Why is Future Thinking Important?
Future thinking enables us to explore new ways of driving change and innovation, and the impacts it may have. It can help us identify both the opportunities and the risks that may present themselves if routes are taken and give us opportunity to develop robust measures to mitigate them. Future thinking can help us envision more “ideal” futures that we can then mobilise toward.
The aim of futures thinking is not to “focus on foresight instead of forecasting, referring to methods that can identify possible futures and using them strategically instead of trying to predict the future” (Gall et al, 2022).
References
Gall, T., Vallet, F. and Yannou, B. (2022). 'How to visualise futures studies concepts: Revision of the futures cone', Futures, 143, article number 03024. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2022.103024
Institute for the Future (2025) The Future is Wide Open. Available at: https://www.iftf.org/ (Accessed: 27 February 2025).
