5 steps to think strategically about the future

12 min readApr 11, 2023

Illustration of a girl wearing visual acuity testing equipment. — Illustration by Jesseca Buizon, part of a project called “Ahead by a Decade: Employment in 2030.”

Imagine an archaeological expedition: several people digging up terrain, conducting research, interviews, and collecting materials. These “Indiana Joneses,” however, are not after mummies or treasures hidden for past generations; rather, they are after clues about what our life will be like in a few decades. This approach is one of the foundations of what is called Futures Thinking, a technique that allows us to glimpse opportunities and prepare for the future.

Futures Thinking, explained

Many people claim the ability to predict the future. However, such a skill does not even make sense [1]. After all, the future is not something already defined that simply happens to us; the future is the consequence of ideas, actions, and decisions that unfold over time.

But once it is not possible to “see” future events, why even bother to think about them? Marina Gorbis, executive director of the Institute for the Future, justifies:

“(…) this is an exercise that allows for its own inoculation. By envisioning a range of possibilities for the future, you have the opportunity to better prepare for them.”

Futures Thinking is related to imagination, to creating maps that allow us to foresee opportunities and, most important, our own protagonism within those scenarios. It pushes us to reflect on how we could take part in actions that make desired visions of the future a reality, while avoiding those that seem negative.

And, if there is no data about the future, there are, however, a number of clues — called “signals” — floating around us: trends that are manifesting themselves and that point to possible paths and developments: technologies, products, ideas, policies, patterns of behavior, in short, changes that belong to specific niches, happening in a restricted or limited way, but that insinuate possible changes in a society. Paying attention to these signals is the first step in thinking (and preparing for) the future.

“Victims” of the future?

In 1984, Alvin Toffler, an American author and futurist, warned us about “future shock”: a state that is similar to the great cultural disparities a traveler experiences when landing in another country, involving a lack of orientation, unfamiliarity with habits, and a certain feel of discomfort:

Now imagine not just an individual, but a society, an entire generation suddenly transported to this world. The result is mass disorientation, a large-scale shock about the future.

Amid climate change, new channels of information (or misinformation), and the growing automation of processes, millions of people are in this state, dominated by a sense of powerlessness — like inevitable victims of this shock caused by the future. Hence, the urgent importance of disseminating studies in this area.

A woman feeling disoriented amid self-driving cars and drones. — AI-generated image by the author.

Looking backward to see forward

Imagining a future that is distinct from the way things are today is often a difficult exercise, as we tend to project current limitations onto the process. However, major transformations happen — and much faster than we imagine. Revisiting the past and the succession of events that were triggered is, therefore, a way to expand our minds to broader possibilities in the future.

By turning our eyes “backwards,” we can list key elements of change, how they connected to each other in order to create larger and often unpredictable events, and the inexorable flow of this process.

Here, I propose an exercise:

Choose a topic of your interest to think about how it might be different in the future. It can be a simple everyday object (the future of colored pencils), a service (the future of basic sanitation), a region (the future of the your neighborhood), a context (the future of early childhood education).

Define a timescale to analyze it, but one that is long enough to understand a series of historical transformations. Tip: the past horizon should be at least twice as long as the horizon you are trying to project into the future, although there is no proper limit.

For example: if I want to ponder on possibilities for the future of early childhood education in 10 years, I should establish this temporal ruler at least 20 years back, to be able to map out what has happened until now.

Futures Thinking exercise — a timescale — Futures Thinking exercise: a timescale. The author.

Think about the major transformations that have occurred in this period: events, discoveries, innovations, changes in law or behavior, among others. List them on a chronological scale. To make things easier, you can use an A3 sheet, a whiteboard with sticky notes, or a digital tool like FigJam, Miro, or Mural. Below, an example of a framework developed by the Institute for the Future, which I have adapted for this exercise:

Futures Thinking exercise: looking back to look forward. The author, inspired by an IFTF template.

Create an insights section to discuss topics such as: What were the implications of those changes? How quickly did they happen? How did people deal with them? Were there major disruptions? What other areas were affected? What remained the same? How much time elapsed between each of those points? Are we still experiencing the effects of these events? And so on.
Project new transformations into the future, considering the timeframe you have previously defined: What trends are manifested in the present? What kind of change do they represent? What would happen if they became more popular or widespread? What kind of impact would they have, who would be affected and in what ways?, among other similar questions that you consider important.

