Introduction
Summary of the book How to Future by Scott Smith with Madeline Ashby. Before we start, let’s delve into a short overview of the book. Imagine standing in a busy train station, where crowds move in all directions, each person headed toward a different destination. Now picture time itself as a train station, with countless possible futures lined up on different tracks, each ready to depart at any moment. Some futures feel close and predictable, like deciding what you’ll eat for breakfast tomorrow. Others stretch far beyond our imagination, like living on a distant planet or creating incredible new technologies that reshape the world around us. Learning how to think about these possible futures – to notice signs, guess what might happen, and plan ahead – is called futuring. It’s like having a special map that doesn’t just show one path, but many. In the following chapters, we’ll explore easy-to-understand methods to help you prepare for whatever tomorrow might bring, so you can make smarter choices and feel more confident about what lies ahead.
Chapter 1: Understanding the Limitless Pathways of Tomorrow: Why Thinking Ahead Matters Greatly.
Imagine looking out at a vast forest of tall trees. Each tree might represent a possible future, and each branch a pathway leading to different events. Sometimes we think the future is just one thing—a single tomorrow that’s set in stone. But in reality, countless futures stretch before us like a tangled web of many branches. Some futures feel more certain, like waking up and going to school next Monday. Others feel wildly uncertain, like whether humans will colonize Mars in your lifetime. Thinking about futures is not just some fancy trick for scientists or fortune-tellers. It’s a skill that anyone can learn. By carefully studying the world around us—tracking changes in technology, politics, the environment, and society—we can imagine what might happen next. This thinking-ahead mindset is what we call futuring, and it can help guide our decisions today.
When you begin to think about multiple possible futures, you’re not just daydreaming. You’re doing important detective work. It’s like preparing for a trip where the weather might change suddenly. You wouldn’t pack only swimsuits if there’s a chance it might snow. Similarly, by considering many futures, you give yourself a better chance of being ready for whatever actually comes your way. Maybe one future involves your favorite sport becoming more popular, creating new careers and opportunities. Another might see that sport replaced by a new activity nobody’s invented yet. Without exploring different futures, you might focus too narrowly and miss chances. A broad outlook helps you avoid being caught off guard by surprises and allows you to adapt. Futuring encourages flexible thinking so you can keep moving forward, even when the road turns unexpectedly.
Thinking ahead also means learning from the past and present. Imagine you’re planning a garden. If you understand how climate patterns work, what plants thrive in your soil, and how pests behave, you can guess which seeds are most likely to grow well. In the same way, futuring isn’t about guessing blindly. It’s about using clues, patterns, and changes we see now to imagine several tomorrow-worlds. By observing how industries shift over time, how new inventions alter our daily lives, or how social issues evolve, we gather pieces of a puzzle. Each piece helps us see not just one possible ending, but many. When we build this habit, we become better at handling uncertainty. Instead of fearing change, we learn how to dance with it, staying balanced even if the music changes.
Another reason why thinking ahead matters is that it allows us to shape the future rather than just letting it happen to us. If you know there’s a chance that clean energy could become cheaper and more available, you might start studying that field, preparing yourself for job opportunities. If you suspect that rising temperatures could affect certain crops, you might invest in better farming techniques or new technologies. By considering various futures, you empower yourself to influence the direction we all head in. This can mean supporting policies, designing new products, or choosing a career path that aligns with the changes you think are most likely. Futuring encourages you not only to survive in tomorrow’s world but to actively help create a brighter, more sustainable, and more inclusive version of it.
Chapter 2: Exploring How Futuring Guides Us Through Uncertain Twists and Infinite Possibilities.
Before you begin a futuring project, it’s helpful to understand its true purpose. Imagine someone hires you to predict how energy will be produced and used ten years from now. It’s impossible to know for sure, but by asking the right questions and narrowing your focus, you can make some educated guesses. Why do they want this prediction? Perhaps the world’s shifting energy needs demand a new approach. Maybe there’s a plan to create a product that must survive changing markets. Understanding the reasons behind a futuring exercise helps you find the right lens to look through. It’s like choosing the correct map for a journey. If you know you’re traveling by boat, you’ll pick a map that shows waterways, not just roads. Similarly, understanding your futuring purpose reveals the boundaries that shape your exploration.
