Years ago, as a first-semester MBA student, I asked one of my favorite professors who else I should study under during my time at NYU. He told me to look up Amy Webb. “She’s a futurist,” he explained, adding, “…And she’s the real deal.” Trusting his judgment, I enrolled the following semester in Professor Webb’s course, and have been working with her and the Future Today Strategy Group ever since. In that time, I’ve spent countless hours in the company of fellow futurists, and learned just what it takes for one to be the “real deal.”
The term futurist first showed up in mid-19th Century religious literature, and since then its definition has expanded to include figures in fields as diverse as philosophy, economics, art, and business. Because of this wide and disparate range, it can be challenging to know exactly what it means when someone calls themself a futurist. But what is true of all futurists, regardless of their medium, is their common interest in exploring what’s to come and exchanging their insights with others. Within this expansive, inclusive group of futurists lies a subset with a more focused objective—to methodologically examine potential futures in order to help organizations navigate uncertainty. This subset constitutes a field known as strategic foresight. That’s where FTSG plays.
You can think of the relationship between futurism and foresight as concentric—you know, the idea that all squares are rectangles but not vice versa? So, all practitioners of strategic foresight are futurists, but not all futurists are practitioners of strategic foresight. Say you’re eager to know more about the future, but you’re not sure where to turn. Try asking yourself, “Why do I want to explore the future?” For fun? Investment advice? Spiritual enlightenment? Actionable business strategy? If it’s amusement, stock tips, or nirvana you’re after, there’s likely a certain type of futurist out there who can offer you their services. But if you’re a decision-maker in business who needs to make sense of today’s constant, often contradictory flood of signals about the future, you’ll have to refine your search. You’ll find the answers you seek in foresight.
Modern foresight’s most immediate precursor was the prescient science fiction of the late 19th and early 20th century. That’s right, we’re talking classics like H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Work that envisioned futures familiar enough to readers so as to be recognizable, yet transformed by the repercussions of technologies that had hardly been dreamt of, much less invented yet. From immersive forms of multimedia, to high-tech surveillance states, to the beginnings of AI, these visionary concepts weren’t pulled out of thin air, but theorized by the authors based on early inklings of what technology might be capable of, and an understanding of how society might feasibly put that technology to use.
It was only a matter of time before the creation of these speculative futures, rooted in knowledge and logic and brought to life with storytelling, would be adapted for more strategic purposes. Sure enough, by the 1950s an American physicist and futurist named Herman Kahn had begun developing a new method of strategic planning based on powerful narratives exploring various permutations of the future. The approach would come to be known as scenario planning, now considered a critical component of modern foresight. Working for the RAND Corporation, a post-WWII think tank, Kahn applied this method to the subject of nuclear war and deterrence, with his resulting scenarios greatly influencing the United States’ nuclear strategy. French executive Pierre Wack, inspired in part by Kahn, expanded the reach of scenario planning in the 1970s by ushering it into the private sector at oil and gas giant Royal Dutch Shell, helping them accurately foresee and weather the so-called “oil shocks” of the ‘70s. To this day, the company—which you might know as Shell—features a series of contemporary future scenarios on their website, and touts their use of scenario planning for the past 50 years.
Over that 50 year period futurism has grown in popularity, with a corresponding rise in futurist organizations. From think tanks, policy institutes, and consultancies, to university-affiliated and independent courses of study, today these organizations range in focus and rigor. Because there is no single governing body to bestow a definitive credential on aspiring futurists or practitioners of strategic foresight, there is virtually no barrier to entry. Anyone can call themself a futurist. Ultimately, this is a good thing! Exploring and preparing for the future is a practice best done in dialogue with others, and any person wanting to spend their time on better understanding the world to come should be encouraged to do so. As a consequence of that inclusivity, however, anyone looking to hire a futurist or base their strategy on a futurist’s insights has a responsibility to verify that the futurist in question is, in the words of my professor, the “real deal.”
Whether you’re assessing an individual futurist or an organization, it is first important to understand what methodology they are using to conduct their work. Are they using established frameworks and tools? Maybe causal layered analysis, a futures wheel, or the Delphi method? Alternatively, have they developed a proprietary methodology that is available for public evaluation? Does it follow a logical progression, and has it been used successfully with clients? Better yet, have these clients provided testimonials? A methodology is not a guarantee of quality foresight work, but it is exceedingly difficult to reliably produce quality work without a robust toolkit. Some futurists keep their methods under wraps as a precaution; it makes sense to protect certain trade secrets, but it’s a red flag if their entire process is a mysterious “black box” that only they can understand.
What else should you be on the lookout for? Well, if a futurist has been in the field long enough, they should have at least a few scenarios, trend reports, studies, or articles to show for it. Are these materials published and available to the public? Read them! Decide for yourself if their scenarios reflect a proper balance of thorough research and compelling storytelling, if their reports analyze longitudinal trends rather than “trendy” developments in tech, business, and beyond. Be wary of anyone claiming to make definitive predictions, especially those with precise chronologies attached to them. The best futurists understand that, even when heavily researched and data-driven, futures work will always be speculative and scenarios will rarely, if ever, occur exactly as described.
Finally, while there is no universal seal of approval in strategic foresight, certain credentials can nonetheless be a helpful barometer of one’s experience and knowledge of the field. There are certain reputable certificates and specialized degrees in foresight and futures studies, but don’t just assume their value. When in doubt about the organization administering a credential, subject it to the same line of questioning above to help separate those serving hobbyists from those designed for dedicated, professional futurists.
These criteria should help in seeking out a futurist or foresight organization whose visions of the future are not wild guesses, but well founded hypotheses. And who couldn’t use a good futurist right now? Unprecedented volatility and uncertainty are swirling, with no sign of letting up, and naturally people want answers about what lies ahead. For safety. For security. For strategy. It’s easy to think of the future as a static question mark, an unchanging unknown, but those of us who spend our time there know better. The rate of change, of technological advancement, of information flow, is accelerating, which means the future is actually arriving faster. Keeping up is a challenge, but it’s well within your means. It just takes some foresight.