Practicing the concept

As an example, I will consider the future of engineering related to air transport, based on a recent work I conducted:

In this exercise, I began my research all the way back to ~1,000 b.C., in China, when the kite was invented. Although it was not intended for any transportation means, the object demonstrated some important facts that influenced its stability in the air — phenomena that would still take some centuries to be understood, but that empirically brought up these challenges. The invention may have inspired the Chinese of the time — and other peoples, as these cultures began to establish contact and exchange with one another — to consider flight as something a little closer to reality, and not just a skill of birds and insects.
Second half of the 15th century: Leonardo da Vinci draws the first prototypes of flying machines. The curiosity and experimentation initiative of this great inventor leads humanity to a great period of discoveries about the forces that govern nature and stimulate their imagination.

Monalisa, flying machines and other pieces by da Vinci, combined in an animated figure. — A gif consolidating some of da Vinci’s main works.

1783, Paris: the Montgolfier brothers perform the first manned balloon flight. Although different from da Vinci’s designs, this new approach is based on deeper knowledge of the forces of air, gravity, and how to control vertical takeoff and landing movements through the exchange of hot and cold air. For the first time in history, humans could literally take their feet off the ground and contemplate the world from above.
1903–1906: From the Wright Brothers in the US to Santos Dumont’s 14-bis in France, the first heavier-than-air machines are successfully built and tested, paving the way for aviation.
1928: Frank Whittle, a British engineer, inventor and member of the Royal Air Force (RAF), develops the jet engine. The idea would be perfected during World War II and subsequent years, gradually making commercial transportation routes viable.
1961: The technological race sparked by the Cold War moved the US, USSR, and allies to seek supremacy on various fronts. One of the most symbolic was the conquest of space: in this year, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to travel through space, completing an orbit around the Earth in the Vostok.
September 15, 2021: Through SpaceX, a company envisioned by Elon Musk, space is no longer the exclusive domain of scientists and highly trained individuals. Now, it can be part of anyone’s life experience (anyone wealthy enough, that is). On this date, the Inspiration4 mission takes four civilians into Earth’s orbit.

From these milestones in the aviation history— and note that I could have included many others, but I chose these as the most representative of technological leaps — , we have a starting point to think about the future context.

Let’s then look for signals and emerging trends that can direct the course of history in the coming years. A simple and effective way would be searching the Internet with key sentences as “future of [the topic you have chosen]”. You will certainly have numerous entries referencing news, discoveries, and unusual facts that are showing up somewhere in the world.

Just be careful, though, to capture this information from reliable sources. Some sites I use as reference: Futurism, GeekWire, Institute for the Future, Interesting Engineering, Journal of Futures Studies, Medical Xpress, Science Daily, TechCrunch, The Futures Centre.

Signals of change

e-VTOL: acronym for electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles. Prototypes like this are gaining ground, becoming increasingly safe, practical, and economically viable. Examples include the ZEVA Aero, developed at the Washington State University and initially aimed at rescue and emergency operations; the XTURISMO Limited Edition, a “gliding sports motorcycle” produced by the Japanese start-up A.L.I Technologies; and the CityHawk and Falcon XP models, created by the Israeli start-up Urban Aeronautics, capable of taking off and landing practically anywhere, such as streets and building tops (unlike other VTOLs which, in general, depend on specific structures).
Space balloons: In June, 2021, space travel gained a new modal — balloons! On the occasion, Space Perspective completed its first test flight and is already planning to take passengers to space from 2024 onwards. For a much more accessible price than Elon Musk’s, Jeff Bezos’s, and Richard Branson’s rockets — US$125,000 — it will be possible to rise to 30km in altitude, admiring a panoramic view of our planet.

Space Perspective’s prototype for their space balloon. — Space Perspective prototype.

