Institute For The Future

An IFTF workshop is an experience unlike any other. Our workshops spark new connections, generate streams of valuable ideas, and recharge a team's creative energy. We start by presenting our grounded foresights around a subject or theme. From there, we work with you to create insights, those "aha!" moments when you realize how a future force may affect your organization. Over our forty years we've developed an array of innovative group processes—from leading alternate-reality games to generating real-time digital maps—to help your team think about the future broadly and deeply. By the end of your workshop, your team will have deep insight into the forces shaping the future—and the tools to act.Our workshops run from a half-day to two full days and provide valuable insights to strategic and civic leaders, global teams, U.S.-focused marketers and product developers. The following are just a handful of the workshops that IFTF can facilitate. Of course, we’d also be delighted to work with your organization to create a custom forecast and workshop.

Want to learn more? Contact Sean Ness (sness@iftf.org) at 650-233-9517 or Dawn Alva (dalva@iftf.org) at 650-233-9585.

Ten-Year Forecast For three decades, IFTF’s Ten-Year Forecast has brought focus to the most important forces that will shape our society and economy over the next decade. The annual forecast gathers signals of change and identifies patterns among the intersecting lenses of extreme ecologies, disruptive economies, and smart networking to produce a Map of the Decade. Beginning with a primer on interpreting the Map of the Decade, this workshop offers deeper conversations about trends from mobile health to emerging markets that will shape the next decade in your industry.

Technology Horizons: 2020 Technology is perhaps the world's greatest disruptor, with the power to rapidly transform people, companies, and even entire civilizations. It drives and enables dramatic change through the entire corporate ecosystem, from R&D and strategy to marketing and human resources. In this workshop, IFTF researchers will take you beyond the hype to share an array of technological and social forces, from synthetic biology to the GeoWeb, that will shape the next decade of technological change.

Boomers: The Next 20 Years Baby boomers are perhaps the most widely studied generation in U.S. history, yet few research efforts take a longer view of this influential group. IFTF has tapped the knowledge of experts on aging and the boomer generation to create a map of the “boomer landscape” for the next 20 years. This workshop will look at how the different motivations, life stage issues, and expectations will likely motivate and shape the decisions of boomers as they face the coming global challenges in the environment and economy and the personal challenges of aging.

The Global Health Economy     As people take increasing responsibility for the cost of their health care, they are looking beyond the traditional health care system for innovations in health and wellness. These forces are fueling growth and innovation in markets not traditionally associated with health or health care, including beauty, food, consumer electronics, building supplies, and retail. IFTF’s Global Health Economy Workshop and Map of the Decade will guide you through the expanding landscape of business models, innovations and collaborations in the shifting landscape of health.

The BRIC Family Forecasts Even though global economic challenges threaten the recent growth of large economies like Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC), the citizens of these countries are experts in rapid change—and families in these countries are the locus of innovation managing and integrating change into daily lives. IFTF will highlight research from in-depth interviews with more than 50 families in the four BRIC countries to create a unique BRIC Map of Local Lives in a Global Economy, as well as a companion DVD of videos that explore the key themes emerging from these economies.

Open Innovation and Health    Open Health applies the principles of open innovation to the global health economy. It encourages the opening up of a firm’s boundaries, resulting in extraordinary collaboration both inside and outside the firm that moves innovation from traditional in-house R&D to a network of entrepreneurs, startups, academics, labs and independent scientists. Open Health is a new business strategy for health companies that provides a framework for recasting business models and innovation systems, and for rethinking the boundaries of health itself.  At this workshop, we will work through the principles of open innovation identifying threats and opportunities for innovation in health and health care as well as identify critical steps for creating your own Open Health strategy.  Want to learn more? Contact Sean Ness (sness@iftf.org) at 650-233-9517 or Dawn Alva (dalva@iftf.org) at 650-233-9585.

The Future of Work The tools of Web 2.0 are changing the way we communicate with our colleagues, and our customers, and this is just the beginning. It is a time of experimentation for companies and organizations, as trends in technology converge and a new workforce, with new skills, waits in the wings for their chance to run the show. IFTF has spent 40 years studying how technology is changing the workplace, from the birth of the Internet until today. In this workshop, we will present IFTF’s Future of Work Map, identifying key trends that will impact work, from technology to demographics and desire for sustainability.

The Future of Making Two forces, one mostly social, one mostly technological, are intersecting to transform how goods, services, and experiences—the "stuff" of our world—will be designed, manufactured, and distributed over the next decade. An emerging do-it-yourself culture of "makers" is boldly voiding warranties to tweak, hack, and customize the products they buy. Meanwhile, flexible manufacturing technologies will change fabrication from massive and centralized to lightweight and ad hoc. This workshop will help you understand how maker culture is opening up a game-changing opportunity for organizational learning, consumer engagement, and unbridled innovation.

The Future of Sustainability In recent years, ideas of “sustainability," "environmentalism," and "health” have moved from the margins to the center of business activity. Working with the Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI), IFTF’s Future of Sustainability workshop draws on research into emerging technologies, from sensor networks to alternative energies; social practices, from commons-based management to personal carbon footprints; business strategies, from cap-and-trade frameworks to sustainability scorecards, and many other innovations.

