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How to Future: Leading and Sense-making in an Age of Hyperchange
Approach the future as a conversation, not a declaration.
How can you be prepared for what's next when emerging trends constantly threaten to turn your strategic plan on its head? The world of business is experiencing a state of hyperchange influenced by global movements, disruptive technologies, political uprisings and new consumer expectations. If your world is turned upside down, will you know how to pivot and thrive, or will you be roadkill in the 'adapt or die' business race? Futuring is the art of anticipating and testing the trade-offs of different futures by making sense of key trends, signals and emerging patterns. How to Future is the only book that will teach you how to become a strategy wayfinder, allowing you to evaluate, plan and prepare for better futures for you and your business.
How to Future is a guidebook to futuring and arms you with tools, strategies and practices that illuminate new strategic pathways. Renowned futurists Scott Smith and Madeline Ashby teach you how to manage the daily flood of information and signals, and discern emergent patterns that have a direct impact on the direction of your business. How to Future isn't about the "one future" you expect. Instead, this book equips you with valuable tools and concepts, builds a future-focused mindset and enables you to envision, stress-test and prototype adaptable, informed and agile strategic visioning. These tools will empower you, your team and your organization to anticipate whatever futures emerge.
How can you be prepared for what's next when emerging trends constantly threaten to turn your strategic plan on its head? The world of business is experiencing a state of hyperchange influenced by global movements, disruptive technologies, political uprisings and new consumer expectations. If your world is turned upside down, will you know how to pivot and thrive, or will you be roadkill in the 'adapt or die' business race? Futuring is the art of anticipating and testing the trade-offs of different futures by making sense of key trends, signals and emerging patterns. How to Future is the only book that will teach you how to become a strategy wayfinder, allowing you to evaluate, plan and prepare for better futures for you and your business.
How to Future is a guidebook to futuring and arms you with tools, strategies and practices that illuminate new strategic pathways. Renowned futurists Scott Smith and Madeline Ashby teach you how to manage the daily flood of information and signals, and discern emergent patterns that have a direct impact on the direction of your business. How to Future isn't about the "one future" you expect. Instead, this book equips you with valuable tools and concepts, builds a future-focused mindset and enables you to envision, stress-test and prototype adaptable, informed and agile strategic visioning. These tools will empower you, your team and your organization to anticipate whatever futures emerge.
248 pages, Paperback
Published September 29, 2020
61 people are currently reading
369 people want to read
About the author
Scott Smith
1 book67 followersScott Smith is founder and managing partner of Changeist, a futures research and consulting partnership established in 2007 in the United States, now based in the The Hague.
With more than 15 years in futures, Scott and his team have consulted to a range of global institutions, including SWIFT, UNICEF, The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, The Royal Society, Nesta, and the Dubai Future Foundation. He leads engagements with some of the largest and most respected global financial, retail, telecoms, technology and media brands. He has delivered futures projects, talks and workshops in over a dozen countries, across Asia, North America, Europe and the Middle East.
Scott developed the Strategic Foresight program for Dubai Future Academy, and guest lectures in the Innovation & Future Thinking program at IED Barcelona. He has written for international publications such as The Atlantic, Quartz, WIRED UK, and How We Get to Next, and spoken at major events worldwide, including The Next Web, Lift, South Australia’s Open State, Oxford Futures Forum, Sibos, FutureFest, and NEXT. He is the author of “How to Future: Leading and Sense-Making in an Age of Hyperchange,” published by Kogan Page Inspire.
With more than 15 years in futures, Scott and his team have consulted to a range of global institutions, including SWIFT, UNICEF, The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, The Royal Society, Nesta, and the Dubai Future Foundation. He leads engagements with some of the largest and most respected global financial, retail, telecoms, technology and media brands. He has delivered futures projects, talks and workshops in over a dozen countries, across Asia, North America, Europe and the Middle East.
Scott developed the Strategic Foresight program for Dubai Future Academy, and guest lectures in the Innovation & Future Thinking program at IED Barcelona. He has written for international publications such as The Atlantic, Quartz, WIRED UK, and How We Get to Next, and spoken at major events worldwide, including The Next Web, Lift, South Australia’s Open State, Oxford Futures Forum, Sibos, FutureFest, and NEXT. He is the author of “How to Future: Leading and Sense-Making in an Age of Hyperchange,” published by Kogan Page Inspire.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 27, 2021
This is a useful little book. It sets out to provide a framework through which a lay person could start a futures project, providing a step by step guide to the process of delivering that project. In this sense, it is a laudable idea. There aren't too many 'how to' books about the study of the future, so it occupies a great place in the market. The question is whether or not it delivers what it sets out to do.
