How to Future: Leading and Sense-making in an Age of Hyperchange

by Scott Smith, Madeline Ashby

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789664706
Publisher:	Kogan Page, Ltd.
Publication date:	09/29/2020
Series:	Kogan Page Inspire
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	5.04(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.43(d)

About the Author

Scott Smith is a renowned futurist, business writer and adviser who is an expert in strategic foresight and futures design. He has over 25 years of grounded experience in applied foresight and has advised global corporations, governments and NGOs including UNICEF, ASOS, the Dubai Future Foundation and Comcast. He has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, WIRED, Quartz and The Atlantic. He is based in Amsterdam.
Madeline Ashby is a consulting futurist, expert and adviser on technology, culture, politics and strategic foresight, based in Toronto. She is a regular contributor to Slate and writes for MIT Technology Review.

Table of Contents

** Chapter - 00: Introduction; ** Chapter - 01: Different futuring for different needs; ** Chapter - 02: Getting started – scoping; ** Chapter - 03: Sensing and scanning – finding signals of the future now; ** Chapter - 04: Sense-making and mapping – turning data and insights into patterns and themes; ** Chapter - 05: Scenario development – combining patterns and themes to tell strategic stories; ** Chapter - 06: Storytelling and prototyping – creating ways for others to engage with your future stories; ** Chapter - 07: Assessing effectiveness – tools for monitoring and measuring fitness of approach; ** Chapter - 08: What to do next? Building a futuring culture; ** Chapter - 09: Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

"In a world that needs proper, grown-up futures thinking more than ever, How To Future is simply brilliant - it's the tonic (and the gin!) we've been waiting for. A true manual to futuring, it is both accessible and wise, written by two of the leading thinkers in the field with their characteristic wry pragmatism. With hope and without hype, the book shows us how to better think about, prepare for, and deal with the many strange things the future yet has to offer."

Author “Innovation for the Fatigued" Professor Alf Rehn

"Smith and Ashby have done our increasingly uncertain world a service with How to Future by sharing the crown jewels of the futurists' trade. This book is filled with plain-spoken but extremely sophisticated guidance on how to understand-and prepare for-what's over the horizon."

co-author of Burn In: A Novel of the Real Robo August Cole

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. The old pros at Changeist have written the definitive guide to thinking around corners, out of quarantine, and through the uncertainty ahead. How to Future contains all the accrued foresight you need to begin practicing futures as a team or organization, and persuasively argues that your "return on vision" will trump straight-line projections every time."

Greg Lindsay

"In a world that needs proper, grown-up futures thinking more than ever, How To Future is simply brilliant - it's the tonic (and the gin!) we've been waiting for. A true manual to futuring, it is both accessible and wise, written by two of the leading thinkers in the field with their characteristic wry pragmatism. With hope and without hype, the book shows us how to better think about, prepare for, and deal with the many strange things the future yet has to offer."

Author “Innovation for the Fatigued" Professor Alf Rehn

"The Future is no longer uncertain once you have read How to Future. The book does a brilliant job of providing the reader with the confidence and know-how to embrace uncertainty and work purposefully towards the future with ease. Using models of possibility and clear framework tools, anyone can learn to understand, predict, and shape the future, which is particularly refreshing considering the fact that futuring can often feel like an intimidating task."

Julie Doleman

"Just like great science fiction, 'futuring' isn't about trying to predict the future; it's about stimulating creative thinking about a range of possible futures. In How to Future, two of the best strategic foresight professionals in the business share all of their secrets, explaining how you can use the same tools they use to help their clients systematically think about and prepare for what's coming next—whatever it might be. It's a toolbox for taking control of your own future."

AI Policy Director at Facebook and Fellow at Arizo Kevin Bankston

"Reading How to Future in mid-2020, reinforced in my mind how important it is to broaden the scope of who gets to 'future.' There has never been a better time to learn how to imagine new possibilities and incorporate more diversity of experiences and points of view into the process. If you want to engage communities and make new, different, and more resilient futures happen, Smith and Ashby's book provides both a manual and a call for doing so."

Matt Jones

"The future is rarely singular, and even more rarely stable. And there are few voices I would rather have in my head, to keep me company into all those futures than Scott Smith and Madeline Ashby. Drawing on more than two decades of expertise and experience, this book is an exemplary way-finding tool, full of helpful instructions and sign-posts that will be unfailing useful no matter where you find yourself. And the book is also an incantation: summon the future, they write, but do it with intentionality, a sense of purpose, and a strong moral compass!"

Distinguished Professor Genevieve Bell