Blended Reality  In a world of Blended Reality, the virtual and the physical are seamlessly integrated. Cyberspace is not a destination; rather, it is a layer tightly integrated into the world around us. From tweeting plants to starring in our own shows to digitizing and purging boxes of physical memories, we're moving into a world where physical and digital environments, media, and interactions are woven together throughout our daily lives. IFTF's Blended Reality workshop will help you tease out what pieces of this physical/digital landscape mean the most for the future of your organization.

The Seven Superstruct Strategies As organizational challenges move beyond the borders of traditional organizations, strategic leaders will need to begin superstructing—creating structures that go beyond the basic forms and processes with which we are familiar—traditional institutions and business practices; developing a new vocabulary and new skills for mobilizing collaboration at scales that are both larger and smaller than “business as usual.” Based on research on new institutional forms as well as real-world experiments in superstructing, IFTF will present seven practical strategies for reinventing your organization for the new institutional landscape.

The Greening of Health: Sustainability and Health Converge IFTF research has revealed that individuals are linking their personal health to community, ecology and the environment. We call this trend “Green Health.” Our research looks at the historical roots and drivers of this shift and analyzes various stakeholder implications. We look at Green Health values and practices and how they are likely to define whole new product and service categories across the global health economy. This workshop gives you a tour of the emerging world of green health and explores breakthrough leadership opportunities for your organization or company.

Reinventing Health and Health Care in a Mobile World We live in a period of expanding mobility, with people on the move as never before. At the same time, we are experiencing an explosion of ubiquitous mobile communications and computing devices. The devices we carry in our pockets today boast better capabilities than the most powerful desktop computers of the late 1990s. The convergence of these two forces is creating a new landscape of opportunities for innovation in health management and service delivery.  This workshop offers deeper insights into this quickly evolving landscape of mobile health to guide your strategic decision-making.

The Future of Mobility The mobile phones that we carry in our pockets today are more powerful than the most powerful desktop computer of the 1990s. Despite the economic slowdown, personal mobility continues to expand and evolve in ways that challenge our notions about consumer markets, politics, and youth. By combining physical and virtual forms of movement, consumers are taking advantage of innovations in mobile devices and services brought about by new open ecosystems. In this workshop, we'll share our digital stories on mobile ecosystems and draw from our global research to identify key areas of growth, development, and innovation in an increasing mobile world.

Leaders Make the Future Building on 40 years of forecasts by IFTF, Bob Johansen paints a picture of the next decade, one characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. The leadership skills that got leaders where they are today will not be the same leadership skills that will make them successful in the future. This work is not intended as another leadership development program nor is it meant to replace the skills inventory you may already have in place for your leaders. Rather, it is a provocative, outside-in, futures-oriented complement to the leadership skills that you value.

Signtific: Workshops on the Future of Science & Technology Science generates new technologies, provokes incremental and disruptive innovation, sustains national competitiveness, and inspires new forms of cooperation and communication. This workshop introduces organizations to big trends and emerging disruptions in science. Working with cutting-edge collaborative visualization tools and IFTF’s public Signtific database of forecasts, IFTF facilitators can help companies see how new discoveries, emerging fields, and global shifts can influence the creation and application of scientific knowledge.

Strategic Philanthropy and Social Impact Strategic philanthropy and social investing have become growth markets as society attempts to promote more effective ways to address the accelerating breakdown of our economic, social and natural systems. The Institute for the Future has a variety of services to help public benefit organizations and leaders strengthen their capacity to understand the future forces affecting their work and expand their social impact. Workshops for foundations and social entrepreneurs draw on all IFTF’s core research programs to address issues such as global and interactive philanthropy as well as social impact investing and technologies. Workshops can also be customized for philanthropies interested in particular regions (e.g. Brazil, Russia, India, China, Kenya, South Africa) as well as issues including, for example, health, poverty reduction among other areas.

Foodscapes:  The New Geography of Food    Food companies must increasingly address health concerns and ecological issues such as sustainability. As consumers show an increasing interest in healthy foods, and experience new fears or anxieties over the quality of food from the global food chain, we face a bewildering array of controversies, business opportunities, and dilemmas.  Indeed, we are now entering a transition period from a producer-oriented food system to an era focused on the needs of consumers. This landscape of food trends, evolving consumer needs, ecological niches, food conflicts, and demographic changes constitute what we call foodscapes.  This workshop provides a rich overview of the trends and drivers that will shape the global food landscape over the next decade and identifies hot spots for novel forms of collaboration.

Biocitizenship and Social Media  This research explores the evolution of biocitizenship and how the health and health care landscapes will be transformed in the coming decade by new media technologies. Online access to health and medical information has already changed the doctor–patient relationship, while YouTube, MySpace, and other Web 2.0 social technologies and media are gaining attention in the global health economy. A new collective intelligence is emerging with new health-information authorities that will redefine the health information landscape in the future.  This interactive workshop will help you organize and develop a social media strategy.

Want to learn more? Contact Sean Ness (sness@iftf.org) at 650-233-9517 or Dawn Alva (dalva@iftf.org) at 650-233-9585.