Contributor Ali Llewellyn
Kevin Kelly famously noted that the most difficult part about looking at the future is unlearning what we know. Futurists get themselves and their clients over their assumptions so that they can see what they otherwise would not know. Futurists expose these assumptions and stereotypes that are often our most significant barriers to change.
A futurist is a person trained to think intentionally about the future, and help others do the same, so that they can influence that future positively. Rather than developing predictions, true foresight professionals systematically analyze the possibilities to understand the wider scope of the future and to provide actionable insights toward the actual preferred future. Aware of the assumptions in us, and the possibilities before us, futurists help orient us to where we are and where we want to go.
Futurists do far more than horizon scanning or trend analysis or scenario planning. They listen and understand, they analyze and formulate, and then they make the case to move forward. Wikipedia frames the practice of futures as to “systematically explore predictions and possibilities about the future and how they can emerge from the present, whether that of human society in particular or of life on Earth in general.” That moving forward is the option out of the present, with agency and intention, toward a specific future. Futurists are designers of that transition between the present and the future, and purveyors of hope that change is possible.
In the 1940s, professor Ossip Flectheim and author HG Wells said that: A futurist is someone who studies next-order outcomes using signals from the present. They look at the present and decide what part of the present will drive the future – and how. The analyze what the needs are now and what they will be next season or next year or next decade. Sometimes they turn this into strategies, sometimes reports, sometimes science fiction stories. Whatever the tool, it demonstrates the futurist’s understanding of the present and how we will get into that future.
About Ali Llewellyn
‘Interdisciplinary team builder and trained futurist, passionate about architecting sustainable solutions to real problems and building the teams that deliver them. I’m driven by a core interest in people, an understanding of shifting environments, and a strength for connecting the dots. My studies have focused on the past and the future so that we can build a better present together.’
