Category: Technical

We want to highlight an organization that is focused on equipping educators and administrative leaders with the mindset and resources to empower their students to own and influence the future.

Environmental scanning is the most critical practice for all foresight practitioners. But where to begin with sourcing interesting scan hits? The internet is an endless ocean of information, littered with misinformation and distractions. Even if you have a solid grip on how to conduct quality futures intelligence, good scan hits can be hard to come by– that is, until you know where to look. Below is a list of our favorite sources along with our community’s. Use it to kick-start…

We have a tradition at TFS for a few years running- each July we hold “Listmas in July”. Toward the end of each year, futurists typically have a field day with lists. Top 10 Trends for 2022, 20 Major Trends for the Next Decade, Best Tech Trends for Your Company… You spend an afternoon reading through these lists and– voila!– you have everything you need to take your leadership, organizational development and innovation incubator to the next level. See how…

TFS: How do you establish a regular scanning practice? There’s so much information out there, and only so many hours in the day. I want to be efficient, but I also want to make sure that I’m not missing anything when I look for trends and emerging issues. Can you give me some suggestions? – Sincerely, Feeling Overwhelmed!

We often joke that since the pandemic we have not had to advocate for futures thinking to skeptics nearly as strongly as we used to. The disruption proved to be a meaningful shockwave across all disciplines, forcing us all to seriously reevaluate priorities and the antiquated systems that keep us from reaching our higher order potential. Reactionary, short-term, quantitative, and mechanical approaches are ill-equipped to carry humanity into the future, or “what got us here, won’t get us there”. Luckily,…

VUCA—volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous—is an acronym coined by the U.S. military to describe the geo-political environment after the Cold War. Today, business leaders have adopted the term to describe their Monday mornings.

If you’ve just learned about Strategic Foresight you may be wondering, “Where do I begin? Do I need to create scenarios? Should I develop trend cards?” Focal issues help us to answer these questions, making them a critical starting point in your futures initiatives.

The Current State: Good Intentions, Poor Results Having spent the majority of my career as a finance professional for large, multi-national firms, I know intimately the herculean (and often fruitless) task of strategic and financial planning.

We’ve done the heavy lifting of experimenting with several tools and complied our reviews below. While not an exhaustive list, this article ranks top platforms based on effectiveness based on an environmental scanning use case.

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” T.S. Elliot A growing body of research suggests that our playgrounds are too safe. Apparently, giving children the ability to fail and recover builds not only resilience, but creativity and overall health. It may seem counterintuitive, but consider that if we don’t allow kids the opportunity to push the boundaries on their abilities (to “test the fences,” if you will), then when they…