I gave an “overview of the future” talk this weekend (should have a link to the video soon) and concluded it by suggesting the audience might have some “futurizers” in it, and that we professional futurists need the futurizers to helps us spread the word about foresight. I defined “futurizer” simply as those who introduce the meme of foresight or thinking about the future into their organization. Maybe at a staff meeting, after hearing a futurist talk, or reading an article about the future, the futurizer asks “why aren’t we looking to the future in any systematic fashion? Or we aren’t we doing long-term planning? Or something along those lines. The initial question may spark some interest in colleagues – and probably some resistance from those who prefer to stick to the current agenda. It may take raising the question several times, before the organization becomes infected and the foresight virus spreads. Or the organizational antibodies might kill it.
I had been thinking about futurizers because a piece of my dissertation (still awaiting a thumbs up or down on that) explored how foresight actually gets introduced into organizations. Most of what I came across was anecdotal, suggesting that it might be a good research study someday. One anecdote from my own experience: I was hired as an internal futurists at Dow back in 2000. But how did I get there — if you will? Well, it turned out that the “futurizer” in this case was a former client when I was with the former Coates & Jarratt, Kerry Kelly, who advocated for bringing me in. And it turns out that Kerry had been instrumental in getting futures thinking into the company many years before, which lead to them bringing in Joe Coates as a consultant, which lead to me meeting Kerry and several years later being hired. We wrote up the story as “Viral Futures at Dow” several years ago. So, futurizers, we need you….and futurizing has and can work! Andy Hines
