THE INDUSTRY STANDARD SOURCE FOR TREND AND SCENARIO ANALYSES
CREATED BY PROFESSIONAL FUTURISTS
A TEAM OF PROFESSIONAL FUTURISTS WORKING FOR YOU
WE WORK 24/7 ON UPDATING AND ADDING NEW CONTENT
At the heart of our solution is an exceptionally rich collection of in-depth analyses of future phenomena, all available to you as our platform subscriber. Our in-house team of 10+ futurists work relentlessly on adding new high-quality pieces of content and keeping existing ones up to date.
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Futures Platform offers the world’s largest repository of in-depth analyses of future phenomena. Each trend analysis is published in an easy-to-digest article format, including an introductory video, additional readings and AI-generated feed of related news & signals. You may also create your own phenomena as you like.
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Our rigorous analysis process draws from the methodology of future studies, and includes approaches like horizon scanning, driver mapping and scenario analysis. Each phenomenon is peer reviewed before publication.
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Every card on Futures Platform’s foresight database is assigned a type according to its anticipated future development path. We normally categorise future phenomena into four general types - Strengthening, Weakening, Wild Card and Weak Signal.
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We ensure a rich coverage of topics by applying a 32-domain taxonomy of the world, including domains such as energy, values and ethics, food, public governance, and climate change. Each of these domains are continuously being monitored for potential new phenomena to be analyzed further.
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For each of the 32 domains, our futurists have created a foresight radar, giving a handy way to start exploring and understanding related phenomena. You may create & edit your own radars with or without the existing templates.
MEET A FEW OF OUR FUTURISTS
Dr. Tuomo Kuosa, Director of Futures Research
Associate Professor, Strategic Foresight
Max Stucki, Futurist
Content Analysis Manager
Shiori Ota, Futurist
Senior Foresight Analyst
LEARN MORE ABOUT TREND ANALYSIS BY FUTURISTS
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Recently published trend analyses
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What's included in a trend analysis
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Foresight radars created by futurists
RECENTLY PUBLISHED TREND ANALYSES
Each analysis is run through a systematic research process conducted by professionally trained futurists. For each analysis, we identify, among others, key drivers, potential paths of events, key scenarios, and main implications. Each analysis is peer reviewed before adding onto the platform. Read more about the typical contents of a trend analysis further below.
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November 20th, 2025
Weak signal. Security cosmopolitanism is a proposed approach that expands the concept of security beyond the nation-state to a universal good on planetary scale, holding all states responsible for creating enduring security for all humans, and potentially for other species as well. That responsibility extends across borders and through time, and is not limited to particular groups, regions, or the present moment alone.
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November 18th, 2025
Weak signal. Microbiome mining refers to the exploration of the still largely uncharted world of the human microbiome to identify new organisms and bioactive compounds. Scientists are particularly interested in this field because the microbes within the human gut exhibit immense diversity while surviving in an environment of resource scarcity, making them a potential source of innovation that could be leveraged for the development of new antibiotics, more resilient crops and sustainable materials.
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November 13th, 2025
Weakening Trend. Global foreign aid is declining, as major donor countries redirect budgets toward defence and domestic priorities. The United States and several European countries have announced official development assistance budget cuts, hitting the poorest countries, health and education sectors, and other vital services the hardest. This could erode years of progress on global health, gender equality and poverty reduction.
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November 11th, 2025
Weak signal. Scientists from Ohio State University have discovered that edible fungi, like shiitake mushrooms, can be trained to function as tiny components that help computers process and store information. Conventional electronics are usually made of metal oxides and require rare-earth minerals, high temperatures and a lot of energy to run, unlike fungi, which can be grown at room temperature and are biodegradable.
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November 13th, 2025
Wild card. Under genuine global democratic governance, citizens worldwide would be able to elect global representatives; a legal and institutional infrastructure would ensure elected representatives are held accountable for their actions, and transnational civil society organisations and a global free media would emerge. If realised, global democracy would entirely change current power dynamics between nations.
