Institute For The Future

Upcoming IFTF Foresight Talks

From the Archives of Foresight Talks

Agents of Change

We all know that "young people are the future." Yet we rarely enable them with the tools they need to think more strategically about what they want that future to look like. Much less young people of color. But what if we did enable them? With over 75 high school aged youth involved in the summer of 2021 alone, the Community Futures School at the Museum of Children's Art (MOCHA) leverages the power of Afrofuturism, immersive digital tools, and art-centered practices to help its participants imagine a transformational vision for the city of Oakland, California, all while empowering them with the tools and skills to lead us there. IFTF Research Director Sara Skvirsky spoke with renowned Afrofuturist Dr. Lonny Avi Brooks, Professor at California State University, East Bay, about the ins and outs of his experience developing and running the Community Futures School, and the lessons he's learned along the way. Aired Wednesday, August 31 • 9am PDT.

How to Use Foresight to Build Responsible Smart Cities that Align with Our Values

Across the world, as people move to urban centers, more places are investing in smart city technologies. A smart city uses sensors to collect data that is ultimately meant to serve the interests of its residents, but what are the values city administrators and technology experts are putting at the center of their decisions as they build our smart city infrastructures? On Thursday, July 28, 2022, Rod Falcon, IFTF Program Director, and Julieta Matos Castaño, researcher at the DesignLab of the University of Twente in the Netherlands, had a conversation about how we can use futures thinking to stimulate ethical reflection on smart cities. Julieta will share and demonstrate the "Future Frictions" web experience, which is a simulation she and her colleagues built using foresight methodology to provoke important debate about the future of smart cities and their social impacts. To experience "Future Frictions" and find more information about the project and its collaborators, visit www.responsiblecities.nl.

Foresight in Cybersecurity: A Scenario Planning Approach for Managing Digital Security

Cybercrime is on the rise. As of 2021, Cybersecurity Ventures estimates the annual economic toll to be $6 trillion; by 2025, that figure is expected to rise to $10.5 trillion. Organizations are struggling to move beyond security crisis management, but increasingly understand the need to take a long-term view of cybersecurity risk and adopt a strategic, proactive approach to managing it.

Mark Frauenfelder, IFTF Research Director, hosted a conversation with Steven Weber, a Partner at Breakwater Strategy and Professor at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Information and Department of Political Science, about the role of foresight in cybersecurity. In this webinar, Weber shared his approach to scenario planning designed to help organizations develop robust strategies for managing digital security.

A Futures Thinker Goes In-House: How to Create a Foresight Role at a Large Organization

According to BetterUp Labs, teams with future-minded leadership are 18 percent higher in innovation, 18 percent higher in performance, and 15 percent more resilient. However, even the most cutting-edge companies need help systematically thinking about the future. Tessa Finlev, Head of Foresight at audio and visual technologies pioneer Dolby Labs, shares her journey building foresight capacity at a large organization from scratch. She describes her engagement approach with different stakeholders and how she created a Futures Council to incorporate a long-term, systems view of the world into Dolby’s work. See how one person is working to change a company culture, and you can too!

Design Fiction: How to Imagine the Future Mundane

What if you were sent ten years into the future with the specific mission to bring back something to show how life has changed? What would you pick? Of course, you wouldn’t be able to bring back an autonomous vehicle let alone a whole kitchen but perhaps you’d be able to quickly pack the Quick Start Guide to a self-driving car or an IKEA catalog of the future. This is the principle behind the practice of design fiction: a way to imagine and create everyday future things in order to pose questions about present choices. IFTF Research Affiliate Jorge Camacho spoke with  Julian Bleecker and Fabien Girardin, two of the founding partners of the Near Future Laboratory, about the origins of design fiction and its relation to other design practices, their experience using design fiction with organizations to help them clarify the present, their recent work exploring the futures of space culture for the Museum of the Future in Dubai, as well as their upcoming Manual of Design Fiction—a definitive text on the practice of Design Fiction.

Imaginable—How to Be Fearless in Realizing a World with Possibilities

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it more challenging than ever to feel prepared, hopeful, and equipped to face the future with optimism. How do we map out our lives when it feels impossible to predict what the world will be like next week, let alone next year or next decade? What we need now are strategies to help us recover our confidence and creativity in facing uncertain futures IFTF Research Director Leah Zaidi talks to Dr. Jane McGonigal, IFTF Director of Game Research + Development, about her inspiring new book Imaginable, which draws on the latest scientific research in psychology and neuroscience to show us how to train our minds to think the unthinkable and imagine the unimaginable. Jane invites you to come learn how we can build our collective imagination, develop the vision to solve problems creatively, take actions that will shape the future we desire, and access “urgent optimism,” an unstoppable force within each of us that activates our sense of agency.

