[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ6UHFIbFyc[/youtube]
Futurist Thomas Frey at the TEDx University of Chicago event
We are a very backward looking society.
We’re very backward looking in that we’ve all personally experienced the past. As we look around, we see evidence of the past all around us. The past is very knowable, yet we will spend the rest of our lives in the future.
My job as a futurist is to help turn people around and give them some idea of what the future holds.
So, what images come to mind when you think about the future?
If you are like most people, you have some persistent vision of the future that keeps replaying in your head. Perhaps it’s an image of riding on a hoverboard, traveling in a flying car, or stopping at a space hotel.
Many of these visions have been planted in your head through the movies you watch or the magazines and books that you read.
More importantly than how they were created is the question, “Who owns these visions?”
I’m not talking about the intellectual property rights associated with these images. Rather, who is it that cares enough about these particular visions to want to take an ownership stake in their creation and fruition?
In the vast majority of all cases, the answer is simply, “no one.”
In the years ahead, the speed of business will continue to accelerate, and executive teams will quickly learn that simply planning for the future is no longer good enough. In order for them to better control their own destiny, they will need to take an ownership stake in the creation of the future, and that’s why this book is so important.
Until now, the science of the future has been a murky science. The tools are primitive, reputations are often suspect, and the unknowns continue to dominate the path ahead.
Scenario planning, trend analysis, demographic shifts, and cyclical patterns are all tiny Braille bumps on the looming mosaic that constitutes our future, and some of our best and brightest continue to be confounded when it comes to predicting the future.
But what if we step beyond simply predicting the future and instead work on controlling it?
Contact:
If you’d like to get more information about the process for “Communicating with the Future” or to have Futurist Thomas Frey speak at one of your events, please contact Deb at deb (at) davinciinstitute.com or 303-666-4133.
Futurist Thomas Frey: We are a very backward looking society.
We’re very backward looking in that we’ve all personally experienced the past. As we look around, we see evidence of the past all around us. The past is very knowable, yet we will spend the rest of our lives in the future.
My job as a futurist is to help turn people around and give them some idea of what the future holds.
Continue reading… “TEDxUChicago 2011 – Thomas Frey – Communicating with the Future”