Next, think about who the future is for. Are you imagining futures for an entire nation, a single company, or maybe just your own life? The people you’re guiding might be business leaders planning product launches, communities trying to save their forests, or individuals choosing a career path. Each audience may care about different details, so defining your who helps narrow down what matters most. For instance, a global energy company wants to know how entire continents might shift toward clean energy. Meanwhile, a small town might be more interested in how weather changes affect their local farming. By clarifying who you’re futuring for, you avoid getting lost in endless possibilities. Instead, you zoom in on the scenarios that have the greatest impact on your chosen group.
After figuring out your purpose and your audience, it’s time to set the scope of your futuring exercise. Imagine you have a huge telescope that can see very far, but you need to pick exactly where to point it. Should you focus on the next five years or imagine what might happen in twenty? Should you look at one industry or all industries that connect to it? Setting the right scope is crucial. Too broad, and you get lost in a sea of information. Too narrow, and you miss important signals lurking just outside your view. Balancing your scope allows you to gather enough evidence to paint a meaningful picture. Think of it as choosing how zoomed-in your camera lens should be when photographing a crowded festival. The right level of focus reveals important details without losing the bigger story.
Once you’ve defined your purpose, audience, and scope, you’re ready to move forward confidently. However, it’s also vital to remember that you’ll need a strong and diverse team to help. Futuring is not a one-person show. It benefits from people with different perspectives, backgrounds, and expertise. Some team members might be deep thinkers who love data. Others might be creative dreamers who imagine surprising alternatives. Together, they can spot trends one person alone might miss. You’re building a crew of explorers, each one contributing their unique strengths. This diverse approach means you can handle unexpected challenges and see the future from multiple angles. By combining well-defined goals, a clear audience, the right scope, and a strong team, your futuring journey begins on a solid foundation, ready to uncover hidden possibilities.
Chapter 3: Diving Deep into the Art of Sensing: Picking Up Clues From Our World.
Every day, you receive countless pieces of information—news headlines, social media posts, new gadgets at the store, or even a rumor shared between friends. Buried in these everyday bits of data are signals pointing toward future changes. Learning to sense means training your mind to notice these subtle clues. For example, if your grocery store suddenly starts selling a new kind of plant-based burger, that’s a signal. It might mean more people are open to eating environmentally friendly foods. Sensing is like learning to read the world as if it’s a giant comic strip packed with hidden hints. At first, you might struggle to notice anything special, but with practice, you’ll spot patterns: technology getting smaller, certain attitudes shifting, or unusual ideas popping up more frequently.
To become good at sensing, start by staying curious and open-minded. Don’t limit yourself to just one type of information source. Read magazines, watch videos, follow blogs, and talk to people from different walks of life. Each source provides a piece of a larger puzzle. Also, remember that not every signal is correct or important. It’s okay to find conflicting signals—some might say electric cars will take over next year, while others insist it’ll take decades. As a sensor, your job is not to believe everything blindly. Instead, you collect many signals, compare them, and notice which patterns emerge again and again. It’s a bit like being a detective searching for clues at a crime scene. The more clues you gather, the better you understand what’s really going on.
Another key skill in sensing is staying objective. It’s tempting to only follow sources that tell you what you want to hear. But if you do that, you might miss important warnings or opportunities. Being objective means regularly checking different kinds of information and not ignoring signals that contradict your expectations. For example, you might strongly believe that 3D printing will revolutionize medicine, but if reliable sources indicate that progress is stalling, you must consider that possibility. By balancing different opinions, you ensure that you don’t fall into wishful thinking. Instead, you base your future visions on a stable foundation of evidence and reasoning. Objectivity in sensing is like making sure you don’t tilt a see-saw too far on one side; a stable balance gives you a clearer view.
