The rise of the hybrid futurist

It seems that each Spring in ProSeminar class we eventually get to the topic of the hybrid futurist. This year it came up during the class week in which students discuss two interviews they do: one with a program alum and one non-alum. [Thanks to those who do this for us — it is tremendously valuable for the students!]. The goal is for them to get a better feel for what it’s like to be a working futurist.

The idea of a hybrid futurist came up in the discussion — the essence of it is that our foresight expertise is paired with “something else,” and in many cases it is the “something else” that gets us in the door. So, maybe we’re working at an organization, and we get the foresight degree and hope to apply that to our existing organization. The something else in this case is the expertise we earned working at the organization. And, of course, we could take the expertise — with our foresight learning — to another position.

Or the something else might be our undergraduate specialization. I am routinely asked about the typical background of foresight students and futurists, and I’ve yet to come up with any discernable pattern. We come from all sorts of disciplines and there doesn’t seem to be one that helps more than others — the common bond is the commitment to the future. Nonetheless, that disciplinary background might serve as the something else.

The something else might be cultivated during their time in the program. I can think of several examples of students who had a subject matter interest that they pursued by choosing variations of it as topics in semester-long projects and their Master’s option or internship…and emerged with a subject matter expertise that launched them into a career.

It could also be methodological expertise — becoming an expert in a particular method, developing a new method (a bit more challenging), or being an expert in a type of foresight deliverable, e.g., expertise in using foresight tools to produce innovative product concepts or policy alternatives.

Of course, there is still room for being a “pure” generalist futurist. In our conversation, we acknowledged that it’s a bit harder to start out that way. The hybrid positioning can lay the foundation for being more of a generalists, as well as being an increasingly common path itself. Andy  Hines