Bridging the Experiential Gap through Artifacts from the Future

Physical objects make the future more tangible and believable. That’s why design futurists and foresight practitioners use “artifacts from the future” as powerful tools to convince us that an imagined future could become a reality. IFTF Research Fellow Jacques Barcia talked to experienced artifact designers Christian Cañibe, Head of Design at Eramos Tantos, and Nic Weidinger, Senior UX Designer at Instrumental Inc., about their processes for creating artifacts, with images and sketches to go along. See the process first-hand when they design an artifact from scratch live during the webinar with the help of audience contributions, so please email us a signal of change or bring one to share during the webinar! 

Navigating the Tech Storm with Nicklas Bergman

Genetic engineering, AI, quantum, autonomous vehicles — with the head-spinning acceleration of innovative technology developments, how can leaders evaluate emerging tech's urgency and relevance?

Nicklas Bergman, venture capitalist for frontier technology, strategic advisor to the European Innovation Council Fund, and author of Navigating the Tech Storm, sorts it out and reveals his new taxonomy for the top emerging technologies — a framework born from his belief that we’re thinking of technology all wrong. For more than 20 years, Nicklas has worked with a wide range of corporate clients and stakeholders, advising them how to make decisions about deep tech like AI, predictive analytics, new media art and quantum computing. IFTF’s senior technology researcher, Mike Liebhold, will interview Nicklas about how futures thinking influences his tech forecasting, and how organizations should assess the implications of new innovations. From Monday, January 31, 2022.

Making the Future Culturally Equitable: Artistry for the Next Decade

What is Cultural Equity? What does it look like and how is it shaped by the innovation, creativity and artistry of its time? How do organizations built on missions of cultural transformation grow towards an equitable future? Join us for a conversation about equitable futures with long time friends and collaborators Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Vice President and Artistic Director at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, and Hodari Davis, longtime associate of IFTF, and Chief Innovation Officer at Edutainment for Equity based in Oakland, California. Marc and Hodari were among the original Program Directors of Youth Speaks in San Francisco, and architects of the youth spoken word movement commonly referred to as Brave New Voices. Their youth centered and artistic futurist frameworks center equity as a portal to justice, reparation and healing.

Building a Futures Community in China

The future is imagined, interpreted, and acted upon differently depending on where you live in the world. What can we learn from how foresight is practiced in other countries? On Tuesday, November 30, IFTF Distinguished Fellow Dr. Lyn Jeffery spoke with the three founders of FutureMatters, a Shanghai future-oriented consultancy, and FuturistCircle, the leading professional futures community in China. They discuss the big picture of foresight in China, what futures projects have been most inspirational to them, and how the group built from scratch FuturistCircle, now a vibrant WeChat group of 200+ members from a network of innovation and insight practitioners in China’s major cities, as well as 4000+ followers on the WeChat public account.

Decolonizing Futures: Exploring Inclusive Futures Storytelling Methods

On Thursday, October 14, 2021, IFTF's Ilana Lipsett hosted a conversation with award-winning futurist and designer Pupul Bisht, who is pioneering the use of the Kaavad storytelling tradition of Rajasthan, India for developing transformative futures visions. Pupul will share examples from her work with youth, women, and communities in the Global South and Africa, including designing participatory games.

Pupul Bisht is a multidisciplinary designer, futurist and the Winner of the Joseph Jaworski Next Generation Foresight Practitioners Award 2018. She founded the Decolonizing Futures Initiative in 2018— a global project that aims to engage marginalized communities in imagining their preferred futures.

Speculative Futures: Designing with the Future in Mind

On Tuesday, September 14, design futurist Jacques Barcia spoke with speculative futurist/creative technologist/designer Doc Martens, who sits on the board of the Design Futures Initiative and is the acting Director of Communications & Special Programming. Jacques and Doc will discuss how Speculative Futuring can help adopt more extrapolative and speculative mindsets and how we can use design as a tool to investigate the implications of today's emerging signals to co-imagine and co-create preferable future worlds. Doc will share examples from their personal and professional practice and introduce Futures x Design, a new framework and workshop co-created with Jack Wilkinson, that leverages modes of futures design thinking to undertake speculative projects.

