Let’s anticipate possible futures so that we and our organizations can prepare and adapt. Research shows that future-prepared organizations are much more profitable than the average. Not only do they do better in the possible futures, but also in the present. Boost your own and your organization’s leadership, culture, change skills, future-preparedness, resilience and agility. Here’s update 2 with content from researchers, futurists, bloggers, entrepreneurs and other professionals.
- Keep your mind open!
- Discuss these updates with your colleagues.
- What if…?
- What next…?
Four scenarios for AI
Will artificial intelligence help us achieve more, freeing up time for a better work-life balance? Or will it widen inequalities, leaving some behind and disrupting jobs? See the scenarios that the Futures Platform created. Which of these seem plausible to you?
1. Humans and AI work together in great synergy
2. Rushed AI adoption creates inefficient work environments
3. Widescale automation displaces workers as AI development outpaces regulation
4. AI falls short of expectations and remains limited to narrow applications
Imagine yourself at a meal 10 years from now
This scientifically grounded exercise helps strengthen four key imagination skills! Discover how well you can envision alternative futures and identify areas for growing your foresight abilities.
- How is your imagination? How did this exercise work for you?
Energy: fossile and/or renewable
Renewables can end endless energy extraction – read this hopeful, thoughtful article by Nafeed M. Ahmed.
From The Carbon Almanac: Which is the better of two extraction evils? Fossil fuels or mining critical minerals? There are always trade-offs but we need energy in the futures, too.
How to prepare for possible futures?
Lasse Jonasson writes: This is the challenge for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs): they must constantly balance short-term operational pressures with long-term strategic considerations. Limited liquidity makes them more vulnerable in crises, and unlike large corporations, SMEs rarely have the budgets for R&D and big innovation projects that may not pay off for many years.
By prioritizing strategic foresight, SMEs can get ahead of the curve-without breaking the bank. Strategic foresight is a well-tested, methodological approach to engaging with the future: analyzing possible scenarios, preparing for different outcomes, and thereby widening the strategic playing field. It is not just about reacting to market developments; it is about helping to shape them. By understanding the forces that drive change, companies can craft strategies that focus not only on short-term optimization but also on long-term growth and survival.
Foresight is not a luxury. In a chaotic world, it is a necessity.
(We at the Strategic Foresight & Futures Community couldn’t agree more!)
The Next Global Mega Epoch Change Beginning Around 2030
“Whether we embrace it or resist it, we are entering an era where nearly all fundamental principles and practices undergo profound transformations. This conclusion is derived from four key sources: macro-historical analysis, complexity theory, recent global events, and the prospects of forthcoming technological changes” – says Dr. Tuomo Kuosa from the Futures Platform.
“Complexity theory also states that all open systems undergo three natural renewal cycles to maintain their operational capabilities over time.
These are:
1. Break of the existing order (bifurcation/entropy release)
2. Re-assembling/emergence/growth of the new order
3. Change pressure or entropy increase
Historical Cycles: A Long View of Change
The cycles identified in other macro-historical works can be grouped into micro (approximately 12 years), meta (around 50–65 years), and macro (roughly 100–130 years) patterns that recur at nearly regular intervals.
When I extended the timeframe to analyze societal changes since the beginning of the Roman Republic, I discovered something other macro-historians hadn’t identified: approximately 250-year mega cycles that recur at even more regular intervals than the shorter cycles. The first significant discovery was that there have been ten such mega cycles between the start of the Roman Republic and the year 2030. Each has been a distinctly different epoch from the one before and after it. The second major discovery was that the year 2030 marks a pivotal milestone in world history.
The signs of growing societal pressure towards new principles, practices and order worldwide have been clear. From this perspective, we may say that we’ve just went through what can be identified as phase 3: pressure or entropy increase, and have now entered phase 1 of the next cycle, breakdown of the existing order (bifurcation/entropy release).”
- Are we ready for big change..?
Is Your Organization Ready for What’s Coming Next? Get 4 free, insightful videos on Strategic Foresight and how to anticipate Change.
Five levels of complexity
How to keep up with AI’s rise? How to assess the risks? Check the 5 stages of complexity that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) can cause in your organization. Most organizations aren’t ready for this – so take care.
As companies move from narrow to generative to agentic and multi-agentic AI, the complexity of the risk landscape ramps up sharply. Existing AI risk programs—including ethical and cyber risks—need to evolve for organizations to move fast without breaking their brand and the people they impact.
Organizations need to assess where they are on the complexity curve, build the capabilities required for their current stage, and create the infrastructure to evolve safely to the next. This means investing in comprehensive employee training, developing robust monitoring systems, and creating intervention protocols before they’re desperately needed. This task is difficult, but the reward is the safe, wide-scale deployment of truly transformative technologies – says Reid Blackman in this HBR-article.
Generation Alpha
Generation Alpha (born between 2010-2024) is expected to follow traditional paths to adulthood while living through unprecedented crises, economic precarity, and dizzying technological advances. The Institute for the Future’s latest research examines how the world’s largest-ever youth cohort is responding to this dilemma through three key strategies: strengthening local climate resilience, developing sophisticated tech boundaries, and reimagining financial health as a public journey. The most promising path forward, however, transcends these approaches by fundamentally redefining adulthood for an age of uncertainty.
This approach reimagines maturity itself, not a diminished version of traditional adulthood, but a more adaptable, community-oriented, and technologically sophisticated way of becoming an adult. This version of adulthood may look strange to their parents, but it’s precisely what their future demands.
Read the IFTF’s forecast brief “The Uncanny Valley of Growing Up.”
Imagination: open your mind!
The unthinkable keeps becoming reality. Record heat, AI disruption, global realignments — yet most organizations still get blindsided by predictable change.
Marina Gorbis and Lyn Jeffery (Institute for the Future) explain: we cling to the present, avoid “forbidden futures,” and protect outdated structures.
The solution? Master quick improvisation and bold imagination: flip your assumptions, run “signals swarms,” engage everyone in futures thinking, and more. Want to learn more? Join us in the Strategic Foresight & Futures Community.
© curated by Marcella Bremer, 2025
Is Your Organization Ready for What’s Coming Next? Get 4 insightful videos on Strategic Foresight and how to anticipate Change.