Why Every Corporation Should Employ A Futurist

Most people and corporations are terrible at planning for the future, according to prominent futurist Dr. Peter Bishop of the University of Houston.

"The way the public and particularly the way policy and decision makers talk about the future, is with way more certainty than they should have," Bishop explained in a phone conversation with Business Insider.

"To tell you what's going to happen is asking the wrong question," he said. "It's not what the future will be, but what it could be or what it might be. And the problem is that in the halls of decision, in the boardroom or the pentagon or something like that, That degree of uncertainty is not welcome."

Bishop says there are subtleties to future planning that can only be grasped by a futurist.

Several major corporations feel the same way, which is why Google just hired futurist Ray Kurzweilas director of engineering and Cisco employs furturist Dave Evans. Bishop himself has worked with IBM, NASA, Nestle, and more.

Says Bishop: "We're encouraging companies to spend a little bit of time thinking about the future, single digit percents. They don't do it because they don't know how to do it so they think it's a waste of time, and the reason that they don't know how is because nobody in their schools has ever taught them how to do it."

So what are the keys to thinking like a futurist?

Futurists think in terms of "multiple futures" rather than one. Not only does this increase the chances that one will have a plan for the actual future, but it also "intellectually conditions" one to adapt to change.

Futurists also see value in challenging basic assumptions.

"What we do now is basically assume," says. Bishop. "Then we go on and make plans, and those assumptions are fine. The problem is we don't challenge those assumptions, and what we've been taught in physics class is to state your assumptions. We were never taught to say, 'and what if those assumptions are wrong? What's different about it?'"

Originally posted here:
Why Every Corporation Should Employ A Futurist