Freedom Dreaming in the Midst of Emergency: Methods from the Afrofuture

On Thursday, August 12, Hodari Davis, IFTF foresight faculty, interviewed Calvin Williams, Founder of Wakanda Dream Lab, about the importance of dreaming and how to design world building processes to manifest the impossible into the inevitable. Watch and learn about the purpose and practices behind Black freedom dreaming. How can we interrogate injustice in our futuring processes?

Using Virtual Reality to Immerse the U.S. Air Force in Alternative Futures Scenarios

Have you ever pre-experienced alternative futures scenarios in virtual reality? Watch IFTF's Toshi Hoo in conversation with Lt. Col. Jake Sotiriadis, Chief of the Strategic Foresight and Futures Branch at the U.S. Air Force, looking at how he led a project to turn a futures report into a VR experience for stakeholders in the U.S. armed forces and beyond. They also discussed the lessons he's learned in making futures thinking a part of a bureaucratic organizational culture, why he fought so hard to make the VR scenarios unclassified, and how he believes the future of communication is moving toward VR.

IFTF Foresight Talks: How to Democratize the Future Through Social Media Theatre

Come behind the scenes with Resilience 2032—when an indigenous woman is running for President—and learn about how to design and implement a participatory futures project from start to finish. Futurist Nour Batyne will take us on a journey of the principles and practice behind inclusive and participatory futures through her project Resilience 2032. The project received the Next Generation Foresight Practitioners Award (North America) for its aim to democratize and scale futures thinking, leveraging social media theatre to inspire widespread civic engagement with a focus on climate change, data-driven technologies and systemic inequality.

IFTF Foresight Talks: Bringing Strategic Foresight to the U.S. Government

On May 27, 2021, Sharaelle Grzesiak, Assistant Director, Center for Strategic Foresight at the US Government Accountability Office and Co-Chair of the Federal Foresight Community of Interest, shared how she's integrated strategic foresight into multiple federal government agencies and policies through workshops, consultations, and community-building.

IFTF Foresight Talk: Transition Design with Terry Irwin and Gideon Kossoff

On April 15, 2021, IFTF hosted Terry Irwin and Gideon Kossoff of the Transition Design Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University to discuss the emerging practice of Transition Design, which draws on approaches from the social sciences to understand the social roots of wicked problems and places stakeholder concerns and co-design/collaboration at the heart of the problem-solving process. Transition design sees the future as both a space in which stakeholders can transcend their differences in the present and enter into a space in which they can create together and build trust as the basis for the more difficult work in the present. The future and the past are both seen as crucial in developing systems interventions that are connected to each other, as well as the long-term vision and the transition pathway milestones.

IFTF Foresight Talk: The Capacity to Decolonize with Geci Karuri-Sebina, a founding director of the Southern Africa Node of the Millennium Project

On Tuesday, March 16, 2021, IFTF hosted Dr. Geci Karuri-Sebina, a founding director of the Southern Africa Node of the Millennium Project, who spoke about her personal journey in futures thinking, including her current participation in a growing agenda to build futures literacy and decolonize futures, starting in Africa. We explored with her the critical issues, insights, and experiences that she thinks may be pointing us towards new questions and ideas about foresight practice and capabilities.

IFTF Foresight Talk: The Things We Did Next: Collaboratively Envisioning Multiple Futures

On Feb 22, 2021, Institute for the Future hosted a Foresight Talk with Alex Kelly and David Pledger, co-creators of The Things We Did Next, a collaborative practice that generates a series of interconnected artworks and projects based on collectively imagining multiple futures. Explore how they work with artists and cultural operators to generate bold, positive, and transformative visions of the future. We discussed how Covid has impacted their work & the lessons they have learnt by bringing creative approaches to online futuring. For more information, visit The Things We Did Next website. https://www.thethingswedidnext.org/

IFTF Foresight Talk: The Initiative for Indigenous Futures

Interested in the intersections between art, technology futures, and indigenous knowledge? On January 14, IFTF Executive Director Marina Gorbis joined digital media artist Jason Edward Lewis for a conversation, followed by plenty of time for your questions. We’ll learn what Jason is currently working on and what he recommends for other foresight practitioners to expand our minds, work practices, and imaginations.

IFTF Foresight Talk: Equity and Decolonization - Transformation at the Intersection of Aid, Policy, and Foresight

On Wednesday, December 2, 2020, Institute for the Future hosted humanitarian Aarathi Krishnan, Strategy and Foresight Advisor for UNDP, to discuss what it takes to design decolonial futures, and how to ensure the foresight methodologies we use are pluralistic, equitable and go beyond surface-level rhetoric. We explored what it means to tangibly move from theory to practice to policy, how to create tipping points of change on an ecosystem-wide level, and what it takes to build foresight muscle from the ground up in a global organization.

