Institute For The Future

Foresight Forensics: Using Scenarios to Demonstrate Unintended Consequences

Foresight professionals typically don’t use scenarios as stand-alone forecasts. In most cases, we use scenarios as a way to give some emotional or...

Video Storytelling Brings the Future to Life: A Conversation with Filmmaker Demetrius Wren

Demetrius Wren is a filmmaker, musician, and storyteller based in Los Angeles. He has told stories in the form of award winning documentaries, feature...

Future Factors: Flex Your Foresight Muscles with IFTF's Signals Database

Signals gathering lies at the heart of every good futures practice.And the more diverse the community, the better the signals. ...

News from the Future #60

The Games are full of surprises.

Foresight Forensics: How to Learn From Your Previous Scenarios

I wrote my first scenario about 30 years ago. I was in graduate school at the time, studying International Politics at UC Berkeley. As part of a...

Creating Better Futures through Collective Intelligence

In my years as a community engagement practitioner and participatory designer, I learned that the process of participating in the design of something...

California 100: Vision and Strategy for the Next Century

IFTF Partners with California 100 & Research Centers Across the State to Examine the Future of...

News from the Future #59

IFTF Foresight Essentials mid-year update

Drivers and Signals: How Are They Different?

Signals and drivers are two pillars of foresight practice at IFTF, yet many workshop attendees struggle to fully understand the two concepts and how...

News From the Future #58

Moving towards an equitable future: 2021, Pride, and Juneteenth!

News from the Future #57

Who owns your attention?

Rediscover Your Inner Futurist

I have found that those of us who have the privilege of spending our days thinking about the future tend to have a complex relationship with the title...

Avoid These Common Mistakes in Your Foresight Practice

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News from the Future #56

How will you go beyond carbon neutral to climate positive?

Stone Soup Scenarios: How to Pull in Multiple Perspectives When Forecasting the Future

“What happens when 20 futurists team up to investigate the future of family?” Institute for the Future Director of Game Research and Development Jane...

How to Assemble Your Foresight Community

No single person can claim the future for themself. The future is shared by a multitude, whether we like it or not, so it is a futurist’s folly to...

Futurist Book Reviews

RECOMMENDED READING The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values

Hiding in Plain Sight: America’s Working Poverty Epidemic

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Are Foresight Practitioners Optimists?

With so much time spent thinking about the future, IFTFers are sometimes asked whether they have optimistic or pessimistic outlooks regarding what's...

News From the Future #54

On track towards the post-pandemic future.

News from the Future #53

Build a Scenario for Climate Action.

News from the Future #52

As futurists, we’re biased toward optimism. 2021 is gathering momentum, and efforts to address COVID-19, climate change, racial injustice, immigration...

The Social Work Health Futures Lab: Exploring the Future of Well-Being and Justice

What does it look like to invite an entire profession to consider whether futures thinking and foresight practice should be part of how it operates to...