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November 4th, 2025
Strengthening Trend. 4D weapons can self-assemble and are made of materials that can respond to environmental changes. Though still in the nascent stages, countries like the US and China are advancing research and testing of 4D weapons. In the future, 4D weapons will boost military efficiency and ensure the execution of tasks with high agility due to their responsive nature.
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October 30th, 2025
Strengthening Trend. Climate litigation has become a powerful mechanism for enforcing climate accountability, with nearly 3,000 cases filed across 60 countries since 1986, most seeking systemic policy and corporate change. Recent rulings in Europe have strengthened legal recognition of state and corporate responsibility for climate harm.
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October 28th, 2025
Strengthening Trend. China is expanding its economic and security ties in Latin America. Driven by its economic and geopolitical interests, the country is building partnerships across the region through trade agreements, major investments in infrastructure and the energy sector and stronger military collaborations, all amid an intensifying rivalry between China and the US and the growing alienation of the US from Latin America under President Trump.
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October 23th, 2025
Strengthening Trend. The Persian Gulf nations are investing in artificial intelligence to accelerate economic diversification beyond oil and position themselves as emerging global AI hubs. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE have pledged more than $2 trillion to drive this transformation, supported by large-scale infrastructure projects and strategic partnerships. Their goal is to build innovation ecosystems and strengthen digital sovereignty.
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October 21st, 2025
Weak signal. Travelling by train is making a comeback among people who seek more sustainable, slower and comfortable ways of exploring scenic routes. Particularly in densely populated urban areas, train travel also offers a relief from congested roads. A true renaissance of rail transport could strongly contribute to the decarbonisation of the transport sector and bridge the rural-urban divide.
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October 16th, 2025
Strengthening Trend. Virtual power plants (VPPs) are used to coordinate distributed energy resources such as solar panels and batteries to balance supply and demand. Their adoption is expanding due to global decarbonisation efforts, cost advantages and the flexibility they provide to grid operators.
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October 14th, 2025
Wild card. Intrinsic human dignity has long been grounded in the religious belief that humanity’s worth is derived from its divine creation. As societies have secularised, the religious foundation of human dignity has weakened, and secular societies struggle to replace it. If unconditional human dignity becomes conditional, societies may prioritise productivity over compassion and shift moral judgements towards a cost-benefit analysis, transforming equal rights into privileges and maybe even redefining who deserves to live.
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October 9th, 2025
Weak signal. A new realisation is spreading among a growing number of business leaders that the rushed adoption of generative AI can backfire, leading them to regret their AI-related redundancies and rehire human workers. Instead of the higher efficiency and reduced costs many businesses hoped for when they replaced human workers with AI, many of them experienced low-quality work output, internal confusion, a drop in productivity and an increasing number of employees leaving. In a 2025 report, MIT researchers found that 95% of organisations are getting zero return on their GenAI investments.
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October 7th, 2025
Strengthening Trend. 3D-printed medicines are produced using additive manufacturing technologies to create personalised treatments. Since the first regulatory approval of 3D-printed medicine in 2015, the research and application of 3D printing in the pharmaceutical industry have expanded, offering tailored solutions for groups such as children and older adults by improving dosage precision and treatment adherence. Currently, adoption remains in its early stages due to regulatory and technical challenges.
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October 2nd, 2025
Strengthening Trend. Renewable energy is emerging as the most viable solution to Africa’s energy deficit, where millions of people still lack reliable access. Decentralised solar and mini-grids are proving effective for hard-to-reach communities, while national grid expansion remains more feasible in urban zones.
TREND AND SCENARIO ANALYSES
The Futures Platform solution is built on a vast repository of comprehensive analyses and descriptions of future phenomena, created and curated by our in-house team of professional futurists. Here is a brief overview of what each of our 1000+ phenomenon cards contains, all available to you as a subscriber.
Type & Timing
What and when?
Each phenomenon card begins with a title that explains the core of the phenomenon in a few words. Along with the title, the theme tags help users to understand the scope of the trend at a glance. Each phenomenon is assigned into one of four types - Strengthening, Weakening, Wild Card and Weak Signal. Except for weak signals, all trends on our foresight database have an expert-assessed time frame within which the phenomenon is anticipated to either accelerate or decline.
