Institute For The Future

Leaders: How to be there when you are not there

Most leaders I know today are at their best when they are there physically, in person as we say. When they are not present physically, however, there...

Leaders: Do you know how to lead Shape-Shifting Organizations?

When I first came to Institute for the Future, I got introduced to Paul Baran, one of several people who is credited with inventing packet switching,...

Leaders: Do you fear the future?

If you don’t have some fear about the future, you’re not paying attention. Fear is not a bad thing. It’s what you do with your fear that can turn bad....

Three Strategies for Building Kitchens of the Future

Rebecca Chesney shares three strategies for designing kitchens of the future to help you think beyond smart kitchens to kitchens of...

From the Archives: World Climatic Change + Variability

In 1978, IFTF published a paper titled World Climatic Change and Variability, 1977—1990: Five Scenarios, which explored the consequences of five...

Leaders: Learn by looking backward from the Future

The reason you look backward from the future is to develop the perspective necessary to come up with a good plan of action in the present, a way...

Working While Learning: Does the Past Signal the Future?

Do studies of today's students make a case for braiding together working and learning?

Augmented Reality: Empowering the Future of Museums

For the past year, building on a long-term partnership, my team in the IFTF EML and The Tech Museum of Innovation team set out to create one of the...

Food Innovation Recipes: ENGAGED EATERS

Some recipes are passed down from generation to generation, becoming long-standing traditions. Others such as 'Engaged Eaters' invite us to explore...

Food Innovation Recipes: REWRITABLE NARRATIVE

Some recipes are passed down from generation to generation, becoming long-standing traditions. Others such as 'Rewritable Narrative' invite us to...

Devices 'Disappear'

Advances in computing power are largely the work of scientists and engineers ... but it’s often artists that provide us visions of how we might use...

The Tech + IFTF: Body Worlds Decoded

Institute for the Future partnered with The Tech Museum of Innovation to create a first-generation interactive, custom augmented reality (AR)...

Oct 11, 6-7pm: Bots, Disinformation, Computational Propaganda

Join us for a conversation with Samuel Woolley, IFTF's newest Research Director, who specializes in the study of automation/AI, political...

Crashing My Own Hotel Room

It was supposed to be a romantic evening. My wife’s business trip to London landed us in one of the nicest hotels of my well-traveled...

Food Innovation Recipes: EXPERIMENTAL BIODESIGN

Some recipes are passed down from generation to generation, becoming long-standing traditions. Others such as 'Experimental Biodesign' invite us to...

Oct 10-12: Reconfiguring Reality Conference

IFTF's Tech Futures Lab to host a hands-on exploration of the future on October 10-12 featuring leading thinkers, researchers, and technologists and...

Vint Cerf Presents, Facilitates Discussion at IFTF about Ethics + AI

IFTF had the privilege of inviting one of the “fathers of the internet,” Vint Cerf, to talk about the tough issues around Ethics and AI in a society...

Looking Backwards from 2025

An Anthropologist Explores How Body Area Networks Became Family Area Networks...

IFTF Report IDs Ways to Leverage Creative + Cultural Economies for Sustainable Development

Institute for the Future (IFTF) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) today released a report outlining 10 areas of innovation that...

Build Your Employer Work + Learn Portfolio Like Your Stock Portfolio

An employer work + learn portfolio is a new idea that riffs off of stock portfolios.

Leaders: Are you Future-proof?

We think we are connected today, but the next ten years will be a period of explosive connectivity and asymmetric upheaval. In this future world of...

West and East Africa

While the U.S., Europe, and Asia lead in hardware and supercomputing, in Africa’s “high-delta” (or “frontier”) markets, social innovation is what’s...

Food Innovation Recipes: CLOUD INTELLIGENCE

Some recipes are passed down from generation to generation, becoming long-standing traditions. Others such as 'Cloud Intelligence' invite us to...

At The Nexus Of Science Fiction and Future Fact with Ramez Naam

The single most important law of futures studies is that there are no facts about the future. Only fictions. Ramez Naam lives by that law, having...