Developing your sensing abilities can be fun and surprisingly empowering. As you get better, you’ll start to see stories forming beneath the everyday buzz of life. Perhaps you notice that more families in your neighborhood are installing solar panels. This small detail might hint at a larger shift in energy choices, nudging you to investigate clean power further. Or maybe you see more headlines about certain jobs fading away, encouraging you to think about new skill sets you might need in the future. With improved sensing skills, you don’t passively wait for change to surprise you. Instead, you become an active observer, ready to follow intriguing leads. This sets the stage for deeper steps like scanning, where you’ll be even more focused, organized, and deliberate in piecing together tomorrow’s possibilities.
Chapter 4: Going Beyond Surface Observations: Targeted Scanning to Uncover Key Trends and Forces.
While sensing is like keeping your eyes open to anything unusual, scanning is more focused and deliberate. Imagine you have a powerful spotlight in a dark theater. Sensing is walking around with a flashlight, noticing random details. Scanning, however, means picking a spot on stage and shining a strong beam of light there, looking carefully at what’s happening. When you scan, you already have some idea of what you’re looking for. Maybe you want to understand how energy technology is changing, so you search for articles, reports, and data about solar, wind, and hydrogen power. Scanning helps you move from general awareness to targeted investigation. By carefully searching in the right places, you can uncover patterns that sensing alone might not fully reveal.
Many organizations fail at scanning because they treat it as a quick, one-time task. They might look up a few studies or glance at the latest tech news, then stop. But effective scanning is ongoing. It’s like a gardener regularly checking the health of their plants. The world doesn’t stand still, and neither do trends. What’s true today might shift tomorrow. If you keep scanning over time, you’ll catch these changes as they happen rather than getting blindsided later. For instance, you might notice that a certain type of energy storage device starts getting cheaper month by month. At first, it’s just a neat fact. But over time, as you gather more data, you see a trend forming. Soon, you realize this technology might be the key to unlocking cleaner, more efficient power sources.
As you scan, you’ll find clusters of signals that point in a similar direction. These clusters form what we call trends. A trend can be small and short-lived, or huge and long-lasting. By identifying trends, you start to understand how certain changes might play out over months or years. For example, let’s say you notice more and more headlines questioning the efficiency of solar panels. At the same time, studies suggest wind turbines are becoming more powerful. Over time, these repeated signals form two trends: solar skepticism and wind optimism. Trends help you see not just a single event, but a pattern that can guide your thinking about the future. Once you understand which trends matter to you, you can focus your energy on studying them in more depth.
Scanning also reveals deeper drivers hidden beneath trends. These drivers are like the engines that power trends. They can be technological leaps, economic shifts, political decisions, environmental changes, or social movements. For example, if wind power is getting cheaper and more popular, maybe it’s because governments are offering tax breaks for clean energy projects. That political support is a driver. By recognizing drivers, you understand not only what’s happening, but why it’s happening. This understanding allows you to imagine how trends might interact. If political support for wind energy grows while environmental concerns push people away from fossil fuels, you have a clearer idea of why wind energy might dominate in the coming years. Without scanning, these connections might remain hidden, making it harder to plan for future outcomes.
Chapter 5: Using the Mighty STEEP Framework: Organizing Trends for Clearer Future Visions.
So, you’ve gathered a bunch of trends and drivers. Now you need a way to organize them so they make sense. One helpful tool is called the STEEP framework. STEEP stands for Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, and Political. Imagine having five big drawers, each labeled with one of these words. Whenever you find a new trend, you place it in the drawer that matches its main category. This method helps you keep track of where trends fit. Instead of juggling a messy pile of data, you neatly sort it, making it easier to see what areas you’ve explored deeply and what areas might still be overlooked. With a STEEP chart, you get a more balanced understanding of future possibilities.
Let’s say you have a trend about people increasingly working from home. That seems social—how people live and interact is changing. It might also be partly technological, since better internet speeds and communication tools enable this shift. Another trend might focus on cheaper energy storage devices. That fits neatly under technological, but it also influences the economy and environment. By using STEEP, you might put a trend in more than one category if it has multiple impacts. Over time, you’ll have a map of trends that shows you which areas are well-explored and which need more research. If you notice you have tons of trends in the technology drawer but very few in the environmental drawer, that might signal a need to look harder at how nature’s changes affect your future scenarios.
