The Futures Telescope
The Futures Telescope is a tool for uncovering the blind spots in our vision and the assumptions that guide us.
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Of Bridges and Vessels
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the notion and see the beauty in all the “Build bridges, not walls” kind of metaphors. But when it comes to strategy and futures, I’m afraid a bridge isn’t the answer.
Because Strategy needs Conversation.
Conversation is not the same as communication. Conversation can create friction. And it is friction you need to create a spark.
What Happens When We Engage with Futures Thinking?
Anticipation is not prediction—it's the art of sensing, adapting, and shaping possibility. But have we forgotten how to use it? Futures Thinking is not a luxury; it’s a societal necessity.
The Banyan Approach
The problem with traditional strategy is not just its rigidity—it’s its assumption about time. The idea that we can move from ‘now’ to ‘next’ as though history were a straight road. The Banyan approach rejects this.
The Dawn of the Pinkpaper
Pink is one of those colors that has always had a strong presence, though it often evokes mixed reactions. Historically, pink was seen as a softer, more delicate color—often linked to femininity or sweetness. But over the years, it has evolved into something more powerful.
If This Season Speaks
If you can find warmth in the longest night, seeing light not as certainty but as motion, a shifting glow against the vast unknown. If you can hold the weight of silence without naming it fear, letting the absence become a form of presence, an invitation to breathe. If you
A Season of Paths
December is full of contradictions—the year closes, yet the world feels impossibly full. Lights shine on long nights, reminders that even darkness holds a spark of hope. Christmas invites us to reflect on the tangle of past, present, and future, offering pathways not to predict but to participate.
The Cyclops' Gaze
The Cyclops, one eye fixed on the world, sees only what lies before it. Depth dissolves into certainty, a singular truth, unbroken but incomplete. Complexity shimmers beyond its gaze, an intricate weave of ripples and roots, where nothing stands alone, where every part speaks to another. Hierarchies cling to their
On Participation
Participation is key to Futures Work, yet often resisted by hierarchies valuing efficiency over collaboration. Its value lies in complexity's nature.
Where Futures Wait
We carry the yet-to-come in the marrow of our being, woven deep, unseen, a pulse older than time. The world is not a machine. It breathes, it bends, it breaks. We thought we could tame it, chart its paths, name its stars. But the stars are wild, their light a
Beyond linear paths
Why do we think about futures? As anticipatory beings, we’ve evolved to imagine and prepare for what’s ahead. But in today’s complex world, is traditional strategy enough—or is it time to evolve?
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On Hope.
Between tides, we face uncertain futures and the weight of complex challenges. Yet hope rises—not as a lone flame but as a wildfire, igniting resilience. Hope empowers us to move forward together, a shared light guiding us toward what lies beyond the unknown.
The Ballad of Coherence and Alignment
written by Dall-E Open AI This ballad is the result of an unfinished prompt by myself. I wanted to create a visual with Dall-E for my latest LinkedIn post and pressed the enter button already after "The Ballad of Coherence and Alignment" without adding the visual instructions. And
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The Comfort of Prutures
We are caught up in prutures—iterations of the present dressed up to look like progress. They’re infused with just enough novelty to convince us that we’re moving forward, yet they don’t truly challenge us. And as comfortable as they may be, prutures are holding us back.
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Mirrors of meaning
Metaphors are like keys that unlock hidden doors in the mansion of the mind (a metaphor to explain metaphor, oh dear). Behind each door lies a room full of potential, complex ideas, abstract emotions, and unspoken truths.
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The Dandelion Approach
This piece explores how the resilience and adaptability of dandelions illustrate the benefits of Futures Work in business, promoting innovative strategies and embracing disruptions for growth.
To think is to forget.
To think is to forget a difference, to generalize, to abstract.(Jorge Luis Borges) This quote is from the short story "Funes el Memorioso", dating back to 1944,about a young man named Ireneo Funes who, after an accident, gains the ability to remember everything in vivid detail,
The world does not need futurists.
The world needs futures. In a world teeming with complexities and uncertainties, the profound words of Spanish poet Suso Sudón resonate with an unexpected clarity: "El mundo ni siquiera necesita poetas, el mundo necesita poesía." (The world doesn't even need poets; the world needs poetry.) This
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Futures Work
Futures Work is still considered somewhat esoteric since it deals with the yet-to-come, the unknowable. In a world that deals usually in facts or fiction, and right or wrong, futures are all probability and possibility. I can relate to that. I am an engineer by training. In my formative years,
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The Future is not Female
The Future is Female. Every time and in every context this sentence irritates me. The Future is Female. I perfectly understand the symbolic value of this phrase, as a metaphor for female empowerment. However, describing the future as inherently female overlooks the broader concept of futures being a space of
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Enough.
Proposition of a guiding principle for an in-between world. Welcome to the hamster wheel Humanity faced scarcity over centuries of their history. Therefore modern, and also partly postmodern values and guiding principles were based on this environment. It was deemed progress to have more.
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Polarities Power to Shape Futures
In a world where polarity, tension, stress, and pressure are often seen as negative, can they be reimagined as the drivers of innovation, growth, and progress? Explore how embracing these opposing forces can lead to transformative change and sustainable solutions in our societies and organizations.
Philosophy
Mycelic Philosophy-Gyms.
"Philosophy-gyms, likened to an ecosystem with mycelium, tackle the metacrisis by embracing diverse philosophies. Through daily practice, they foster cooperation, adaptation, and continuous improvement in philosophical approaches."