Future Fest 2024 | IBM’s First Foresight-Focused Event
This summer, IBM hosted its first-ever strategic foresight event, Future Fest, on July 25th. Organized by IBM’s own Strategic Foresight Guild, this forward-looking event aimed to revolutionize product design, research, and business strategy by equipping IBMers with cutting-edge tools to navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of product development. With 320 IBMers from 28 countries participating, the interest and need for this innovative methodology were clear.
The Strategic Foresight Guild, co-founded by Dan Silveira, Roosevelt Faulkner, and Meghan McGrath, began in 2020 at the pandemic’s onset when predicting the future became increasingly challenging. Initially, the guild had just six members and focused on summarizing foresight literature and introducing new methods. Since then, it has grown to over 400 members and has been featured as a case study in Scott Smith and Susan Cox-Smith’s book, “Future Cultures.” Hosting a one-day foresight event was a natural progression for the three founding futurists to further embed the practice within IBM.
The event kicked off with insights from Shani Sandy and Tad Chisti, two executive leaders from IBM Technology and IBM Consulting. Shani emphasized how strategic foresight can help us envision desirable futures while avoiding undesirable ones. Tad highlighted how IBM Consulting’s new Strategic Foresight offering can transform how IBM assists its clients, providing crucial information to inform decisions and future-proof products.
Future Fest showcased top foresight talent, including external experts like Phil Balagtas, Brian David Johnson, and Julienne DeVita, alongside IBM’s own Dan Silveira, Roosevelt Faulkner, and Meghan McGrath.
Phil Balagtas, the opening keynote speaker and author of the newly released novel, “Making Futures Work,” delivered an engaging presentation on the history of strategic foresight, its current applications, and concepts from his book. Brian David Johnson followed with a talk on thinking like a futurist, discussing his Threatcasting methodology and sharing case studies from his career. He also touched on his many successful books, including “What You Need To Know About A.I.,” “The Future You,” and “Threatcasting.”
The main workshop, developed and facilitated by Julienne DeVita, guided attendees — both virtual and in-person — to work in teams and create future artifacts, similar to concept design. The groups then identified the potential impacts of those artifacts and used a method called backcasting to determine the present-day actions each team should make to either avoid those future events from occurring or ensure they do.
Following the main activity, Roosevelt Faulkner delivered a lightning talk on integrating strategic foresight into the product development lifecycle, making the process more tactical. Meghan McGrath discussed leveraging pasts and futures when designing for infrastructure, introducing attendees to activities they could do to break down timelines into actionable parts, including “100 Things.”
To wrap up Future Fest, Dan Silveira took the stage to share his perspective on strategic foresight from a consulting point-of-view, detailing the end-to-end process of a new foresight offering for IBM Consulting and sharing a case study from a recent engagement with a large-scale client in the parcel delivery industry.
As IBM’s Future Fest concluded, one thing was clear: the critical importance of developing strategic foresight skills in today’s world. IBM’s investment in this area ensures a bright future for many more Future Fests to come.
We would also like to recognize all the amazing IBM volunteers who worked to make this event happen including Dipali Aphale, Russ Bennett, Mariah Woodruff, Caroline Laszcz, Thomas Goudsblom, and Liz Pratt.