Futurist as Public Voice | Hinesight....for Foresight

I was glancing through the posts to our Futurists in Media project, and I noticed the strong presence of two organizational futurists: Ray Kurzweil of Google and Sheryl Connelly of Ford.

It reminded me of the second question on the Organizational Futurists Audit: What is your positioning? Way back in the early 2000s when we first put this together, I would often comment that the public voice positioning was both the most exalted…..and the rarest. At the time, Ian Pearson of BT was the only example we could find. The basic idea of the public voice is a thought leadership positioning in which the organization’s view of the future is publicly shared and promoted as a way to build support for it. Back in the early 2000s, however, many if not most of internal futurists were in stealth mode.

Is that changing? In addition to Google and Ford, in looking over the last year’s scanning we see:

Futurist Brian David Johnson, formerly of Intel, where he actively and publicly promoted a vision of the future, moved on to become the futurist-in-residence for the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University
Gen. H.R. McMaster is called the Army’s charismatic chief futurist
Concordia’s Institute for Urban Futures announced two Futurists-in-Residence: Jonathan Lapalme and Mallory Wilson
Sci Fi author Neal Stephenson was dubbed Magic Leap’s chief futurist.
And 20^th Century Fox claims Ted Schilowitz as their technology futurist

It’s not yet clear how public these roles will play out. But I find that fact that they are emerging to be very encouraging. Andy Hines

About Andy Hines

Dr. Andy Hines is Program Coordinator at the University of Houston’s Graduate Program in Foresight, bringing together the experience he earned as an organizational, consulting, and academic futurist. He is also speaking, workshopping, and consulting through his firm Hinesight.

Before that, he was Managing Director of Social Technologies/Innovaro, and served as an Adjunct Professor with the university since 2004. Hines enjoyed earlier careers as a consulting and organizational futurist. He was a partner with Coates & Jarratt, Inc., a think tank and consulting firm that specialized in the study of the future. He was also Futurist & Senior Ideation Leader at Dow Chemical with a mission of using futures tools and knowledge to turn ideas into new business opportunities. Before that, Hines established and ran the Global Trends Program for the Kellogg Company.

Hines is motivated by a professional hunger to make foresight practical and useful, and he believes that foresight can help deliver the insight that is so needed in today’s organizations and the world. His goal, he says, is to infect as many change agents as possible with this message. Thus, he has honed a skill set designed to make foresight more actionable in organizations.

In this pursuit, he has authored five books: Teaching about the Future: The Basics of Foresight Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); ConsumerShift: How Changing Values Are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape (No Limits Publishing, 2011); Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight (Social Technologies, 2007); 2025: Science and Technology Reshapes US and Global Society (Oak Hill, 1997); and Managing Your Future as an Association (ASAE, 1994) and has another in the hands of publishers: Teaching about the Future: The Basics of Foresight Education. He has also authored dozens of articles, speeches, and workshops, including the 2003 Emerald Literati Awards’ Outstanding Paper accolade for best article published in Foresight for “An Audit for Organizational Futurists” and the 2008 award for “Scenarios: The State of the Art.” He has appeared on several radio and television programs, PBS Houston, KRIV-26 News, and the CBS “Early Show.” He also co-founded and is former Chair of the Association of Professional Futurists.

About Andy Hines

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