Summer School Futures Thinking

Course Futures Thinking for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Strategy

Futures Thinking is a methodology that will allow you to understand the trends and patterns that surround us today in order to understand those of tomorrow.

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Presentation

Futures Thinking is an emerging practice comprised of Strategic Foresight, Design Futures (Speculative Design & Design Fiction) and Strategic planning. Futures Thinking has been growing in popularity as an approach to innovation, entrepreneurship, and strategic thinking and has been used to protect businesses against global crises and economic threats as well as used as a tool for developing innovative products and services and new intellectual property.

When used effectively it can be powerful for identifying risks and opportunities and allow businesses to pioneer into new markets well before their competition. It can also be used to analyze future market disruptions, transform mindsets and cultures, financial and resource planning, identifying and assessing emerging technologies, and preparing organizations and societies for future threats and opportunities.

Who is aimed at?

Designers, Strategists, Programme and Product Managers.

Objectives

The objective of this course is to introduce designers, strategists, entrepreneurs and innovation leaders to the methodology, principles, and frameworks of Futures Thinking.

We will walk through all the key stages of the process, develop perspectives and practice methods through exercises in class and on a transversal project.

Structure and contents

Day 1: What is Futures Thinking?

+ History of futuring
+ What is Futures Thinking and Strategic Foresight?
+ The Futures Mindset – how to prepare the mind and teams for futures work
+ Problem Framing – How to set up a futures project

 Day 2: Trends & Futures Intelligence

+ Anatomy of a trend – drivers, signals and trends
+ Mega, Macro, Micro trends and Fads
+ Prioritizing trends and futures research

 Day 3: Implications & Scenarios

+ Futures Wheel – mapping consequences and implications of trends in the future
+ Scenario Planning – fundamentals of scenario archetypes
+ Scenario writing – How to write and design scenarios

 Day 4: Designing Futures

+ Future market analysis (TAM, SAM, SOM)
+ Design Futures
+ Design ideation methods

 Day 5: Strategic Planning, Measuring success and Futures Culture

+ Backcasting – strategic roadmap planning
+ Setting up success metrics
+ Implementing futures into an organization
Faculty

Phil is a design leader, strategist and futurist based in Barcelona, Spain. He has over 20 years of experience designing digital products, services and strategies for a variety of devices and platforms for business operations (B2B) and customer-centric (B2C) solutions. Within the last decade he has served as Design Director for General Electric’s Digital Aviation group and an Experience Design Director at McKinsey & Company working across industries such as airlines, retail, hospitality, utilities, oil and gas, transportation, nonprofits and government institutions. As a thought leader, facilitator, and design and futures expert, he has worked closely with Fortune 500 companies to transform their operations, enhance their digital services, and build more innovative and responsible products for the future.

He is also the founder of the Design Futures Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to the advancement and education of Futures Thinking and a global community of chapters in over 90 cities. Today he is a professor of research and Futures Thinking at Elisava University in Barcelona, Spain for the Masters in Innovation and Design program. He leads his own Futures Thinking consulting and training firm called HABITAT working with public and private sector organizations. And in 2024 he will be publishing his first book called Making Futures Work on O’Reilly publications.