Ten-Year Forecast
feedThe Ten-Year Forecast Program provides a distinctive outlook on the changing global environment for a vanguard of players in business, government, and nonprofit organizations. Focusing on the next three to ten years, the program anticipates discontinuities and emerging dilemmas--discontinuities because they challenge business as usual and dilemmas because they demand new ways of thinking about complex problems. Together, discontinuities and dilemmas provide a vista of new practices and points of view that will shape tomorrow's organizations and today's choices.
Kathi Vian | Director, Ten-Year Forecast Program
For more information on membership in the Ten-Year Forecast Program, please contact Sean Ness at sness@iftf.org or 650-233-9517.
Announcing the Ten-Year Forecast 2012 Research Agenda and Annual Retreat
SAVE THE DATE: The Ten-Year Forecast Annual Retreat will be held April 24-26, 2012 at Cavallo Point in Sausalito, California.
When we look back from 2100, we...
Ten-Year Forecast: 2012 Research Agenda
When we look back from 2100, we may recognize the present decade as the gateway to a world that seems impossible today. Certainly the transition to a vibrant, sustainable urban culture where people around the world live comfortably in settlements as dense as today’s poorest slums seems impossible. A transformation from the fossil fuel economy that has generated unprecedented wealth to...
Images of Future Wars
Last night as part of my work looking at futures thinking and conflict resolution I was reading The Future: Images and Processes by Elise and Kenneth Boulding. As a long time peace researcher, Elise has found that the world lacks images of peace, and therefore an ability to truly move towards peace.
The history we read is structured on wars and the associated winners and losers. Much of...
If youth are our future, what of the future of youth (leaders)?
Youth leadership is a hot button issue these days. But I think what we tend to forget—or don’t have the opportunity to understand—is that youth leadership is very different throughout the world. Missing these nuances could lead to potentially ineffective global youth leadership initiatives.
While working in Kenya this year I had a lot of interesting conversations about Kenya’s youth...
Forecasters around the world tuned their compasses to the Magnetic South
On June 24-25, people all over the world signed up to help the people of Christchurch, NZ, think about their future in the foresight game Magnetic South. Using IFTF's Foresight Engine, they brought tremendous enthusiasm to the questions that face Christchurch in the next decades—so much so that they filled the site to capacity with...
Kenya Youth Scenarios, a personal perspective
Last June I had the pleasure of facilitating the Eastern province Kenya Youth Scenarios workshop on behalf of Institute of Economic Affair’s (IEA) Futures Programme after observing their Western province workshop...
Reinventing Our Energy Futures
Next week, members of IFTF's Technology Horizons research program will be attending a workshop on alternative energy called Reinventing Our Energy Futures. Technology Horizons clients will receive a Reinventing Our Energy Futures Map that forecasts the impact of four alternative energy scenarios on households, markets,...
Exploring Social Production in Education
One of the key themes of our Ten-Year Forecast retreat last month was the concept of social production - production that draws on contributions from large networks of people, enabled by social technologies, to create new kinds of wealth. Last week, Marina explored what social production might mean for the world of education when she addressed the...
Reflections on the 33rd Annual Ten-Year Forecast Retreat
Re-balancing our unsustainable, massively inequitable world seems daunting, but we have no other choice. We see a decade of unprecedented change and re-invention on the horizon. Some of the futures we forecasted point to widespread collapse of existing institutions and infrastructures, others to radical transformation and the emergence of new systems. However, one thing is certain: whichever...
2010 Ten-Year Forecast: Research Materials - The Future is a High-Resolution Game
We are pleased to publicly release the 2010 Ten-Year Forecast (TYF) research material, The Future is a High-Resolution Game.
This next decade will be one where we become both the gamers and the creators of the game itself. The goals of the game are clear: Happiness—what we really want out of life; Resilience—a way to respond better, adapt more...
FutureCast: Dr. Thomas Perls on Centenarians (Dec 2, 11am PT)
Join Vivian Distler in conversation with Dr. Thomas Perls, founder and director of the New England Centenarian Study, the largest study of centenarians in the world. A significant portion of the study is devoted to understanding why centenarians delay or escape Alzheimer’s disease and other brain disorders.
Dr. Thomas Perls completed his...
FutureCast: Michael Chorost on World Wide Mind (Nov 4, 11am PT)
Join Lyn Jeffery in conversation with Michael Chorost, discussing—among other things—his second book, World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humans and Machines (coming in February 2011 from Free Press / Simon & Schuster).
Dr. Michael Chorost was born with severe hearing loss due to an epidemic of rubella. He didn’t learn to talk until he got hearing aids at age 3½....
Geoengineering at the National Academy of Sciences
It's amazing what can happen in five years.
On October 13 2010, I delivered a talk on the political and ethical dilemmas surrounding geoengineering at the National Academy of Sciences. I spoke at a meeting organized by the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable (GUIRR), a group within the Academies that identifies...
What would YOU do to build a better California?
California has always been a frontier—a place of change and innovation. From the gold rush to the rise of the film industry, from the free speech movement of the 1960s...
2010 Map of the Decade: Connect Four Game Master Guide
Do you remember the game from the 1970s, Connect Four? Originally published by Milton Bradley (now owned by Hasbro), the game was played on a vertical board of sorts, with black and red checker-like pieces. To win the original game of Connect Four, you needed to connect four of the same color pieces in a row, a column, or diagonally. Once one “Connect Four” is made, the game is over.
...
New Forecast Map Provokes Engagement with the Future of California
IFTF today released the results of its social impact research project, designed to provoke citizens to imagine and build a sustainable future for California for the next ten years and beyond (interactive map illustrating the findings at California Dreaming: Imaging New Futures for the State). It asks the question, "What would YOU do to build a...
Explore the World of Superstruct
Superstruct was a massively multiplayer forecasting game, created by the Institute for the Future, and played by more than 7000 citizen future-forecasters from September - November, 2008.
Although the game is no longer live, you can still learn about superstructing and explore some of our archived game content:
- Visit the Superstruct...
What will this next decade look like?
The future is a high-resolution game. Never before has humanity been
able to explore the emerging landscape in such detail, to measure the
forces of change...
