Five Principles for Thinking Like a Futurist

Thinking about the future allows us to imagine what kind of future we want to live in and how we can get there. In 2018 we celebrated the fifty-year anniversary of the founding of the Institute for the Future (IFTF). No other futures organization has survived for this long; we've actually survived our own forecasts! In these five decades we learned a lot, and we still believe--even more strongly than before--that systematic thinking about the future is absolutely essential for helping people make better choices today, whether you are an individual or a member of an educational institution or government organization. We view short-termism as the greatest threat not only to organizations but to society as a whole. In my twenty years at the Institute, I've developed five core principles for futures thinking: If somebody tells you they can predict the future, don't believe them. Nobody can predict large socio-technical transformations and what exactly these are going to look like. We are getting better at making point predictions.