In 1968, Institute for the Future was founded by Paul Baran, Olaf Helmer, and Ted Gordon in Connecticut in order to institutionalize systematic and comprehensive studies of the long-range future. In 1970, it moved to California, and soon afterward, Roy Amara took the helm to shape the organization into a what it is today: a small group of dedicated, cross-disciplinary researchers using leading-edge tools and hybrid methodologies to address the pressing problems of the future.

The Institute owes much of its direction to its earliest research. Jacques Vallee’s vision of computer networks as instruments of group communication set the course for decades of research that explored not only the technologies of group communication but also their social impacts. Bob Johansen’s commitment to social science methodologies gave the Institute a unique voice in the world of technology and laid the foundation for social assessment of technologies at the individual, household, organizational, and societal level.

By the end of its first decade, IFTF had completed one of the first efforts at collaborative modeling of the global climate change, and began to focus attention of the deepening crisis in health and health care. Ian Morrison joined the staff to lead the health forecasting work, and when Roy retired in 1990, Ian stepped up to become president.

Meanwhile, the Institute was refining its skills in working with groups in large organizations and institutions to use forecasting for strategic planning. When Bob Johansen succeeded Ian Morrison as president in 1996, he began to craft the practice of Foresight to Insight to Action—a distinctly IFTF approach to strategic futuring. As the Institute approached the millennial threshold, the communication technologies that had formed the focus of early work were now clearly remaking the world at large. They were creating the more open, more participatory world our early studies had foreseen.

Marina Gorbis immersed herself in this world by studying the social and technological networks of young people and pursuing what she called the “pillars of mobility.” This research prepared her to take over the leadership of IFTF in the era of highly social media to guide the Institute today toward a practice of immersive, collaborative forecasting.

New media tools pave the way for IFTF to re-invent forecasting methodologies. While following the original vision of harnessing the intelligence of large groups of experts to develop forecasts, these new tools take forecasting to the new level—engaging vastly larger groups of experts and non-experts in immersive experiences that allow us to envision multitudes of future possibilities in a dynamic and continuous way. Forecasting is no longer something you do at certain times and with certain people; it is something that is open to anyone, it is an ongoing process that is updated continuously. It is a game never ending.