A professional futurist is a person who studies the future in order to help people understand, anticipate, prepare for and gain advantage from coming changes. It is not the goal of a futurist to predict what will happen in the future. The futurist uses foresight to describe what could happen in the future and, in some cases, what should happen in the future.

Most people use some sort of foresight all the time - something as simple as listening to the weather forecast to prepare for the next day. A professional futurist uses formal methods to develop descriptions of possible futures. The output of a futures study may include the driving forces, assumptions, evidence or indicators of the futures. A futurist is more likely to say how or why a future could appear rather than to say what the future will be.

One of the founding principles of the field of futures studies is the idea of personal and organizational choice. Although the future is unknown, a person can identify possibilities, select the most favorable outcomes and attempt to influence events to create a desired future.

By considering systems and human agency, futurists help identify choices that affect the future, for ourselves and future generations.

What do futurists do?

Futurists work in large and small businesses, governments and non-profits, as teachers or researchers in education, and as consultants or as permanent staff. Many futurists focus on one topic such as a technology or an industry. Other futurists study broad social changes or global problems. All futurists take a very wide view of the world in both scope and time. Futurists tend to take a much broader perspective, consider longer time horizons, and include many more factors in a study than analysts such as economists, technology specialists, social critics or political commentators.

The foundation of a good futures project is the solid understanding of the present conditions and historical influences. A futurist describes a situation using a deliberate and structured method. This process includes the surface conditions of, for example, an industry, but the futurist also studies the goals and purposes behind the industry.

The second type of scanning looks for anomalies or unusual events that may provide an indication of change or a solid piece of evidence for an emerging trend, called weak signals. Both types of scanning require futurists to be information sponges." Many futurists and organizations use structured methods of sorting and categorizing data to help sort useful information from noise.

Most get information from a wide variety of sources including newspapers, books, periodicals, scientific and trade journals, forecasts, interviews with subject matter experts, electronic media, arts and cultural trends, to name only a few. While most futurists scan broadly for background information, it is most effective when used in combination with a defined, focused framework.

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Association of Professional Futurists - What Is A Futurist?