Institute For The Future

Stealing the Future at the Cavallo Maneuver

On April 11-12, IFTF’s Ten-Year Forecast program hosted the Cavallo Maneuver—an experiment in alternate reality games and augmented reality spaces.

For the 150 strategic leaders from corporations, nonprofits, government agencies and entrepreneurial startups who gathered at Cavallo Point in Sausalito, CA, the maneuver was an opportunity to remap the world by jumping through five timestreams between now and 2023—and then to return to the present with insights stolen from the future. 

The maneuver was designed to help these leaders make the leap from the First Curve—the world of incumbent institutions and processes—to what former IFTF president, Ian Morrison, calls the Second Curve. Over the next decade, new technologies and social inventions will begin to define this Second Curve and the new ways of organizing our economy, our governments, and our daily lives to meet the epic challenges we face as a global society.

As part of the maneuver, participants explored 25 video forecasts that started with trailheads all over the world. They crafted First Curve strategies that could succeed on the Second Curve and then took a deep dive into genuine Second Curve strategies. As they jumped five timestreams, they plotted the path from today’s organizations to emerging platforms and ultimately to global movements to respond to everything from climate change to a billion new women workers in the next decade alone. 

They also explored five future destinations:

• Work: the rerouting of our productive labors into homes, co-working spaces, DIY manufacturing shops and even our café cultures
• Wealth: the rise of new ways of building wealth, from IP-free zones to new kinds of investors
• Mind & Body: the strategies we’ll use to adapt to both physical and digital environments that test our health and security
• Planet: the transformation of physical environment at all scales from climate change to the “matterstream”
• Power: the dynamics of world where guns can be printed and information can target our nervous systems 

A Field Guide to the Cavallo Maneuver used the augmented reality tool Layar to uncover video forecasts at each of these destinations and to unearth strategies for moving from organizations to platforms to movements. Participants designed their own movements and captured the designs in aspirations videos. Along the way, they shared lessons with nine Next-Gens: personas of young people from around the world, aged 17-24, who were identified as “tipping point” individuals. They also pursued secret missions to “do it without” money, employees, intellectual property, managers, and even organizations.

For more information about the Cavallo Maneuver and IFTF's Ten-Year Forecast program, please contact Sean Ness ([email protected]).