Institute For The Future

What Exactly is Futures Thinking?

As a futurist I often get the question: What really is “futures thinking” and why should I care? ...

CA 100 MEGA Scenarios

IFTF Releases “Mega Scenarios Toolkit” To Help Decision Makers Explore Urgent Futures Facing California...

Congratulations, Urgent Optimist founding members!

Congratulations to everyone who seized the window of opportunity to help build this community from...

Deploying Artists as Futurists and Policy Makers

“What if we treated the art of cultivating dignity as an intentional economy? What if dignity was currency and the raw material to make it was...

Three Basic Steps to Creating Climate Positive Futures

Climate change is one of the most urgent future–and present–issues to consider in any foresight project. It will continue to be a major driver of...

Looking 100 Years Into the Future: Lessons from John Maynard Keynes

“We are suffering from a bad attack of economic pessimism. It is common to hear people say that the epoch of enormous economic progress is over and...

The Power of Futures Simulations to Change Future Outcomes

The following is an excerpt from Jane McGonigal’s Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything, Even Things that Seem...

How a Public Utility Used Foresight to Take Action

If you've taken IFTF’s Foresight Essentials training, you have encountered this image showing the cycle of Prepare, Foresight, Insight, and Action. It...

New Course: Designing Sustainable Futures

OCT 7-DEC 12 2022. A new IFTF 8-week course developed in partnership with Politecnico di Milano's...

Scenarios of University in 2035: A Transformation Towards Individualization

To address the future of your own university when one is still a student is a unique opportunity to change the existing structures according to one's...

How to Win Over Your Futures Skeptics

If you’ve done any amount of futures work you’ve inevitably had experiences with skeptics. The doubt can come in the form of snide comments about...

IFTF News From the Future #71

OCCRP co-founders and IFTF Fellows do their part for Ukraine with the Russian Asset Tracker.

IFTF's Equitable Enterprise Initiative Newsletter: Issue #5

IFTF Welcomes Seven New Future for Good Fellows!

News From the Future #70

At IFTF, we remain dedicated to creating safe spaces for people to dream and imagine how we can build a better, more humane, and equitable world....

Urgent Optimist Is

Urgent Optimists is Institute for the Future's first individual membership program.

How I Became a Futurist: Foresight Practitioner Origin Stories

“Growing up, it was never a dream of mine to become a futurist,” says Susanne Forchheimer, a Research Manager at IFTF. “I didn’t even know it existed...

News From the Future #69

Become an Urgent Optimist!

The Great Imagination: A Futures Exhibit with an Urgent Message

Think of the last time you visited a museum. What kind of experience was it for you? Did it lead you to interrogate ideas we hold of the past,...