The Rise Of The Futurist

🔗 This article was originally published at FutureMonger.com

All of us are futurists. We are consistently making guesses about the future, and some are able to detect signals while examining various trends.

Now, Can you offer a strategy around that? Not a conventional one but a practical one that let you assess your current assumptions and present a mapping with emerging trends, correlate it with economics, society, science and associated ecosystem; and later advise you on the best possible indicators for future so that you stand armed for the action.

History has witnessed many futurists and future will encounter many more and all that will be exciting.

The Rise Of The Futurist:

William Gibson, the man who saw tomorrow stated

The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet.

In the good old times, leaders had performed the position of trend spotters and making predictions based on multiple models like SWOT and scenario developments.

Exponential growth in the technology world needs creative talents and capacities that can anticipate organization’s future to enhance vision and future prosperity.

In today’s business, futurists play a key role in leading organizations and societies. They guide us not to agree with the faster horses but to think radical and transform the total drama of how we innovate.It could be 🔗10x thinking or Artificial Intelligence based prediction tools

This can be the decisive thing and we will have more futurists coming, and that is a great indication.

Why Are Futurists Required?

Traditional approaches for forecasting and trend-spotting were sufficient but chiefly they were established on past trends analysis.

Exponential growth in technology talks about

1️⃣ Everything will be connected to the internet
2️⃣Artificial Intelligence will change everything
3️⃣Every company is becoming a technology company

To formulate organization’s vision and strategy, the need for the futurist was never as serious as now.

Now, all these technology disruptions are forcing businesses to advance quicker than ever before and earlier prediction systems are no longer favorable because they do standard calculations and so much slower.

Futurists play key role in the present times when speed of change and speed of knowledge both are accelerating.

Futurists of tomorrow needs to consider modern business operations and social media throw vast extent of information, and how to deal with that information, what filters to set up, how to separate noise from the signals and most important how to share information and developments.

Sometimes there remain too many dots to connect and that calls for a lot of experiments.

What Futurists Do?

To manage the future is to manage constant change. This includes art equally well as science.

‘The only immediate utility of all sciences is to teach us how to control and regulate future events by their causes.’

- David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

To remain competitive and proactive, every business and society want to have a strong grip on the handle of future.

By practicing curiosity, anticipations, and courage; — along with systematic tools and knowledge, futurists are supporting organizations and nations solving their toughest issues

Your internal teams are doing innovations. But where the next innovation will come from? and who will tell that? Answer is — Futurists.

But, we are living in large uncertainties and none can predict the future.
The one and only way to stay ahead of change is to anticipate everything methodically, as fast as possible, not as far as possible.

Who Need Futurists?

Are futurists really necessary? If you glance at organization’s visions and road maps, you will know that it is aligned with their present abilities with some linear growth forced upon different purposes — and not perfectly adjusted with market wisdom.

Organization’s current business drivers are not aligned with the 1️⃣insights arising from ever-changing trends and 2️⃣likely future guided by disruptive technologies.

There is an obvious need to respond to such trends and take advantage of all foreseeable opportunities.

Therefore organizations need futurist who can map these trends to various insights and contexts and build a framework to help organization’s innovation team.

Societies, corporate and nations — all need futurists. Futurists are more than trend spotters and analytical thinker. Thinking like futurist is a kind of logical chasm of the mind, sometimes — even independent of past data. And, that is a new way of thinking to create a new kind of future.

What Tools Futurist Use?

By the means of analyzing past data and tendencies, carrying out observations and experiments we can assume certain knowledge about the future events.

Armed with several theories of mathematical and scientific probability equations, futurists do many predictions.

Various methods like hypothetical situations, scenario planning, and prototyping and SWOT analysis were applied.

In this age of technological advancements disrupted with Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Social Media — variables that play a role in influencing foreseeable future have multiplied exponentially –and making any framework obsolete in no time.

So the trick is to use proven methods and put a layer above by playing with intuition coming from various variables like urgency, importance, life cycle of idea and economics.

How To Become A Futurist?

Characteristics of futurist include knowledge and expertise on manifold subjects, a strong urge to self-study, associating with experts from disparate disciplines and sharing knowledge to test new approaches, and build value for the society.

Other than the skills mentioned above, to become a professional futurist you need to own your career; building an online platform/blog and staying active on social media are indispensable to achieve credibility.

Publishing regular blogs and books will strongly put you into the influencer position; this will further support to participate in various leading institutes and communities so that you can inspire others too.

You don’t need a formal degree in futurism, Still, the most crucial skill you require is your deep down interest in future and finding signals while spotting various trends and correlating those with multiple courses of action and ecosystems.

Einstein once said
💬 I never think of the future — it comes soon enough 💬
but in today’s business it wouldn’t be bright if you disregard future. Need for the futurist is remarkably compelling and every community, organization, and nation need one.

No one can possibly predict the future correctly but it is an indispensable skill now, and assuming that you learn it well, there exist endless possibilities that can be leveraged towards the success.