organization to anticipate the future and take action in the present by learning this updated scenario approach.

New Business Exploration Workshop
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This hands-on workshop is an overview of how to do exploration for new business and new product development. Exploration involves the process of coming up with new ideas on both new growth areas and specific new business ideas for the organization. The course is intended to cultivate and expand the “explorers” mindset, skill set and tool set for doing new business exploration. It covers a wide range of best practices that have been distilled into a format that guides one from the beginning to the end of the exploration process. The delivery method will be a combination of lecture, discussion and exercises. Participants are encouraged to bring a “real world” new business exploration problem with them to work on.

The course will teach participants the essentials of how to set up and run a new business or new product exploration project.

For individual participants, our objective will be:

• to understand and cultivate the exploration mindset, skill set, and tool set for identifying, shaping, and communicating new product and new business opportunities

For the organization, our objective will be:

• to help build its internal capacity for exploration for new business and product development, using proven tools and techniques that may be applied to diverse business needs now and in the future

We will learn by doing. Participants will be asked to come equipped with their laptop and a topic area they would like to explore.

Scanning Workshop
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This hands-on, one-day workshop will teach participants how to do environmental scanning, that is, the identification of potential signals of change in the external environment that could impact the organization. These scanning hits are clustered into trends or issues. The idea is to identify them as early as possible in order to give the organization the maximum amount of time to either deal with the threat or exploit the opportunity.

The course will teach participants how to set up and run a system in their organization in several modules: phases:

• Developing the mindset of scanning
• Where and how do we look for scanning hits
• Tools for evaluating which hits to pay attention to
• Developing an ongoing system
• Alternative approaches

Example outcomes from scanning systems will be described and analyzed. It is recommended that participants come equipped with their laptop and a topic area that they would like to learn more about.

The Organizational Foresight Audit
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What do you need to think about to create or build a futures function inside today’s organization? The session goes through a 10 question issue audit for future practitioners and management to discuss and answer. Strategies for moving forward will then be crafted. Participants will come away with a clear set of the issues in implementing foresight within their organization and a plan for dealing with them.

Please contact me directly to arrange.