I have several regular talks on futures topics in which I focus the implications for the audience as well doing customs talks on specific topics. Some of my favorite regular topics (abstracts below) are:
ConsumerShift: How Changing Values Are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape
A Dozen Surprises about the Future of Work
Which Energy Future? You Decide
How Thinking about the Future Can Benefit Your Organization
An Organizational Foresight Audit: 10 Questions for Building a Foresight Capability
The Future of Youth Happiness
Need Innovation? Try Foresight
On the Road to 2025: The Role of Forecasting in Understanding the Emerging Science and Technology Landscape
ConsumerShift: How Changing Values Are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape
The old approaches to consumer understanding no longer work. This presentation explores broad-scale patterns in changing values that will reshape the consumer landscape over the next decade. It introduces the New Dimensions of Consumer Life model to help systematically sort out and categorize the myriad influences on consumer decision-making and behavior. It concludes that values, defined as an individual view about what is most important in life that in turn guides decision-making and behavior, is the single best predictor for gaining insight into how consumers may change in the future.
A Dozen Surprises about the Future of Work
This presentation takes a provocative approach in suggesting potentially surprising outcomes regarding the future of work. It builds upon existing trends and covers a wide spectrum of topics that will stretch the audience’s thinking on how work might be different in the future. The session concludes with some strategic implications designed to encourage a lively Q&A and things to do on “Monday morning.”
Which Energy Future? You Decide
Mini-scenarios of possible energy futures are introduced and outlined. We then explore the assumptions underlying each of them, so that participants can see “what would have to happen” in order for each scenario to occur. This approach will enable participants to see a provocative set of potential future outcomes and provide the opportunity for them to make their own assessment on which seems most likely to occur.
How Thinking about the Future Can Benefit Your Organization
This presentation delivers concrete, practical suggestions on how applying foresight can add value to your organization. It is based on the recently released Thinking about the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight, a book edited by the presenter that draws upon the collective wisdom of three dozen foresight professionals. Participants will learn about a framework for organizing foresight based on the six principal activities of strategic foresight: framing, scanning, forecasting, visioning, planning, and acting. They will also learn more than a dozen ways that they can apply selected guidelines to bring practical benefits to their organization in the years ahead.
“An Organizational Foresight Audit: 10 Questions for Building a Foresight Capability”
What do you need to think about to create or build a foresight function inside today’s organization? It takes time and patience, but armed with a plan and strategy, it can be done. The presenter will discuss a 10 question issue audit that gets at the key issues that need to be considered.
This presentation explores the pathways 12 to 24 year olds will be pursing in their quest for happiness. Like most people, they pursue happiness with a combination of three strategies: the pleasure of the moment, relationships with family and friends, and the long-term search for meaning and purpose. After probing more deeply, though, we found that more than any generation that has come before them, today’s youths recognize that happiness is something that can and should be achieved or worked toward, in essence, a practical approach to happiness. We’ll explore 13 forecasts about the future of happiness and bring these forecasts to life in the form of 7 happiness personas, and share our overall findings that we developed in partnership with project sponsor MTV.
Need Innovation? Try Foresight
Rarely does a discussion of business issues or a CEO speech take place without several mentions of the need for innovation. Equally rarely does the idea of foresight appear in the same context. That’s a shame — and an opportunity — because the two go together quite well. The presenter will share his experiences and insights about applying foresight in support of innovation and discuss ways for audience members to apply it in their particular situations.
On the Road to 2025: The Role of Forecasting in Understanding the Emerging Science and Technology Landscape.
This presentation explores the role of forecasting in understanding the emerging science and technology landscape. The presenter will review how the forecasts he and his colleagues made in their 1996 book, 2025: Scenarios of US & Global Society as Reshaped by Science and Technology, are tracking. He will then describe the lessons learned for forecasting and how he would adjust the forecast….if at all.
I have also talked on a wide range of other topics, including the future of libraries, beverages, food, credit unions, the environment, social media, work, insurance, etc.
Please contact me directly to arrange.
