Institute For The Future

Welcome to 2020

It’s a new decade and here are 5 ways you can shape it ...

At IFTF we always think on a 10-year horizon. Why 10? Because it’s long enough to ignore the often inconsequential noise of the here and now, but not so long that you get lost in an inconceivably massive cone of possibility. 2020 is a great year to begin to expand your thinking about what’s possible in the coming decade, and we’ve selected 5 tools you can use to stay strong, resilient, creative, and agile until 2030.

1. Subscribe to IFTF Futures Thinking on Coursera (free to audit!) to develop the creative skills needed to imagine how the future can be different and learn to think like a professional futurist.
2. Listen to an excerpt from IFTF futurist Bob Johansen's upcoming book, Full-Spectrum Thinking, which goes beyond skills and competencies to propose five new leadership literacies—combinations of disciplines, practices, and worldviews—that will be needed to thrive in a VUCA world of increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.
3. Follow our Three-Step Guide to a Networked World to discover hidden potential within your organization’s existing resources, lay out alternative paths using alternative interfaces, and clarify priorities.
4. Train your brain to see more clearly what isn’t there (yet) by practicing this intervention designed to restore normal cognitive function in people with amnesia, brain injury, severe depression, and autism, which has been shown to help anyone get extraordinarily good at seeing the future.
5. Become an IFTF Vantage Partner and receive expert intelligence and proven insights gathered from IFTF’s diverse research labs, personalized guidance based on five decades of experience, and trusted, real-time expertise that alerts your organization to hidden hazards and aligns them with emerging opportunities. (See how Microsoft Envisioning Center’s team uses foresight and insight to understand and shape the ways people will interact with future technologies.)
   
   

Design a future beyond 2020

2020 Marks a fresh start for the future.
Design the Future you want.

Design Futures uses media, design, and immersive experiences to help people feel the future. Join a team of award-winning design futurists to learn to imagine and prototype informed alternatives to the future, and design new offerings and policies for the next decade.

Interested in joining IFTF Design Futures Training on April 29-30, 2020? Learn more about the session and how to register by contacting Neela Lazkani.