STEEP helps you see connections you might otherwise miss. For instance, a social trend like shifting diets toward plant-based foods could interact with environmental trends about deforestation and water scarcity. Together, these combined trends might suggest that future governments (political category) will regulate agricultural methods more tightly to protect resources. Suddenly, by organizing your data, you reveal relationships between trends that were not obvious before. This makes your futuring efforts richer and more realistic. You’re no longer just looking at separate puzzle pieces. You’re fitting them together into a meaningful picture. Over time, STEEP helps ensure you don’t become blind to important categories of change. It encourages you to seek a balanced understanding so that the futures you imagine are not lopsided or missing key dimensions.
Remember that STEEP is not a strict formula. It’s a flexible guide. Some trends might fit comfortably into one category, while others might stretch across two or three. The point is to create a tool that helps you think clearly. If you realize that your project heavily involves environmental changes—like new energy sources or climate shifts—then you might spend more time exploring that drawer. Or if political decisions keep popping up as major drivers for technological trends, you know you should pay extra attention to policy changes. By using STEEP, you build a stronger foundation for your next steps. This framework transforms a messy jumble of signals and trends into an organized library of knowledge, making it easier to spot gaps, refine your approach, and confidently move forward.
Chapter 6: Placing Trends on Timelines: Mapping Probabilities and Impacts Across Multiple Horizons.
Now that you’ve sorted your trends using STEEP, it’s time to think about when these changes might happen. Futuring is not just about what could occur, but also about when. Will a new technology become common in two years, or will it take ten? This step involves assigning horizons—periods of time—during which you believe trends will have the greatest impact. Think of horizons as chapters of the future. The first horizon might cover the next few years, the second horizon might extend further out, and so on. By placing trends on timelines, you get a sense of which changes are urgent and which might take longer to unfold.
Let’s say you’re tracking a trend where solar and wind energy become cheaper. Within the first horizon (the next five years), you might say it’s probable that these renewables will become more cost-effective. After all, you’ve already seen signals and studies pointing in that direction. Moving to the next horizon (five to ten years out), maybe you consider it plausible that new battery technologies will make these energy sources even more reliable, but you’re not 100% sure yet. Further still, you might find it merely possible that hydrogen fuel cells will reshape energy entirely in fifteen or twenty years. By breaking down the future into horizons, you acknowledge that not all changes happen at the same speed and that certainty decreases as you gaze further ahead.
Assigning probabilities and timelines also helps you prepare for different levels of risk and reward. If a trend is highly probable and happening soon, you might need to act quickly—invest in it, learn the skills needed, or adjust your strategy to avoid falling behind. If a trend is less certain and farther away, you have more time to watch it develop before making big decisions. This approach is like planning a road trip: you focus first on the city you’ll reach in an hour and worry later about the place you might visit next week. By thinking about when trends might have their strongest impact, you build a roadmap that guides your choices, making it easier to respond effectively when change arrives.
Remember that these timelines are not set in stone. They are best guesses based on what you know right now. As you learn more or as events unfold, you may need to adjust. If, for example, a breakthrough in battery technology suddenly appears next year, something you thought would take a decade might be right around the corner. This is why futuring is a continuous process. You don’t just make one guess and forget about it. You keep track of trends over time, refining your sense of when they’ll happen and how strongly they’ll affect the world. By doing this, you stay flexible and ready to pivot as new information appears, ensuring that your view of tomorrow remains as accurate and useful as possible.
Chapter 7: Connecting the Dots: Building Rough Roadmaps and Imagining Possible Future Threads.
Once you’ve organized your trends into categories and placed them on timelines, you’re ready to connect the dots. Think of it like weaving a tapestry. Each thread represents a possible future scenario, and you need to pull various threads together to form a picture. Sometimes, a trend you expected to be strong might turn out weaker if another factor changes. For instance, if solar and wind don’t get as cheap as you thought, hydrogen fuel might remain too expensive to scale up, delaying its big moment. By exploring these interactions, you create rough roadmaps that show different paths the future could take.
