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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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

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.

 

  • April 9th, 2024

    Strengthening Trend. Biocomputers could provide significantly improved computing speed, processing capabilities, energy efficiency, and storage capacity, potentially leading to applications in medicine, neuroscience, entertainment, and environmental science.

  • April 5th, 2024

    Strengthening Trend. The obsession with anti-ageing and perfection could exacerbate mental health issues among the youth and their overall well-being, particularly Generation Z and Alpha.

  • April 2nd, 2024

    Strengthening Trend. Programmable money refers to the digital currency that carries within itself the logic and rules of its use. Introducing such a store of value could benefit both consumers and businesses by reducing transaction-related risks and costs.

  • March 26th, 2024

    Wild Card. A critical raw material, elastic natural rubber is used in everything from vehicle tyres to essential medical equipment. Now, its production is threatened by climate change, plant disease, and volatile market dynamics.

  • March 21st, 2024

    Strengthening Trend. Green shipping corridors have the potential to act as a catalyst for achieving the goal of full decarbonisation of the maritime shipping sector by 2050. The concept involves cargo ships navigating designated routes using exclusively zero- or low-emission fuels.

  • March 20th, 2024

    Strengthening Trend. Silicon is reaching its limits in terms of being thin and small enough to support the ongoing trend of miniaturisation in microelectronics. In the future, substitutes for silicon could be crucial for sustaining technological progress.

  • March 15th, 2024

    Wild card. NATO falling apart is an unlikely, but not an inconceivable, possibility. From Russia testing Article 5 in some way to the US withdrawal from the treaty, there are paths to the dissolution of the alliance.

  • March 14th, 2024

    Wild card. This kind of an aerial “energy web” has potential to generate and distribute energy more safely and efficiently, eliminating the risks associated with traditional energy transportation in contested environments and removing the need for personnel to move energy around in a warzone.

  • March 5th, 2024

    Strengthening Trend. Biomining refers to the extraction and separation of valuable metals from ores, mining wastewater, e-waste, or other waste products by using micro-organisms. It not only offers a sustainable alternative for mining and recycling of metals on Earth but could also pave the way for extraterrestrial resource extraction, crucial for humanity's space settlements.

  • February 27th, 2024

    Wild card. Many developing and middle-income countries could be approaching the verge of collapse over the next decade due to issues such as corruption, political polarisation, large sovereign debt, extreme weather phenomena, and geopolitical tensions.

  • February 20th, 2024

    Weak signal. Turning waste coal into carbon fibre could drive the price of carbon fibre down and help deal with the existing waste coal deposits. Also, it could push forward the energy transition worldwide by making clean energy technologies more efficient and durable.

  • February 13th, 2024

    Wild card. Metamaterials are artificial materials engineered to have properties not found in nature. Metamaterials could have many potential commercial and military applications, including in telecommunications, EMI shielding, energy harvesting, medical imaging, and acoustic control.

  • Febrary 5th, 2024

    Weak signal. Hobbies, commonly valued for non-monetary benefits like relaxation and self-expression, are increasingly being monetised in developed economies, especially among younger generations, driven in part by economic pressures and social expectations.

  • January 29th, 2024

    Strengthening Trend. Wave energy solutions could potentially provide reliable, sustainable energy on a global scale and have possible applications in the hydrogen economy and water desalination systems.

  • January 22nd, 2024

    Strengthening Trend. Young people across East Asia are increasingly resisting conventional expectations of marriage, relentless hard work, and property ownership. This trend can potentially exacerbate the region's demographic and economic challenges, highlighting the urgent need for societal and policy adaptations to accommodate changing societal dynamics.

 

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 900+ phenomenon cards contain, 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.

 
 

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

 
 
 
Presenting our foresight consulting services
 

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.

WHAT OUR CUSTOMERS SAY

  • 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)

HAVE ANY QUESTIONS?

Submit your question or enquiry below, and our foresight specialist will get back to you with more specific details.