Summary & background
What is it about?
Each trend description has a summary section which explains the key idea of the trend, the current situation, and the most likely future development paths and impacts, all in one paragraph. Following the summary, there's a video by an external party to supplement our analysis and to provide a relevant explanatory overview of the phenomenon in question.
Drivers & scenarios
How it could unfold and why?
A trend analysis card also contains an assessment of key drivers – the underlying key driving forces behind the trend as identified by our futurists. These drivers are also the building blocks of the scenario analysis presented in several of our phenomena. Each such card contains two in-depth scenario narratives that reflect our futurists’ assessment of the two likeliest directions the given trend may take in the future.
Impact assessment
What are the implications?
The scenario descriptions are followed up by a development path section, which lists three to four steps and timelines that could plausibly happen to move us closer to the given scenario. The purpose of this section is to give readers a list of signs and indicators to look out for when monitoring the future development of the trend.
Additional information
Where to learn more from?
Last but not least, each trend descripition also gives the reader a rich and relevant set of directions to go deeper and further in the analysis. Importantly, we provide a list of related other phenomena on our platform. We also provide a list of links to relevant additional indormation and readings, as well as an auto-crawled feed of relevant news and signals, powered by our strong semantic analysis algorithm.
FORESIGHT RADARS CREATED BY FUTURISTS
Once you have identified a number of relevant phenomena, it’s time to start organising and seeing the forest from the trees. For this, the platform offers a versatile foresight radar tool.
All your radars are fully customisable, and you may build one easily from scratch even if you are not that familiar with horizon scanning methodology. We also offer 40+ pre-filled radar templates that our futurists keep constantly up to date.
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Get a thorough understanding of what is likely to be ahead in your future operational environments. With the radar tool and pre-existing content you can start forming a comprehensive control room for the future.
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Once you’ve collected relevant future phenomena on a radar, you enter a collaborative phase of organising and structuring your future outlook by time horizon, likelihood and relevance.
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Scenario planning is about understanding key drivers and events, and organising these into plausible sequences, that is, scenarios. Our platform helps this process and provides pre-existing scenarios created by our futurists.
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Naturally, all of these phases may involve several people, even multiple teams. Such co-creative work has been made easy with the versatile collaboration and sharing features on the platform.
Example radar: Global impacts of the Ukraine war
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SUPPORT AND SERVICES
WE ARE WITH YOU AT EVERY STAGE OF YOUR JOURNEY
Along with the platform and the unique content on it, we offer a rich array of guidance and services along your journey, and towards the next level in your organization’s foresight capability.
ONBOARDING AND SUPPORT
With each new subscription we assign a dedicated foresight specialist from our customer success team. We are dedicated to making sure all relevant people from your organisation get a kickstart in working with the platform. This is topped with an annual development plan tailor-made for each customer.
CONSULTING SERVICES
To help you dive even deeper into foresight analysis, we’ve developed an array of additional services, and offer the expertise of our futurists and consulting team for you. Our services range from custom trend packages and foresight workshops to large-scale foresight capability development projects.
HAVE ANY QUESTIONS?
Submit your question or enquiry below, and our foresight specialist will get back to you with more specific details.
WHAT OUR CUSTOMERS SAY
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Comprehensive.
“In todays connected and fast paced world, there is a lot to track as a Foresight team – and we do. Futures Platform’s combination of artificial and human intelligence helps us to overlook as little as possible.“
— Thomas Boermans,
Head of Foresight, E.On -
Very usable.
“Futures Platform's radars and phenomena are very usable as a tool for horizon scanning and can assist the work of the policy analyst. They can be particularly valuable for the two purposes of horizon scanning: long-term planning and policy analysis.”
— European Parliamentary Research Service,
Scientific Foresight Unit (STOA)
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As a prospective customer, we are happy to take you and your team through a live demo session where our foresight experts demonstrate the key elements, use cases and value of our solution.
This way, you will be able to get a first-hand experience of the powerful features and rich foresight database that Futures Platform offers.
After submitting this form, one of our experienced foresight experts will get back to you to set up an online demo session.