These roadmaps are not perfect predictions. Instead, they help you imagine what if situations. You might have a roadmap where everything goes right for renewable energy—solar is cheap, batteries get better, governments support the industry, and people demand cleaner power. That roadmap leads to a scenario where fossil fuels fade away quickly. Another roadmap might see technology costs remaining high, political support fading, and people clinging to older energy sources. That scenario leads to a different outcome. By mapping multiple roads, you get a sense of how events might unfold depending on which factors dominate. This approach helps you avoid putting all your hopes into one single vision.
Creating these roadmaps is like having a set of possible story outlines for a novel you haven’t written yet. Each outline suggests a different chain of events. Maybe in one storyline, a sudden economic crisis forces governments to invest heavily in renewable energy. In another, unexpected environmental disasters push people to adopt cleaner solutions faster than anyone predicted. In yet another, advances in artificial intelligence make it easier to manage energy grids, changing the game entirely. By exploring multiple storylines, you realize that the future isn’t a straight line. Instead, it’s a branching tree of possibilities, each branch influenced by countless factors large and small.
These rough draft roadmaps also help you identify moments when decisions matter most. If you know that a certain technology will only become viable if cost reductions happen by a certain year, you’ll pay special attention to economic signals. If you learn that a political decision set for next month could change the energy landscape, you’ll watch that event closely. Roadmaps help you see how current actions can push us toward one future or another. By understanding these crucial turning points, you can influence outcomes—maybe by supporting a certain innovation, educating people about its benefits, or advocating policies that encourage sustainable choices. Instead of just floating along with the current of change, you become an active navigator, using your knowledge of these roads to shape a more promising tomorrow.
Chapter 8: Breathing Life into Scenarios: Constructing Rich, Detailed Stories From Identified Themes.
Having rough roadmaps and threads is one thing, but making them come alive in people’s minds is another. To truly communicate potential futures, you need to craft detailed scenarios—stories that describe what life might be like under different conditions. Imagine painting a picture that shows how a future community works, what people care about, how they earn a living, and what challenges they face. These stories give your audience, whether they’re investors, citizens, or decision-makers, a vivid glimpse into tomorrow. Detailed scenarios help people understand not just the idea of a trend, but its human impact. They turn dry data into relatable, thought-provoking narratives.
For example, suppose you’re creating a scenario where your client’s new energy technology becomes affordable and popular. Instead of just saying wind turbines are everywhere, show how this affects daily life. Describe families who now have lower electricity bills and can afford better insulation for their homes. Paint a scene where local workers maintain wind farms, creating new jobs and strengthening the community’s economy. Mention that schools teach students about renewable energy, inspiring the next generation of engineers. This kind of storytelling helps people care about the scenario because they can see themselves in it. They feel the benefits, sense the changes, and imagine how it shapes their own hopes and dreams.
Detailed scenarios can also address fears and questions. If you’re promoting algae-based fuel as an alternative to gasoline, people might worry about where the algae come from and whether harvesting it harms marine life. In your scenario, explain how sustainable algae farms are managed responsibly, respecting local ecosystems. Show how scientists, fishermen, and environmental groups work together to ensure balance. Describe how communities benefit from cleaner air, reduced pollution, and stable energy prices. By answering these potential concerns upfront in your story, you help readers believe that this scenario is possible. They won’t just dismiss it as wishful thinking. They’ll see the careful thought behind it.
Remember that scenarios aren’t predictions set in stone. They’re windows into possible worlds. By crafting multiple scenarios—some optimistic, some cautious, some very different from our current reality—you help people understand the range of future outcomes. This variety invites critical thinking. Your audience might question certain assumptions, suggest new factors to consider, or even imagine their own scenarios. The point is to spark conversation, open minds, and encourage people to consider choices they might never have thought about. With each scenario, you’re giving people a toolkit for thinking creatively about the future, allowing them to compare, contrast, and choose paths that lead to better outcomes for everyone involved.
Chapter 9: Weighing Multiple Outcomes: Planning Strategies That Adapt As Futures Take Shape.