IFTF Foresight Talk: Queering the Future to Save the Future with Jason Tester

On November 19, 2020, Institute for the Future hosted IFTF Research Affiliate Jason Tester to discuss "queering the future": the untapped power of looking ahead through the perspective of LGBTQ people, a group that has been historically marginalized yet constantly adaptive and resilient. Jason shared the art and science of seeing hidden resources, alternative systems, and transformative solutions by adopting a more expansive, transgressive, and liberating view of the future.

IFTF Foresight Talk: Curating the End of the World—An Afrofuturist 2.0 Lens on our Collapse and Survival

On October 20, 2020, Institute for the Future hosted renowned Afrofuturist Dr. Reynaldo Anderson to discuss the second wave of Afrofuturism, to interrogate our constructions of the past, present, and future, and to share insights and lessons from his extensive career as a scholar and organizer of a cultural movement.

IFTF Foresight Talk: How to Future: A Practical, Tactical Guide to Foresight

On September 30, 2020, Institute for the Future hosted renowned futurists and teachers Madeline Ashby and Scott Smith to discuss their new book How to Future: Leading and Sensemaking in an Age of Hyperchange. Scott and Madeline gave a taste of what's in the book, shared reflections on how futuring feels different in a post-COVID world, and shared valuable lessons from their extensive careers as futures practitioners.

IFTF Foresight Talk with Ann Pendleton-Julian & John Seely Brown: Steering Change in a Whitewater World—Working with Wicked Problems: PART 2

Find JSB and APJ's responses to the unanswered webinar questions.

We are now living in a whitewater world: hyperconnected, rapidly changing, and radically contingent. On Sept 3, 2020, IFTF hosted a talk with Ann Pendleton-Jullian and John Seely Brown, whose book, Design Unbound, argues the need for a new approach to address the complex and entangled challenges increasingly found in this dynamic world. Pendleton-Jullian and Brown describe a new mindset based on understanding complex systems from an ecological perspective and introduce tools to respond to these challenges.The authors call for harnessing the power of a pragmatic imagination that engages a full range of mental activities to discover radically new solutions. They describe the practice of "world building," which can guide the development of transformational solutions to seemingly intractable—"wicked"—problems. Part Two went into more depth on the pragmatic imagination - how to scaffold and instrumentalize it - and presented a case study that pulls all of this together. You do not need to have seen Part 1 of the webinar, but we recommend watching it for a deeper understanding. 

IFTF Foresight Talk with Ann Pendleton-Julian & John Seely Brown: Steering Change in a Whitewater World—Working with Wicked Problems: PART 1

We are now living in a whitewater world: hyperconnected, rapidly changing, and radically contingent. On Thursday, Aug 20, 2020, IFTF hosted a talk with Ann Pendleton-Julian and John Seely Brown, whose book, Design Unbound, argues the need for a new approach to address the complex and entangled challenges increasingly found in this dynamic world.Pendleton-Julian and Brown describe a new mindset based on understanding complex systems from an ecological perspective and introduce tools to respond to these challenges.The authors call for harnessing the power of a pragmatic imagination that engages a full range of mental activities to discover radically new solutions. They describe the practice of "world building," which can guide the development of transformational solutions to seemingly intractable—"wicked"—problems.

IFTF Foresight Talk: How to Build Brave New Worlds

On July 16, 2020, IFTF's Director of Game Research and Development Jane McGonigal hosted a free, public-facing webinar with guest Leah Zaidi, master storyteller and founder of the strategic foresight consultancy Multiverse Design to hear some of Leah Zaidi's most surprising recent forecasts on the future of love technology and the future of work, as she unpacked the process of how she created them. Leah gave an up-to-date look at how the possible long-term consequences of our global COVID-19 response are changing and playing out differently in different parts of the world. Jane and Leah also explored the connections between game design and the seven foundations of worldbuilding, inspired by how science fiction writers imagine and communicate new possibilities.

IFTF Foresight Talk with Cecily Sommers

On June 9, 2020 Institute for the Future's research director Jake Dunagan hosted Cecily Sommers, Business Futurist, in a Foresight Talk. When the ball dropped on the 21st century, it collided with three technological revolutions (AI, synthetic biology, quantum computing) that are redefining humanity, and three existential threats (pandemics, climate change, nuclear war) that could wipe it out. Now, twenty years later, as we transition into a new decade, futurist Cecily Sommers will address how COVID-19 is accelerating the pendular transition into a new era, and the equal and opposite potentials it is energizing for business and society.