Space elevator: a physical structure connecting the surface of our planet to its geostationary orbit. Although the idea itself is not new, the technological paths to make it viable are becoming more feasible. Advantages of this solution include: (1) resource economy, promoting cheaper access to space, once the elevator is fully operational; (2) sustainability, since the amount of fuel required to launch a rocket, as well as several other steps in the process, are extremely harmful to the environment. Achieving this goal would advance us another step towards space exploration (and maybe to the concept of “travel” itself). Signal captured from this link;
Spaceships: based on the pioneering projects of the Space Shuttle (USA) and Buran (former USSR), several companies around the world are working on hybrid projects that would allow the same device to take off under Earth’s conditions and travel through space. The DreamChaser, in development by Sierra Nevada Corporation, will be an unmanned vehicle for cargo transport. It has already completed some test missions, but not yet made effective “deliveries” to the space station. In parallel, NASA created a project called X-37B, which has already transported cargo (whose content has not been disclosed) to the Earth’s orbit. Other countries, such as the United Kingdom, India and China, have also joined this select group, with the Skylon, RLV-TD and CSSHQ projects, respectively. As these are strategic initiatives, it is quite likely that the full details, objectives and successes behind these acronyms are not fully presented.

Building futures scenarios

In the previous steps, we listed the elements that allow us to speculate about the future. Through the example of aviation, all signals combined point to the following possibilities:

Just as with vehicles, there is a trend for airplanes and aircraft to adopt electric systems in the coming years. Not only because of the potential for increased efficiency, but the skyrocketing price of fossil fuels and the pressure to adapt the sector to the environment (an issue discussed at COP26) weigh heavily in favor of this change. Since 2019, several movements, especially in Europe, have sparked discussions and suggested that people replace short flights with train travel — in numbers: rail transport emits up to 19 times less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The potential for drones making everyday deliveries on a large scale has been questioned due to its somewhat… chaotic… implications regarding visual pollution, risk of accidents, damage to the ecosystem, practicality and costs. However, this type of vehicle has been studied for other, more specific purposes, and recently incorporated the transport of people — initially, with enormous potential to implement VTOL solutions in emergency and rescue contexts.
More than ever, there is a great diversity of companies — government-affiliated space agencies and startups — exploring opportunities in space. With the technological advances experienced in recent years and a gigantic amount of venture capital available for such initiatives, we can expect new advances in the segment, with increasing numbers of “space tourists”. Like any new technology, the first expeditions will continue to be prohibitively expensive — to most of the population, I mean; but they will allow the iterations and improvements necessary for scaling up. (Think about the fortune that 3D printers cost shortly after their launch and the 100–500 bucks that a domestic device, with good functionality, is priced today).

Back to the framework

Based on the points above, we can update our framework as follows, plotting future projections:

Note that our goal here is not to hit the bull’s-eye, but rather to identify paths that the topic is taking, and how it can impact us — as individuals, society, or organization.

This exercise then could lead to a study for a company, organization or government, presenting results in a detailed portfolio with references, discussions, contextualization of impacts (positive and negative regarding the present), as well as a map of opportunities — undoubtedly, an excellent starting point for innovation projects, as well as for people to consider their own role within those transformations, and what do they mean for themselves or their businesses.

Additionally, it is possible to transform these results into different prototypes, capable of offering a more tangible experience of what it would be like to live in that future — the so-called artifacts of the future, which I will discuss on another piece. As examples, we already have short videos, objects, science fiction scripts, and simulators.

5 Steps, reviewed

Forget about “predictions”.
Look backward first, as it helps you look forward to the future.
Pay attention to the signals and trends, i.e., present elements that point to paths that the topic may be taking.
Discuss how those signals and trends can fit into a timescale and promote the next steps [of the object, service, region, context, or humanity as a whole].
Design a map of opportunities: how this future is transforming the context in which we live (or the company’s segment), and what we can do about it, whether by taking part in this evolution, supporting desired actions, or avoiding complications.

Thinking about the future should be a routine element of our lives. In addition to the clear benefits for creativity, imagination, and expanding our repertoire, it allows us to move away from an autopilot mode and passive responses towards ourselves, propelling us onto a true protagonism.

Notes

[1] The exception, perhaps, lies in literature, such as in:

“The Never-ending Story”, by Michael Ende: an ancestral being who lives inside an egg and writes nonstop the entire history of Fantasia, anticipates all the events that will occur. It is not clear whether things happen there because he writes, or whether he writes because they will happen anyway.
Or in “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by García Márquez, based on the scrolls of old Melquíades, which already inscribed both the history of Macondo and the fate of the Buendía: “The first of the lineage is tied to a tree and the last is being eaten by ants.”