FUTURIST + MAKER
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Thoughts from the Near Future
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Turn Knowledge and Insights Into Action
Steve Fisher is a design futurist and a multi-disciplinary maker who challenges the possibilities of the future. He serves as the Chief Futurist of the Center for the Future (CFTF) and as curator of DesignFuturist.com. One of Steve’s key abilities is to assist people and organizations in exploring and navigating the potential of a diverse range of possible futures. He provides practical advice that recognizes the nature of humanity and realistic rates of change, guiding people and organizations from inspiration to action.
Why Engage Steve?
Envision and Build New Worlds Together
Steve will work with your organization to imagine the worlds that it might inhabit and to be responsive to opportunities that arise.
We are at the dawn of a transformative era, where design and foresight will turn imaginative concepts into realms for innovation. The emergence of new coding languages and decentralized networks will revolutionize decision-making and interactions, paving the way for fairer trade and community-building beyond conventional limits. Our collective ingenuity and flexibility will forge a future where technology amplifies human potential, transforming dreams into reality in a more connected, equitable, and innovative world.
Explore Alternative Futures
Exploring the future without context can be abstract, distant, and difficult to envision, let alone navigate. Incorporating alternative futures into the present allows for experiencing them as tangible "what-if" scenarios on a 1:1 scale of reality. By using design thinking and techniques such as speculative design and design fiction, the exploration of future landscapes and trends can enable your organization to turn possibilities into practical solutions and catalyze real change.
Navigate AI and Web3
Hyperscale Your Innovation Efforts
Innovation is crucial for any organization, mirroring the ups and downs of a financial portfolio. By adopting futures thinking, your organization gains the foresight to anticipate trends and disruptions, enabling strategic investments in growth areas and ensuring you stay ahead of the competition. This approach not only positions you to seize new opportunities but also fosters a culture of continuous improvement and resilience, essential for long-term success and adaptability in an uncertain world.
Make Futures Thinking Persuasive
Organizations relentlessly seek growth and prosperity but often become ensnared in short-term thinking, prioritizing immediate results and quarterly earnings over long-term strategies. By embracing futures and foresight as central to their strategy, they can extend their vision, exploring potential futures, spotting emerging trends, and preparing for possible disruptions. This broader outlook allows for the development of resilient strategies, ensuring organizations can navigate future uncertainties securing their position as leaders in an evolving landscape.
How do you leverage the future today?
The rate of change today is exponential. What do you focus on and how do you stay ahead? They are four key ways today to do that:
Transform Possible Futures Into Action
Steve works as an innovation leader, futurist and advisor with organizations and governments across the world. He has entertained hundreds of thousands of people across his online shows, podcasts and in-person events with his insightful guidance and poignant wit. He continues to connect with millions through his documentary and media work. His commitment is to democratize futures thinking for leaders and organizations around the world, helping them understand their ability and duty to create a better future. He believes that by envisioning a better future we can impact billions of people around the world by creating the future we want to live in. Steve’s new book (coming in late 2025), "Designing the Future: How to Harness Tomorrow, Today." His "Futures Operating System" (FutureOS) uses his Spectrum Futures Framework (SFF) to provide executives, organizations, and future leaders with the foundation and application of futures design. This allows them to imagine possible futures, communicate bold visions, anticipate risks, and strengthen their organizations to navigate the future. Early elements of FutureOS can be seen in his bestselling book "The Startup Equation," which helps entrepreneurs leverage trends and scenarios to build confidence in their ventures. If you would like to learn more or discuss this, please reach out to us.
Rocket Fuel For Your Organization
Steve is the Chief Futurist of the Center for the Future (CFTF), a worldwide collective of thinkers, makers, and pioneers who collaborate to explore and share knowledge, insights, and tools with organizations. The CFTF operates under the Revolution Institute, a collaborative think tank and platform working to drive exponential impact and create a better future for all. Steve runs the Institute and the Center with Dr. Ja-Nae Duane and an incredible group of interdisciplinary experts. Our motto at the CFTF is, "Be Future Forward," and we bring diverse perspectives, experiences, and expertise in futures, design, behavioral science, anthropology, and engineering to projects that benefit the future of humanity. Steve also leads innovation at the Revolution Factory, where he helps organizations build innovation capabilities, portfolios and venture studios to power their economic engines.
Leveraging a Breakthrough Approach to Navigating the Future: The Spectrum Futures Method
We live in a spectrum, not a binary world. Too often, we think of the future as if there is only one type for all of us to inhabit. Futures work often attempts to neatly categorize potential futures and set boundaries on the ways we might live. However, we know from our current lives that one person's vision is vastly different from another's. Someone could be living in a positive future, while someone else might be living in the present or even a negative future.
The possible futures we explore could exist simultaneously across a spectrum, where the plurality of the future is more tangible than we imagine. Through over 20 years of applied futures work, Steve has tested and iterated on a futures approach called the "Spectrum Futures Method" (SFM). Using our Futures Operating System or FuturesOS we utilize our AI-Powered Futures Software to empower your organization to navigate the future.
This groundbreaking approach presents principles and tasks, which include spectrum scanning for signals and trends, spectrum scenario building, spectrum futures design, and spectrum backcast strategy. It allows you and your organization to navigate a spectrum of potential futures while simultaneously living in many of them.
Foresight and futures thinking has created significant value for organizations as they seek to future- proof their businesses. In one longitudinal study, “future-prepared” firms, defined as those with a corporate foresight practice, posted 33 percent higher profitability than the average company and 200 percent higher growth. Design combined with foresight and futures thinking—bundled into our SFF approach—can help organizations develop a view that goes beyond major trends and reaches for new thinking and solutions.