Now that you know how to sense signals, scan for trends, sort them with STEEP, place them on timelines, and craft scenarios, how do you turn all this knowledge into action? After all, the goal is not just to imagine tomorrow, but to help shape it. One useful approach is to develop strategies that remain flexible as different futures unfold. Think of it like preparing a suitcase for a trip to an unknown destination. You pack clothes for hot weather and a jacket for cooler days. You include a phone charger just in case. Similarly, when you consider multiple futures, you design strategies that can adapt to changing conditions.
For example, a company might decide that no matter which clean energy trend takes off—solar, wind, or algae-based fuels—they will invest in versatile technologies that can be adjusted easily. Maybe they’ll train their workforce in a variety of skills that apply to more than one technology. This way, if wind power grows faster than expected, they’re ready. If solar suddenly drops in price, they can pivot without starting from scratch. Strategies like these prevent you from putting all your eggs in one basket. Instead of betting everything on one future, you spread your bets wisely, making sure you’re prepared for several realistic outcomes.
Planning this way also helps you manage risk. If you’re a government leader deciding how to support your community in the face of climate change, you wouldn’t want to invest all your resources into a single solution that might fail. Instead, you consider multiple paths—improving local infrastructure, investing in education, supporting new technologies—and adjust your efforts as you learn more. This makes your plans resilient. If one future doesn’t pan out, you still have other strategies to rely on. It’s like building a house with strong foundations and backup materials, ready to handle different weather conditions without collapsing.
Flexible strategies also help you take advantage of surprises. Not all unexpected events are bad. Some bring amazing opportunities. If you’re prepared for multiple futures, when a sudden breakthrough happens—a new invention, a surprising economic boom, a shift in public opinion—you’re in a prime position to benefit. Instead of scrambling to catch up, you already have ideas and plans that can fit this new reality. This proactive approach turns changes from scary obstacles into inviting doorways. By staying open-minded, continuously updating your knowledge, and preparing for several outcomes, you become more confident in dealing with the unknown. That confidence sets you apart, giving you the courage to embrace whatever tomorrow brings.
Chapter 10: Empowering Communities and Innovators: Using Futuring Tools to Influence Real-World Decisions.
Futuring isn’t just for big companies or governments. It’s a skill that can help communities, families, and individuals, too. Imagine you live in a small town worried about jobs disappearing as old industries fade. Instead of waiting helplessly, you can gather locals to discuss signals and trends affecting the area. Maybe you identify a growing interest in renewable energy or artisanal crafts that could become popular. By scanning for relevant information, organizing it, and imagining possible futures, you can figure out which new skills to learn, what businesses to start, or which projects to support. When communities think this way, they become more self-reliant, proactive, and ready to direct their own destinies.
Innovators and entrepreneurs can also benefit from futuring techniques. If you’re developing a new product—let’s say a device that stores solar energy—you might worry about market uncertainties. By applying futuring steps, you learn which technologies might emerge, which policies could favor your product, and how customers’ needs might change. With this knowledge, you can design your product more cleverly and choose marketing strategies that fit likely futures. If a certain trend doesn’t materialize, you’ll have a backup plan, maybe shifting your focus to another energy solution that’s taking off. Futuring reduces the guesswork, helping you make informed choices and stand out in competitive environments.
Even at a personal level, futuring can guide life decisions. Perhaps you’re a student choosing a career path. By paying attention to trends—like the rise of automation, the demand for cybersecurity experts, or the popularity of environmental engineering—you can pick a field likely to grow. You might also consider how cultural shifts and global challenges will shape job markets. Instead of leaving it up to chance, futuring gives you tools to think ahead and prepare for the kinds of opportunities that might arise. This can give you confidence in your choices and help you adapt if the world changes in unexpected ways.
In short, futuring is not just about crystal-ball predictions; it’s about empowerment. When people, businesses, and communities understand multiple futures, they move from being passive passengers to active drivers. They can spark discussions, influence policies, and encourage responsible innovation. Take the example of environmental activists pushing for greener policies: they use futuring methods to show decision-makers what will happen if we ignore climate signals and which benefits we might gain by embracing clean energy. This approach can persuade leaders to make bold moves. Similarly, educators can plan for the skills their students will need in a world transformed by new technologies and global issues. By spreading futuring tools, we help everyone make choices that shape a better tomorrow, rather than just reacting to whatever comes along.
