Futures Studies

Are there positive trends amidst the doom and gloom? What are the futures of the global financial crisis? What are the futures of Indonesia beyond 2014? Can cities create alternative global futures? Do women and men see the future differently? What are the alternative futures of Pakistan? Is spirituality the fourth bottom line? How is ageing transforming strategy? What are the futures of Muslims? Can futures thinking (theories, methods, processes) create institutional change? Are there methods that can unpack and transform the future instead of reinforcing business-as-usual?

"Millennium Tree" © Josephine Wall (www.josephinewall.co.uk). Used under license from Art Impressions, Canoga Pk., CA.

Welcome to Metafuture.org - hosted by Sohail Inayatullah and Ivana Milojevic, this site explores these and many more futures-oriented issues. Along with articles by Inayatullah and Milojevic, you can access material by leading futures-oriented scholars living in Australia and New Zealand, including Robert Burke, Marcus Bussey, Richard Eckersley, Jennifer Gidley, Peter Hayward, Francis Hutchinson, Patricia Kelly, Rosaleen Love, Jan Lee Martin, Richard Slaughter, Tony Stevenson, Paul Wildman and David Wright.

There is also an annotated bibliography of some of the best in the futures field. But what is futures studies?  One working definition is: the study of alternative futures including the worldviews and myths that underlie them. And what is a futurist? The futurist employs time, especially future time, to transform the present. Through deeply democratic processes, the futurist helps organizations and institutions move from the default future (which is often the used or the disowned) to the preferred future. Futures studies has six pillars: Six pillars: futures thinking for transforming (Download PDF) Mapping the Present and the Future through methods and tools such as the futures triangle and the futures landscape Anticipating the Future  through methods such as emerging issues analysis and the futures wheel Timing the Future, understanding the grand patterns of change, macrohistory and macrofutures. Deepening the Future through methods such as causal layered analysis and four quadrant mapping Creating Alternatives to the Present through methods such as scenarios and nuts and bolts Transforming the Present and Creating the Future through visioning, backcasting, action learning and the transcend conflict resolution method.