[Book] How to Future
How to Future: Leading and Sense-making in an Age of Hyperchange
by Scott Smith with Madeline Ashby
Kogan Page Inspire
September 2020, 288 pages
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.
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.
Online supplements:
- Mapping Impacts and Implications – A simple tool for sketching possible futures in a crisis.
- Managing Abyss Gaze In a Time of Difficult Futures – Listening for signals when the news is dark