Chapter 11: Embracing Ongoing Change: Continuously Refining Our Visions in a World That Never Stops Shifting.
One crucial understanding is that futuring never truly ends. The world is constantly changing, and so must our outlook. When you finish one round of sensing, scanning, and scenario-building, you don’t just stop. Over time, new signals emerge, old trends fade, fresh innovations appear, and unexpected events shake things up. Instead of seeing this as frustrating, view it as exciting. Futuring is like being on a lifelong learning journey. The more you practice, the better you become at adapting to surprises and integrating new information into your vision. Each cycle of futuring sharpens your ability to respond smartly to shifting conditions.
As you continue refining your views, don’t ignore outliers—those strange, rare signals that don’t fit neatly into your current trends. Sometimes what seems odd today might become normal tomorrow. Many groundbreaking technologies were once considered wild fantasies. By keeping space for unexpected ideas, you ensure you won’t be blindsided when something unusual takes root. This willingness to consider outliers makes your futuring richer and more flexible. It’s like adding extra colors to your palette so you can paint more vibrant pictures of what might lie ahead.
Also, remember that futuring is a team sport. Over time, involve more voices. Invite people from different backgrounds, ages, and professions to share their insights. A teenager might spot a cultural shift an older person overlooks. A farmer might notice environmental changes an urban resident misses. The more diverse your futuring circle, the more complete your picture becomes. This inclusive approach helps ensure that the futures you imagine are fair, balanced, and considerate of all kinds of perspectives. It strengthens your ability to make well-rounded decisions that benefit everyone involved.
Finally, treat futuring as a mindset, not just a tool. It’s an attitude of curiosity, openness, and readiness. When you think this way, you’re not scared of change; you’re prepared for it. You see opportunities in challenges, lessons in failures, and potential in every new development. Whether you’re launching a new product, guiding a community, choosing a career, or planning policies, you bring this flexible mindset along. As the world continues to spin and evolve, futuring helps you navigate its twists and turns. It transforms uncertainty from a stumbling block into a stepping stone, allowing you to move forward with hope, creativity, and confidence.
All about the Book
Unlock the secrets of strategic foresight with ‘How to Future.’ This essential guide empowers readers to navigate uncertainty, embrace change, and envision impactful futures. Ideal for thinkers and innovators eager to shape tomorrow.
Scott Smith and Madeline Ashby are visionary futurists specializing in strategic foresight, dedicated to helping individuals and organizations navigate and shape the complexities of the future through insightful analysis and innovative thinking.
Futurists, Strategic Planners, Business Executives, Policy Makers, Educators
Futurism, Creative Writing, Public Speaking, Innovation Workshops, Technology Trends Analysis
Climate Change, Technological Disruption, Societal Resilience, Economic Inequality
The future is not something that happens to us; it’s something we can create together.
Albert Wenger, Alec Ross, Naomi Klein
Futurist Book Award, Innovation Award from the Foresight Institute, Best Business Book by the Axiom Awards
1. How can we identify emerging trends effectively? #2. What strategies help us expand our futures thinking? #3. How do we recognize patterns in societal changes? #4. What tools can we use for foresight practice? #5. How can we prepare for multiple possible futures? #6. What role does imagination play in strategic planning? #7. How can we better anticipate disruptive innovations? #8. What is the importance of scenario planning? #9. How do we account for uncertainty in decisions? #10. What are the key steps in action foresight? #11. How can we handle complexity in future predictions? #12. What methods enhance our capacity for adaptability? #13. How do we involve diverse perspectives in foresight? #14. What exercises improve our foresight capabilities? #15. How can organizations foster a futures-oriented culture? #16. What is the significance of speculative design? #17. How do ethics factor into foresight planning? #18. What are best practices for long-term thinking? #19. How can we track signals of future developments? #20. What are common pitfalls in futures thinking?
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