Steve and his team help you use the SFF to establish a holistic approach and set of methods that establish foresight and futures thinking as an organizational practice that exponentially powers innovation, strategic planning and vision.
Futures Thinking Creates Value
Serving Clients with the Center for the Future @ The Revolution Institute
Part of the CFTF mission is to provide knowledge and insights on the world of foresight and alternative futures. Reach out to Steve with any questions or to collaborate on an article. Additionally, you'll have access to over 30 years of experience and insights from Steve Fisher, Ja-Nae Duane, and a growing community of bold thinkers and experts in futures, corporate innovation, emerging tech, and much more.
Here are some current areas we work on at the Center:
Strategic Foresight
Futures OS or Operating System
Design
Fiction
Scenarios and Worldbuilding
Trends and Signals
Design Futures Thinking
Work With Steve and His Team
Steve Fisher is recognized as a leading futurist, author, advisor and coach who is democratizing the use of strategic foresight and design futures to help leaders and organizations make a lasting impact. Steve will help your organization build the tomorrow you envision starting today by challenging short-term thinking, exploring new ideas and models, and developing solutions that drive growth and strategic decision making. What to connect and learn more? Reach out to Steve and his team to discuss how your organization can benefit from developing future literacy, identifying signals and trends, and charting possible futures.
Here is some stuff I make and things I do...
Steve Fisher is the Chief Futurist of the Revolution Institute's Center for the Future (CFTF), curator of DesignFuturist.com and host of the Think Forward podcast, where he interviews bold and amazing thinkers, innovators, and leaders on the promise of futures thinking.
Steve is a pragmatic design futurist with over 25 years of experience using technology, strategic foresight, and futures thinking to help organizations and individuals envision and understand possible futures while building the path to get there. Steve has worked with government and private organizations of all sizes, all over the world, to spark curiosity, ignite imagination, and explore a better future for all.
Steve co-founded Revolution Factory, a global innovation company that removes barriers to solving complex problems, and The Revolution Institute, an organization collaboratively exploring complex problems and their potential solutions. Steve is also an experienced entrepreneur, filmmaker, and author with a dual MBA from Brown University and Instituto De Impresa. His master's thesis focused on smart cities, industrial IoT, augmented reality, and entrepreneurial innovation models.
As a spiritual follow-up to his bestselling book, “The Startup Equation,” his new book, "Designing the Future: How to Harness Tomorrow, Today" (coming in late 2023), gives organizations and individuals the "Operating System" for futures design, as well as the tools needed to explore the future, imagine what's possible, create a bold vision, build the path to get there, and navigate it successfully.
The Center for the Future or CFTF (CFTF.ORG) is a global collective of thinkers, makers and pioneers working together to explore the future and share knowledge, insights, and tools with organizations around the world.
As a part of the Revolution Institute, the CFTF brings diverse perspectives, experiences and expertise in futures, design, behavioral science, anthropology and engineering to projects that benefit the future of humanity.
The Center for the Future or CFTF (CFTF.ORG) is a global collective of thinkers, makers and pioneers working together to explore the future and share knowledge, insights, and tools with organizations around the world.
As a part of the Revolution Institute, the CFTF brings diverse perspectives, experiences and expertise in futures, design, behavioral science, anthropology and engineering to projects that benefit the future of humanity.
The Center for the Future or CFTF (CFTF.ORG) is a global collective of thinkers, makers and pioneers working together to explore the future and share knowledge, insights, and tools with organizations around the world.
As a part of the Revolution Institute, the CFTF brings diverse perspectives, experiences and expertise in futures, design, behavioral science, anthropology and engineering to projects that benefit the future of humanity.
The Center for the Future or CFTF (CFTF.ORG) is a global collective of thinkers, makers and pioneers working together to explore the future and share knowledge, insights, and tools with organizations around the world.
As a part of the Revolution Institute, the CFTF brings diverse perspectives, experiences and expertise in futures, design, behavioral science, anthropology and engineering to projects that benefit the future of humanity.
The Center for the Future or CFTF (CFTF.ORG) is a global collective of thinkers, makers and pioneers working together to explore the future and share knowledge, insights, and tools with organizations around the world.
As a part of the Revolution Institute, the CFTF brings diverse perspectives, experiences and expertise in futures, design, behavioral science, anthropology and engineering to projects that benefit the future of humanity.
The Center for the Future or CFTF (CFTF.ORG) is a global collective of thinkers, makers and pioneers working together to explore the future and share knowledge, insights, and tools with organizations around the world.
As a part of the Revolution Institute, the CFTF brings diverse perspectives, experiences and expertise in futures, design, behavioral science, anthropology and engineering to projects that benefit the future of humanity.
Here is some stuff I make and things I do...
Think Forward Show
Conversations with Futurist and Big Thinkers about what is on the horizon and what it means to be a futurist in today's world.
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Transform your Business With Strategic Foresight & Design Futures
Steve Fisher is an expert in futures thinking and design, with over 25 years of experience helping organizations and individuals envision and understand possible futures while building the path to get there. Using strategic foresight and futures design, Steve helps clients adapt and thrive by challenging short-term thinking, exploring new ideas and models, and developing practical solutions that drive growth and strategic decision making.
Steve’s approach to futures consulting is distinct, offering a more realistic perspective on what it takes to solve humanity’s bigger problems and being willing to try new approaches, rather than simply following established norms or imitating others.