I’d say there’s still a lot more potential in doing futures work than we generally realize. I don’t think enough attention is paid to it, at least not in the way it could be. My perspective is that we all have a kind of responsibility, as humans, to imagine what’s next. And foresight, or futures thinking, or design fiction, or whatever name you give it, happens to be one of the places where that imagination gets some structure, especially in commercial or organizational contexts. That’s great. But at the same time, I think foresight often ends up being too structured, too tactical, not visionary enough.

One of my selfish hopes, and I say ‘selfish’ because it’s also what I love doing, is that foresight would allow for more expansive forms of visioning. Telling stories, building possible worlds, making future artefacts, things that are tangible, creative, sometimes weird. Like vivid little films, or speculative newspapers, or a magazine from 2038: these are ways to let people touch and feel the future, rather than just analysing trends in a spreadsheet or making scenario matrices that no one reads. But this kind of work is harder: it’s not easy to tell a compelling story about a future that’s still forming. And I think that’s part of why it happens less often. It requires a lot of creative energy, and it doesn’t always fit into the expectations of a traditional organization.

But I don’t see these artefacts as alternatives to strategy or planning. They’re upstream of both. Their job is to expand the range of possibilities an organization can seriously consider before those possibilities are narrowed into strategy, investment decisions, roadmaps, and execution. If we imagine better at the beginning, we tend to make better decisions all the way through.

Ultimately, the value isn’t the artefact itself. It’s the conversations it enables, the assumptions it surfaces, and the decisions it improves. If a speculative newspaper changes the way a leadership team thinks about a product, a service, or a long-term investment, then it has already done its job.

Plus, let’s be honest, we haven’t always done the best job of articulating the value of this kind of speculative work. Especially when budgets are tight and decision-makers are asking what the ROI is. We’re in one of those phases right now. I don’t think it’s permanent, but we’re in a moment where the kind of large-scale, open-ended visioning that used to happen, especially in the early days of the internet or with companies like Nokia and Google, is happening less. Back then, there was this sense of possibility. You had people exploring ‘new media’, commissioning artists, asking open questions. There was a willingness to engage with the unknown, not just to capitalize on it, but to understand it, to be in conversation with it.

And I think that’s where we’re at again with AI, whatever that word even means. These large language models, these new contrivances, they’re bewildering. They’re powerful, yes, but also deeply confusing. Nobody really knows what they’re for yet. And that’s the moment when futures thinking becomes essential. Not as a way to predict but as a way to explore, to interpret, to give meaning to these emergent phenomena. Some people are trying to monetize it, others want to dominate it. But I like to imagine it as more like discovering an alien. Do we try to kill it, exploit it, or communicate with it?

That’s where futures-related work can really shine, in helping us decide what kind of relationship we want to have with the unknown. Whether we want to colonize it, extract from it, or build something meaningful within it. But again, to make foresight truly valuable in these moments, we practitioners have to show up. We have to make the case. It’s on us to articulate what this work is for and why it matters. And that’s not something you can do once and walk away. It means being persistent and consistent, keeping foresight in the conversation.

Good foresight doesn’t replace disciplined execution. It makes disciplined execution more informed. Organizations still need operational excellence, clear priorities, and rigorous decision-making. The role of futures work is to ensure those capabilities are pointed toward opportunities that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.

That’s why I believe in sharing work openly, in celebrating each other’s projects. If someone in your network posts something smart or beautiful or thoughtful, amplify it. Why wouldn’t you? If we play this as a zero-sum game, as if there’s only room for one or two people to be seen, then everyone loses. I’ve always been drawn to community building. I like bringing people together. But sometimes what I notice is that there’s an adolescent kind of jealousy in the space, like, ‘Why does he get the main stage?’ And the truth is, that kind of attitude only slows everyone down. What would happen if we worked with each other, not against each other?

Sometimes it also feels like foresight has become too exclusive, like it’s a secret club with its own jargon and rituals. And that can definitely create a sense of elitism. Especially if the tone is antagonistic, like ‘You’re doing it wrong’. If you present yourself as someone who always knows better, you risk alienating others. And imagination, honestly, is already hard enough. Not everyone’s good at it. It’s like cooking. Some people can walk into a kitchen, pull ingredients out of a cupboard, and conjure up a fantastic meal. Others look at the same ingredients and go blank. That doesn’t mean they’re stupid. It just means their creativity lies elsewhere.

So maybe it’s not about ‘teaching’ imagination but about recognizing it, in yourself or in others. I’ve come to feel that you can’t really teach this kind of futures thinking in the way you teach accounting. You can offer tools, yes. You can share methods. But ultimately, this is like painting or playing jazz or writing essays. It’s a craft. Some people have a natural intuition for it. Some develop it over time. Others admire it from the outside and contribute in other ways. That’s okay. We shouldn’t be handing out certificates and pretending that mastery comes from checking boxes. You can’t reduce this to procedures. You can’t make imagination an ISO standard.

When I work on something like a speculative newspaper from the future, I don’t do it because a methodology told me to. I do it because it gets stuck in my head. I follow instinct. I see something in the present and think, ‘That would make a great headline for a world that doesn’t exist yet.’ I couldn’t trace it back to a framework. It’s more like that 8-year-old version of me, making movies with friends, drawing spaceships, just expressing itself now in more professional packaging.

That doesn’t mean the work isn’t serious. One of the most meaningful projects I’ve been part of recently was the book Practices of Futurecasting. It brought together a wide range of foresight practitioners, in person, in conversation, and turned that into a physical artefact. A book you can hold in your hands. That’s powerful. Because it wasn’t just about theory. It was about community. It showed that this is something real people care about, think deeply about, and are willing to gather around. That, to me, is part of the future of foresight, building spaces where we talk about what it is, why it matters, and how we do it better.

So, if you ask me, ‘Will foresight become a mainstream planning tool?’ I’d say, ‘Only if we do the work.’ Only if we talk about it all the time. Not once a year. Not when we feel like it. But constantly. Keep writing about it, posting about it, talking about it, podcasting about it. Otherwise, it disappears into the noise. Because attention spans are short. People forget. We have to keep showing up.

And maybe, maybe, we can imagine a future where futuring itself becomes something normal. Not elite. Not niche. But just… human. Like jogging. Jogging didn’t exist until someone named it and gave it a structure. Now it’s just a thing people do. I’d love it if futuring became like that, something people did together for fun. ‘What are you doing this weekend?’ ‘Oh, we’re going to future. Want to come? Bring some markers.’ It could be playful, joyful, social. Like starting a band in your garage.

That’s how I’d love to see the future of foresight, not as a credential but as a craft. Not as a product but as a practice. And above all, as something that brings people together in the act of imagining better worlds.