What We Do
MAKING THE FUTURE WITH FORESIGHT
IFTF brings people together to make the future—today. Whether you’re a strategic leader in a large organization or a community leader in a struggling neighborhood or a netizen who wants to mobilize global crowds, we have practical tools, research, and programs that turn foresight into the critical new insights that ultimately lead to action.
As an independent, non-profit research organization with a 45-year track record of helping all kinds of organizations make the futures they want, IFTF's core research staff and creative design studio work together to provide practical foresight for a world undergoing rapid change.
IFTF has pioneered tools and methods for building foresight ever since its founding days. Co-founder Olaf Helmer was the inventor of the Delphi Method, and early projects developed cross-impact analysis and scenario tools. Today, IFTF is methodologically agnostic, with a brimming toolkit of foresight methodologies.
A Quick Video Introduction to IFTF ...
Practical Tools: Collaborative Forecasting & Serious Gaming
From intimate workshops to global online games, we have a toolkit of frameworks, processes, and platforms to tap the best insights of groups to imagine—and create—the futures they want for their organizations, their communities, and the world.
Examples:
Timely Research: Signals, Scenarios, Forecasts, Maps, Artifacts
Using innovative research methodologies, IFTF draws on its worldwide network of thought leaders and professional researchers to produce leading-edge foresight. This foresight takes many forms, from signals of innovation and disruption to alternative scenarios that help build more resilient strategies. IFTF collates this foresight into strong point-of-view forecasts, maps of the emerging landscape, and artifacts that make the future tangible today.
Examples:
Global Programs: Membership in the Future
Making the future is an inherently collaborative process, and IFTF’s membership programs are the venue for future-oriented leaders to share foresight, build insight, and plot a course of action for their organizations. IFTF offers membership programs that support long-term thinking and long-term collegial networks.
Core Programs:
- Ten-Year Forecast, a broad scan of the changing global landscape
- Technology Horizons, a deep dive into cutting-edge technologies and practices
- Health Horizons, cutting-edge perspectives on health care and the larger ecosystems of well-being
- Global Food Outlook, a probe into the dilemmas and innovations in food and agriculture
In addition, IFTF occasionally convenes short-term membership programs in important topic areas such as aging, global emerging economies, sustainability, and even impossible futures. Current examples include:
- Future of Learning, Reimagining the Higher Education Landscape
- Future of Work, Socialstructing Organizations, Skills, Innovation