Institute For The Future

I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't let you send that email

Suppose you manage a sales team. Of course you don't want them coming across as angry or anxious or pushy. Now suppose, instead, that you could screen...

Science—coming soon to a garage near you

Here in Silicon Valley, the lore—and allure—of the garage model for innovation is strong.  I've heard it said, "It has been successful for IT and...

How to Program Your Immune System

He's at it again. Kary Mullis, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the invention of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), is on a quest. He...

FutureCast: Cesar Harada on Open_Sailing (Aug 12, 11am PT)

Developing the International Ocean Station August 12 at 11:00 am Pacific TimeJoin Jerry Michalski in conversation with Cesar Harada to discuss...

Contagion health continues to spread

Over the last couple of years, we've been interested in the idea that health spreads—for better or worse—through our social networks, and the...

IFTF on GOOD

This past month Jake Dunagan and I started a series of posts over on GOOD magazine's website. The posts focus on both explaining what Futures thinking...

How To Grow A New Joint Inside Your Body

Say you have arthritis, as 80 million Americans do. Your hip has degenerated to the point that you have trouble walking, or standing for too long, or...

Crowd-Tracking Noise and Air Pollution

A new noise/ozone sensor watch being tested in Europe.

The Geneticist Will Skype you Now

One of the more startling statistics I learned last year came from something by geneticist and science writer Misha Angrist: At least as of a couple...

What If Your Genetics Defined Your Community?

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Filtering Out Temptations

When was the last time you looked into the refrigerator or at a store shelf with every intention of grabbing a healthy snack--only to wind up with...

On Governance

Mathias Crawford and I have begun a series on "Futures Thinking" over at GOOD. My first post went up this week--on the need for re-designing our...

Can I Have a Featherless Chicken and a Side of Healthy Bacon?

The New Scientist has a great round-up of the various efforts geneticists are undertaking to modify farm animals. The story doesn't break any new...

15 Ideas to Improve Global Health

If you imagine a healthy future, what does it look like? What will we have done to our bodies, networks, and environments to improve our collective...

Lightweight Innovation

Keeping with Institute for the Future's commitment to share our research with public, throughout 2010 this blog has explored our forecasts and impacts...

Previewing Your Future Self

A few months ago, I highlighted a treadmill at Japanese gyms that flashes pictures of desserts at exercisers as they hit certain calorie counts in...

Lightweight Innovation: Guidelines for Reinvention (Part 1)

Lightweight innovation processes are emerging on the web, aided by new ideas about how to organize innovation and technologies that reduce the cost...

Take the Genetic Test for Longevity

What if there was a simple spit test you could do that would predict how long you are likely to live? Would you want to know?Having this kind of test...

Is That Your Wallet in Your Pocket or Are You Just Happy to See me?

Via PSFK, I came across three concept designs for wallets from MIT's Media Lab that would offer real-time feedback on our spending habits. For...

Curing Cancer in a Garage?

This is the first time I've seen someone happily exclaim, "I'm curing cancer in my garage!"

Longer Lives Make Suicide a More Popular Option

I was presenting some of the forecasts from our recently released HC2020 map last week when I saw a detail in one the map that I had never seen...

Performance-Enhancing... Marijuana?

A recent survey about performance-enhancing drugs and poker has gotten some press for the not-terribly-shocking finding that approximately 80 percent...

Key Characteristics of Lightweight Innovation

In 2007, the Institute for the Future forecast on lightweight infrastructure introduced a set of characteristics common in the design of emerging...

In Memoriam: William Mitchell

I learned with great sadness about the loss of William Mitchell, 65, this past friday after a long battle with cancer. Bill was the chair of my Ph.D....