The Lumisphere Experience was crafted to help people touch their imaginations to envision desired futures...the byproduct is a feeling of hope.
New findings from the Institute for the Future (IFTF) show that immersive cultural experiences can meaningfully shift how people relate to the future. Across 50,000+ visitors to the Lumisphere and 36,000 responses, participants reported higher optimism, reduced despair, and a strengthened sense of what’s possible.
Researchers describe this shift as “urgent optimism” — the belief that the future can be better, and that we have a role in shaping it. Over 11 weeks, these effects didn’t fade; they replicated and strengthened, pointing to something deeper than momentary inspiration.
This is more than storytelling. It’s evidence that immersive experiences can build psychological readiness for large-scale change and act as a shared social resource for better futures. For full report click link in bio.
Nov 6—three IFTF faculty members of Foresight Essentials demonstrate in real time how organic signal sharing is done when they each present three provocative signals of change then dive together into the different possibilities. Come see where their imaginations lead them! Register with the link in our bio.
Join us on 10/9 9am PT, for an overview of the IFTF Foresight Essentials Offerings. Discover the best training to help you launch your foresight practice, or build a deeper understanding of how the tools can take your further on your action roadmap. Register on zoom. Link in bio.
IFTF is sharing the complete Uncanny Valley Anthology, a set of perspectives and foresight research produced for the IFTF Ten-Year Forecast 2024, with IFTF Vantage Partners. This doesn't just describe this future — it equips you to get through to the other side. Our 2024-2035 Forecast Perspectives offer strategic insights for leaders seeking to reimagine what's possible when familiar systems become unrecognizable.
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If you are not an IFTF Vantage partner, but you want to read the summaries, start here: AI: A Visit to the Fast Food Drive-Through of 2035 (/insights/ai-drive-through/ )
#futureready #IFTFTYF #strategicforesight #ai #uncanny #futuresthinking
The new book "Navigating the Age of Chaos," from IFTF Distinguished Fellows Bob Johansen and Jamais Cascio, along with United Way Worldwide CEO Angela Williams, introduces a new way of thinking about our future and how we can best engage with accelerating upheaval. It offers a lens through which we can identify the various ways in which our present and future chaos will manifest, allowing us to recognize and focus on possible paths forward through that chaos.
Leaders need better language to make sense out of a world that is changing in ways that the old terminology can no longer capture. The BANI framework—Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible—is that new language. It helps us describe what’s going on and explore better alternatives.
Pre-Order your copy today! /insights/navigating-the-age-of-chaos-a-sense-making-guide-to-a-bani-world-that-doesnt-make-sense/
#strategicforesight #augmentedleadership #ai #chaos #futuresthinking #foresight #futureready
“Ten years from now, almost all leaders will be augmented or you’ll be out of the game.” IFTF Distinguished Fellow Bob Johansen spoke with Amantha Imber about the new book he coauthored with IFTF Distinguished Fellow Jamais Cascio and United Way Worldwide CEO Angela Williams "Navigating the Age of Chaos: A Sense-Making Guide to a BANI World That Doesn’t Make Sense." Listen here: /podcasts/this-futurists-ai-advice-will-change-how-you-work-forever/
By imagining alternative futures, we can critically examine the potential outcomes of our actions today and build resilience for tomorrow. Our recent research for 1000 Friends of Oregon, "Oregon 2035: Four Alternative Scenarios" illustrates 4 scenarios with videos like "Scenario 3: Pruning. A future driven by difficult choices and the acceptance of fewer individual freedoms for the benefit of all."
Learn to build your own alternative future scenarios for strategic planning with IFTF Scenario Building Training, live online, with our expert foresight instructors, starting this September. Register for the Sept session at the link in our bio. Explore all 4 alternative future scenarios from this research in the following link.
#futureready #foresightessentials #speculativefutures #alternativefutures #scenariobuilding #futuresthinking #strategicplanning
AI is Rewiring Reality—from how we connect and work to how we govern and address global challenges. Explore IFTF’s new multipart series on the “uncanny valleys” emerging across society, where the familiar collides with the alien. Read at the link in our bio.
#futureready #ai #futureofwork #tenyearforecast #futuresthinking #strategicforesight #strategicplanning
Are we prepared for total collapse? Or anticipating a transformation?
Refresh your foresight skills with IFTF Scenario Building Training in September, and learn a technique for making sense of complex possible futures in a systematic way. Esteemed foresight scholar Jim Dator defines 4 different future world dynamics—Growth, Collapse, Constraint, and Transformation. These four corners of possibility help us anticipate opportunities, risks, and coming changes, and leverage those insights toward strategic actions.
Transform uncertainty into opportunity at IFTF's training, beginning Sept 9, 2025!
https://bit.ly/447u94w
#futurist #futureready #foresight
IFTF FORESIGHT TALK: Tues, Aug 5 at 9am PT, Dr. Paniagua, Head of Futures Studies and Co-Director of the UNESCO Chair in Design Methods for Democratic Access to the Imagination of the Future at CENTRO University (Mexico City), shares with us the complex foresight methodologies of two different futures projects. #futuresthinking
Tomorrow!—Join Institute for the Future’s foresight instructors Lyn Jeffery and Sara Skvirsky for a live 30-min webinar to learn how IFTF Foresight Essentials offerings can help you build a foresight practice and integrate strategic foresight into your work.
Register to listen in or ask questions live, with the link in our bio! #foresightessentials #futureready #futuresthinking
