It’s Cool to Be a Futurist

One of the biggest changes in the field that I’ve seen in over 30+ years is that futurists are now practically popular. Early in my career, colleagues and I joked about the “f-word” and I identified the “stealth” positioning in a 2003 article in which some strategically decided not to identify as futurists in certain cases. At the time, futurists were often viewed skeptically. Fortune teller and crystal ball references were all too common. Twenty years later, it’s the opposite. “Everyone” wants to be a futurist. What an amazing and wonderful shift!  

I was recently asked how many of us are there? Which raises the question: who is us? For instance, dear reader, how do you identify? At Houston Foresight, we proudly identify as futurists but at the same time we serve the full spectrum and leave it up to individuals to decide how they want to identify. Much as we love futurists, we don’t believe everyone has to primarily identify as one! We value our hybrids and futurizers.

I’ll share a few observations on the growth, blog post-style, not rigorous academic study style (which would be fun and useful).

Hybrids are growing explosively. If we use LinkedIn self-identification as a surrogate, the trend is pointing up. We periodically doing searches on the use of futurist. I remember under 5,000 a decade ago, then 8,000 3-5 years, then 14,000 in the last couple years and now it’s 28,000.

Futurizers, I suspect, may be growing even faster, but they are harder to track. We’ve certainly seen more interest from students, more certificate program participants, more client projects, more speaking/workshops, etc.  

Futurists continue to grow steadily. Here I am referring to the professional futurists who identify as such. If we use the Association of Professional Futurists (APF ) membership as a surrogate, it has roughly doubled from 15 year ago from 250 to around 500 today.

A few more general observations on growth.

Then grad student now UH alum Lesia Fejer did an amazing study using LinkedIn that pulled out that 25% of the Fortune 500 was doing formal foresight. She also found way more jobs using foresight skills than we imagined, but we haven’t yet mobilized to bring those to light publicly.

Peter Scoblic did a nice study on the growth of foresight in the US public sector, which is going well, but even so is behind that of many countries around the world.  

Perhaps the most challenged sector is higher ed, but even here the news isn’t all bad. Our own program has doubled over the last few years. Arizona State University has just announced the launch of a new Design Futures degree. The World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF) recently launched an Accreditation Council to provide much-needed program level accreditation.

There is indeed good news on the growth front for futurists of all kinds. It’s cool that it’s now cool to be a futurist. – Andy Hines