My Blog
Highlights and provocations from the Future Days 2025 conference
I just came back from Lisbon, where last week the second edition of the Future Days Conference took place. It’s a gathering that brings together the more progressive thinkers and activists in the wide field of futures and intersecting disciplines. This event took place in one of the most impressive conference venues I’ve ever seen,…
Questions instead of answers: morning check-in with AI
“How are you feeling this morning?” This simple question, asked by an AI language model called Claude, forms the starting point of a daily ritual that has fundamentally changed my working day. While the discussion about language models usually revolves around their ability to generate texts and answer questions, I have discovered another added value:…
Hands-on instead of hype cycle: The practical way out of the AI discourse dilemma
How concrete experience creates the basis for productive debates The AI balancing act: between philosophy and practice “How do we protect ourselves from the existential threat posed by AI?” asks an expert at a specialist conference. Meanwhile, millions of people talk to ChatGPT and Claude every day about their mental health (therapy is the top…
The 60-Minute Futures Workshop: Rapidly Co-Create Actionable Scenarios
Ah, that feeling. We’ve all been there, haven’t we? We’ve all found ourselves overwhelmed by the flood of trend reports, sifting through countless slide decks that predict the next “big disruption,” emerging from strategic offsites filled with buzzwords but surprisingly lacking in actual breakthroughs. As someone tasked with trying to make sense of and navigate…
From Future Narratives to Actionable Insights: Opening a Learning Journey in Berlin
This week, I kicked off a three-day Berlin learning expedition for a leadership group from a French finance company. As with any opening keynote, I faced that familiar challenge: How to transform a typical “trend presentation” into something that genuinely empowers participants throughout their entire learning journey?
Trend Talks vs. Futures Literacy: from passive consumption to active shaping
Anyone who has ever listened to a keynote by a typical “trend guru” or “futurist” will probably remember the frenzy of buzzwords, futuristic videos and seemingly inevitable forecasts. This article starts right there and shows why such appearances often cause short-term amazement rather than building long-term capacity for action. Instead of mere trend fireworks, it…
Corporate foresight: from fearing the future to actively shaping it
If I, as an organisation, do not develop my own vision of the future, I am unconsciously working for the vision of others. This insight from critical futures research has far-reaching implications for organisations of all sizes. At a time when terms such as artificial intelligence, sustainability and new work are dominating the debate, it…
