Research Agenda

The coming decade will challenge organizations-and human society at large-like no other decade in recent history. Extreme environmental pressures, large-scale economic disruptions, and technologically amplified human expression will combine to create what may seem like an alien landscape. The Ten-Year Forecast will leverage cutting-edge social software and gaming platforms to engage a broad public in anticipating the future, imagining personal and organizational responses, and creating public dialog about the challenges ahead.

Research Tasks

SuperStruct: A Massively Collaborative Forecasting Game
The next ten years will be a time of taking the world apart and putting it back together in new ways. Organizations will find themselves building new layers of enterprise on old foundations and competing with fleet new structures for getting things done in the market place, in the environment, and in society at large. To probe the complexity of this new world, The Ten-Year Forecast will launch a new platform that will integrate cutting-edge futures research in demographics, economics, environment, health, and technology with the insights and innovations of on-the-ground, everyday people, creating their own digital media scenarios of the future. Called SuperStruct, this massively collaborative forecasting game will create a rich, immersive experience of the future of corporate society.

Map of Survey Signals: 2009 Ten-Year Forecast Survey Results
Ten-Year Forecast’s bi-annual survey will focus on basic shifts in everyday practices and attitudes, with a special focus on mobile digital life, sustainability, sustainability, diasporas, shifts in work practices, and our ongoing indexes of smart networking and collective behavior. The results will be used to construct indexes of these behaviors as well as our at-a-glance map of diffusion of innovative practices and attitudes.

2009 Map of the Decade
The Map of the Decade is an annotated, at-a-glance graphic map that synthesizes the critical foresight across IFTF’s research for the year. It outlines paths that connect seemingly unconnected trends to provide logical and coherent views about how the coming decade could unfold. It is the quintessential big-picture summary of important innovation in markets, society, and the human experience.

Annual Conference
This conference is our platform for presenting the overarching stories and top issues from our Map of the Decade as well as the specific data and signals behind them. For 2009, the conference will not only include opportunities to interact with other members and guest experts; it will also bridge the real-world, present-day concerns of members with the future online world of SuperStruct.