IFTF Foresight Talk: Laura Nissen—Building the US's First Lab to Explore the Future of Social Work

The new National Social Work Education Health Futures Lab will “create opportunities for social workers to come together and envision a world that they would like to be in, while building the skills to help get there,” says Portland State University’s Professor Dr. Laura Nissen, principal investigator of the new lab. On Tuesday, May 19th, IFTF hosted a free webinar with Dr. Laura Nissen, PSU Presidential Futures Fellow and IFTF Research Fellow, to learn how she's spearheading significant research projects “on issues related to the future such as technology use and impact, climate change, and related topics.”

IFTF Foresight Talk with Stuart Candy

On Tuesday, April 28, 2020 IFTF hosted Dr. Stuart Candy, Director of Situation Lab, Associate Professor of Design at Carnegie Mellon University, and Fellow of The Long Now Foundation, for a webinar about how designing fragments of possible futures can help create social and organizational change. Professor Candy shared some of the methods that he has devised and employed with communities, learners, and institutions around the world.

IFTF Foresight Talk with Dr. René Rohrbeck of EDHEC Business School

On Thursday, March 12th, Institute for the Future, together with EDHEC Business School's Dr. René Rohrbeck, hosted a free and public-facing webinar about how organizations can use foresight tools and methods to drive organizational transformation, strategic innovation, and desirable futures. Dr. Rohrbeck discussed methods that he and his team have developed and their learnings from 15 years of benchmarking firms on corporate foresight. 

IFTF Foresight Talk with The World Bank Group's Rachel Alexandra Halsema

On Thursday, February 20th, Institute for the Future, together with The World Bank Group's Rachel Alexandra Halsema, hosted a free and public-facing webinar about how she's applying foresight and design thinking in her role at the ITS Technology & Innovation Lab and what impact it has on the organization's global work.

IFTF Foresight Talks: Designing the Future with Jake Dunagan and Jacques Barcia

On Thursday, January 16, 2020, Institute for the Future hosted a free and public-facing webinar with award-winning design futurists and the instructors of IFTF's new Design Futures Training, Dr. Jake Dunagan and Jacques Barcia, about why it's important to create full-bodied experiences of the future in order to truly immerse people in your vision.

IFTF Foresight Talks: Futures and Forests—Strategic Foresight at the U.S. Forest Service

On Wednesday, December 11th at 9:00am Pacific Time, Institute for the Future, together with the US Forest Service's David Bengston and Jason Crabtree, hosted a free and public-facing webinar about how they're developing and applying foresight methods and thinking to help forest planners, managers, and policy makers anticipate and prepare for change.

IFTF Foresight Talk with Jane McGonigal

On Thursday, November 14, Institute for the Future hosted a free webinar with Director of Games Research & Development, Dr. Jane McGonigal, about how she's pushing the futures thinking field from niche to mainstream by way of her new massively open online courses, which invite the public to game out hard-to-anticipate futures together.

IFTF Foresight Talk: Nestle's Global Consumer Insight & Market Intelligence Mgr, Dimitri Gerebtzoff

On Thursday, September 19th, Institute for the Future, together with Nestle's Global Consumer Insight and Market Intelligence Manager, Dimitri Gerebtzoff, hosted public-facing webinar about what it's like to sense early trends at one of the world's leading food companies. Join us to talk about how Dimitri manages his global network of trend sensers and how he transforms trends into business opportunities and products.

IFTF Foresight Talks with Lisa K. Solomon of the Stanford University d. School

On July 24, 2019 Institute for the Future, together with Stanford University d.school's Designer in Residence Lisa Kay Solomon, hosted a free and public-facing webinar about the intersections and applications of design and futures thinking.

IFTF Foresight Talks: Webinar with Microsoft Envisioning Team's Ming-Li Chai and Harald Becker

On March 19, 2019
Institute for the Future, together with Microsoft Envisioning Team's Ming-Li Chai and Harald Becker, hosted a free webinar for the public about what it's like to make the future in one of the world's leading tech companies

About IFTF Foresight Essentials

Institute for the Future is the world’s leading futures organization. Its training program, IFTF Foresight Essentials, is a comprehensive portfolio of strategic foresight training tools based upon 50 years of IFTF best practices. IFTF Foresight Essentials cultivates the mindset and skillsets that enable individuals and organizations to foresee future forces, identify emerging imperatives, and develop world-ready strategies. IFTF Foresight Essentials is uniquely customizable for businesses, government agencies, and social impact organizations.

Interested in learning more about our webinars and trainings?

Contact Cindy Baskin | cbaskin@iftf.org