The book is structured in a number of steps. You do this, in order to go on to that. The approach is quite a good one. It encourages the reader to walk before they start to run and it instils the belief that there are no short cuts to the study of the future. We all have to do the leg work. The advantage of using this book is that it reduces the points at which mistakes are made, and provides a more direct route from a blank piece of paper to a set of useful insights about the future. At this level, it's a great book.
The book does contain some reservations. The framework set out by the authors is the one that they use in their practice. Which is great - it's current, it's based in practice, it has a proven utility. However, this framework is not the only one. It's not even the one used by most professional futurists. Little coverage is given of alternative approaches to the study of the future, which makes the book a little one dimensional at times. There is a danger in adopting an approach that one methodology fits all situations because this may not be a true assumption. The reader ought to be aware that there are different approaches when working though this book.
If we just focus on this single framework, are there areas of weakness? I was relatively unconvinced by the treatment of risk and uncertainty within the book. I rather felt that the whole issue of likelihood could have done with a more thorough going over. There is a curious relationship between likelihood and plausibility that the book touches upon, but which it then moves away from. I would have liked to have seen that developed more fully.
What the book does really well is to capture the spectrum of weak signals, signals, trends, and drivers. This is a very nice piece of work and it is worth the cover price for this alone. There is much in the chapter on scanning that I can learn from and will introduce into my practice. Whether this will prove to be of any lasting use remains to be seen, but the book has definitely altered my behaviour in this respect.
If you know nothing at all about the study of the future, this is a good practitioners guide - as opposed to an academic guide - that you can start with. It's not the last word on the subject, but it is a useful first step. If it inspires you to delve deeper, then it will have been a very worthwhile activity.
The book is structured in a number of steps. You do this, in order to go on to that. The approach is quite a good one. It encourages the reader to walk before they start to run and it instils the belief that there are no short cuts to the study of the future. We all have to do the leg work. The advantage of using this book is that it reduces the points at which mistakes are made, and provides a more direct route from a blank piece of paper to a set of useful insights about the future. At this level, it's a great book.
The book does contain some reservations. The framework set out by the authors is the one that they use in their practice. Which is great - it's current, it's based in practice, it has a proven utility. However, this framework is not the only one. It's not even the one used by most professional futurists. Little coverage is given of alternative approaches to the study of the future, which makes the book a little one dimensional at times. There is a danger in adopting an approach that one methodology fits all situations because this may not be a true assumption. The reader ought to be aware that there are different approaches when working though this book.
If we just focus on this single framework, are there areas of weakness? I was relatively unconvinced by the treatment of risk and uncertainty within the book. I rather felt that the whole issue of likelihood could have done with a more thorough going over. There is a curious relationship between likelihood and plausibility that the book touches upon, but which it then moves away from. I would have liked to have seen that developed more fully.
What the book does really well is to capture the spectrum of weak signals, signals, trends, and drivers. This is a very nice piece of work and it is worth the cover price for this alone. There is much in the chapter on scanning that I can learn from and will introduce into my practice. Whether this will prove to be of any lasting use remains to be seen, but the book has definitely altered my behaviour in this respect.
If you know nothing at all about the study of the future, this is a good practitioners guide - as opposed to an academic guide - that you can start with. It's not the last word on the subject, but it is a useful first step. If it inspires you to delve deeper, then it will have been a very worthwhile activity.
January 24, 2023
pg 23 levels of futuring
pg 31 futuring process
pg 76 worksheet for capturing and refining trends
pg 96 STEEP - Social Technologic Economic Environmental Politcal
pg 125 STEEP scenario development
pg 165 5 layers of organization People Knowledge Tools Rules Network
pg 169 Scenario readiness worksheet
pg 31 futuring process
pg 76 worksheet for capturing and refining trends
pg 96 STEEP - Social Technologic Economic Environmental Politcal
pg 125 STEEP scenario development
pg 165 5 layers of organization People Knowledge Tools Rules Network
pg 169 Scenario readiness worksheet
March 29, 2021
How to Future is a structured and comprehensive overview of what is means to undertake futuring practices with design teams in industry. Not only does it accurately summarize the field, it also provided concrete ways to get started with futuring, including useful templates and instructions on how to use them. The best book about design futuring that I have read!
October 4, 2022
First of all, I don’t want to put people off reading this book, however if you’re familiar with Design Thinking, Systems Design and all that, this might be like a textbook you could have written already.
But it doesn’t mean that the book doesn’t have many gems which are worth highlighting and applying to your projects.
In the end, it’s recommended:)
But it doesn’t mean that the book doesn’t have many gems which are worth highlighting and applying to your projects.
In the end, it’s recommended:)
September 19, 2020
How to future seems like a mistake in the title but it is not. Future is a verb as presented by the authors. The whole book is focused on how to future and tools that are required to see and act on the future trends. This book is not on my for managers or business leaders, it is for a wider audience because all of us need to see the opportunities to future.
