Strategic foresight is evolving, and fast. As change accelerates across industries, technologies, and the environment, the need for tools that help us make sense of emerging disruptions has never been more urgent. That’s why IFTF recently partnered with the World Economic Forum (Forum) to create a new kind of foresight map — one that surfaces the transformative forces redefining the very field of foresight itself.
We’re thrilled to share that this work is making waves globally. The map was featured and displayed by the Forum during the 2025 Annual Meeting in Davos, where it sparked meaningful conversations among global leaders. Even more remarkably, it recently became the most viewed map on the Forum's Strategic Intelligence Platform, surpassing even Artificial Intelligence, a perennial chart-topper. It’s been spotlighted in the Forum's GlobalForesight Network community newsletter and is now available to explore in a dynamic visualization format on the Strategic Intelligence platform for anyone eager to engage with it.
From the start, our aim was not just to highlight emerging trends, but to illuminate how foresight itself is being transformed. We set out to answer a core question: What are the driving forces that will shape the next era of futures thinking?
The resulting work, developed by a team of seven senior IFTF researchers, maps a series of powerful, intersecting shifts:
The democratization of futures, as once-exclusive methods reach wider, more diverse communities;
The rise of AI-augmented foresight tools, which are compressing traditional planning cycles and enabling more dynamic simulations;
The growing imperative for environmental foresight, which places planetary risk at the center of strategic thinking;
And the pivot from VUCA models to BANI frameworks, reflecting the brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and often incomprehensible nature of today’s disruptions.
These themes aren’t just interesting, they’re essential. Foresight is no longer a niche discipline reserved for government or corporate strategy teams. It’s becoming a shared language for navigating complexity, and that means practitioners must now be fluent in everything from machine learning to community imagination.
That’s why being part of the the Forum's Expert Network is so meaningful to us. It provides a rare opportunity to engage with a global community of thought leaders who are grappling with the same questions we are about the future of leadership, resilience, equity, and transformation. It’s a place where long-term thinking is not only valued but actively integrated into multi-sector decision-making.
This project has also reinforced a belief we hold deeply: Strategic foresight is a practice that must evolve continuously to remain useful. The forces reshaping our world aren’t just reshaping what we plan for. They’re transforming how we plan in the first place.
Take AI, for instance. We’re no longer just scanning the horizon for signals of disruption; we’re also co-creating future scenarios with intelligent systems that learn and adapt in real-time. The challenge now isn’t just staying ahead of trends, but learning how to collaborate with these tools without losing sight of human judgment and community wisdom.
Or consider environmental change. Once treated as a specialized concern, planetary risk is now a baseline consideration for nearly every domain from supply chains to mental health. Foresight work that doesn’t center environmental futures is no longer adequate.
So what’s next?
We see this project as just the beginning. Our role in the foresight ecosystem is to amplify not just signals, but strategies. We are committed to making sense of change in ways that are tangible, inclusive, and actionable. We’ll continue to deepen our partnerships with global institutions like the World Economic Forum and share our work through the Strategic Intelligence platform, where we will add to our map new transformative forces as they emerge. We’re also exploring new formats like social simulations, immersive storytelling, and community-based futures thinking programs that democratize access to strategic foresight.
The fact that our map became the most viewed on the Forum's platform signals something important. People aren’t just looking for forecasts. They want insight into how the future-thinking process itself is evolving. They want to know not just what’s changing in the world, but how to think differently about the future itself.
If that’s the conversation we’re helping to ignite, then we couldn’t be prouder. To learn more about how IFTF’s approach to strategic foresight can help you or your organization contact us!