Futurists is a term often used to describe management consultants who advise corporations on a wide range of global trends, risk management and potential market opportunities. In some countries the equivalent word used is Futurologist.

A key element of all management is being able to anticipate what competitors, employees and customers are likely to do next, in the context of a rapidly changing wider world. Thus it is true that to some extent all effective leaders are futurists.

Future thinking

A key part of futuring is managing uncertainty and risk. Some trends are relatively clear - for example the fall of telecom costs towards zero or the ageing demographics of many countries in Western Europe. The issue is often more about timing than the nature of the events themselves. But others are very hard to predict, including significant numbers of so-called Wild Cards, or low probability, but high impact events.

See Futures Studies

Quotations on the Future

• Study the past if you would divine the future - Confucius

• Take hold of your future or the future will take hold of you - Patrick Dixon - Futurewise publ 2005

• By the time you have finished reading this, the future will have come, gone, and is now history - Uncredited

• Any useful statement about the future should appear to be ridiculous - Jim Dator

External links

• The Futures Foundation
• Global Change - futurist site - 50 videos, 500 articles and many presentations on world trends
• longbets.com
• Shaping Tomorrow - 12500+ organised future links and 1700 + global trends

Futurology | Prediction | Sustainability | Environmental economics | Sustainability | Technology forecasting | Business intelligence | Prediction