January 29, 2022
The authors of this book are clear from the start that "future" is a verb ... "to future." And the authors set out to teach readers how to do it. Overall, the authors made a compelling case for actionable steps one can take, and that case includes some concrete steps, helpful templates, and generative conceptual frameworks for engaging in systematic, future-oriented thinking. There is far less vagueness and "off-stage" magic in the process than I thought there would be, and in a way that is disappointing, but only a little. The disappointment is that futuring is a more mundane practice than catching vivid glimpses of a certain future out of some self-induced, hallucinogenic haze. But the mundanity is also the exciting part. I'll explain.
Imagine being at a party and you see a group of people talking. From a distance you cannot hear what they are talking about, but when you join them you hear their conversation, starting in the middle. At first, you cannot tell what the conversation is about, but as you listen you receive more information about the ideas being articulated and shared. You begin to sense why the conversants are sharing those ideas and see where the conversation might be headed. You also see a place where you might like to take the conversation. With all of this information, you begin contributing and the direction of the conversation changes a bit to accommodate your input.
In a way, I have just described what "futuring" is. It is about making observations over time; understanding what motivations, desires, and obligations link the things observed; understanding where those motivations, desires, and obligations come from and what they aim at; intuiting how acting on those motivations, desires, and obligations will change situations in which we act; and, finally, taking action to help (or prevent) that future from coming about. It is a mundane process. We engage in futuring all the time but are not always cognizant of it or deliberate about it.
Of course the future is not inevitable, and the only way futurists and futurism could make predictions is if the future were already decided. The authors of this book make clear that predictions are not the aim, even if "accurate" futuring does seem like an obvious metric of success. Instead, the metric of success is engagement in helping others to see and talk about a possible future: one that we would like to facilitate or prevent.
Imagine being at a party and you see a group of people talking. From a distance you cannot hear what they are talking about, but when you join them you hear their conversation, starting in the middle. At first, you cannot tell what the conversation is about, but as you listen you receive more information about the ideas being articulated and shared. You begin to sense why the conversants are sharing those ideas and see where the conversation might be headed. You also see a place where you might like to take the conversation. With all of this information, you begin contributing and the direction of the conversation changes a bit to accommodate your input.
In a way, I have just described what "futuring" is. It is about making observations over time; understanding what motivations, desires, and obligations link the things observed; understanding where those motivations, desires, and obligations come from and what they aim at; intuiting how acting on those motivations, desires, and obligations will change situations in which we act; and, finally, taking action to help (or prevent) that future from coming about. It is a mundane process. We engage in futuring all the time but are not always cognizant of it or deliberate about it.
Of course the future is not inevitable, and the only way futurists and futurism could make predictions is if the future were already decided. The authors of this book make clear that predictions are not the aim, even if "accurate" futuring does seem like an obvious metric of success. Instead, the metric of success is engagement in helping others to see and talk about a possible future: one that we would like to facilitate or prevent.
November 11, 2020
How to Future is an excellent source of knowledge and experience for everyone interested in practicing foresight, especially foresight facilitators and lecturers. It is built upon Scott Smith’s experience in teaching and practicing strategic foresight gained over years of hard work on democratizing foresight. It provides readers with a roadmap beginning from sensing and scanning and extending to sense-making and mapping, scenario development, prototyping, and storytelling. Studying the book, readers will learn how to sort, prioritize, and understand relationships among trends. They will know about different approaches to yield new understandings from possible futures. They also learn how to make sense of emerging patterns, map uncertainty, and identify key strategic themes. It is a rich training material. Thanks to Scott and Madeline for co-authoring this great guidebook.
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October 9, 2020This book was a good read for anyone know business or who wants to prepare for the future. Future is used a little differently and is used as a verb. I'm not sure this book was for me based off the writing style, but it does make sense good points about how to future that I can apply within the workplace and my life.
Thanks to Kogan Pg Ltd and NetGalley for a copy to honestly review.
Thanks to Kogan Pg Ltd and NetGalley for a copy to honestly review.
August 7, 2022
The Future is a verb, can be a noun as well - futurizing, futuristics
, futurology, futurists, futurizing requiring forecasting and backcasting. We need to future to overcome the TUNA conditions bedeviling the world.
, futurology, futurists, futurizing requiring forecasting and backcasting. We need to future to overcome the TUNA conditions bedeviling the world.
November 29, 2023
solid and practical
A comprehensive yet easy to follow handbook for thinking about and preparing for/working with the future. A good place to start in how to think and work like a futurist.
A comprehensive yet easy to follow handbook for thinking about and preparing for/working with the future. A good place to start in how to think and work like a futurist.
September 23, 2020
A great, accessible guide to bringing futuring (yes, a verb) into your daily life.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews