IF Insight & Foresight

Today IF launches Mission Future(s). For more than ten years, IF has scanned the world for the forces and signals that shape what comes next. Mission Future(s) turns that work into a place you can step into. → The Bloom: a living map of more than 42,000 forces and signals of change, from megatrends to weak signals, read as a system. It expands every hour. → Twelve destinations: futures that matter to decisions made now, each held as one question. → A return every Monday: a document from a world that could exist, with the real evidence that makes it plausible. → Ask the Bloom: your own question, answered only from what IF has sensed, with its sources. The first return came back this morning: the briefing an AI agent gives a planner in Tampere, Finland, in 2033, the year there are two people over 65 for every child. Until 30 November, Mission Future(s) is open only to paid subscribers of my Substack account (Scanning · Sensing · Acting). Join by then and it stays part of your subscription until 30 November 2027. Read the launch article: https://lnkd.in/eA6EKj4v #StrategicForesight #Foresight #FuturesThinking #Strategy

Insight & Foresight Brief Nº 18 is out. This week, ten signals from IF's daily scan, each mapped to one of the twelve destinations of Mission Future(s): → Ebola in Congo passes 9,000 confirmed cases, of a strain with no vaccine → JPMorgan tells outside AI agents they may look, but not touch → The US nuclear regulator leans towards four reactors for an AI campus in Texas → Hyperscalers now issue a tenth of new investment-grade bonds → Trust in every branch of the US federal government at or near record lows …and five more. Two edges connect them: intelligence now has an address, and the protective layer is thinning. And our news: on Monday, Mission Future(s) opens to every paid subscriber, with the Bloom in 3D. Read the Brief: https://lnkd.in/eckwHcrP #StrategicForesight #Foresight #FuturesThinking #Strategy

This week's Brief carries our news: on Monday, Mission Future(s) opens to every paid subscriber, with the Bloom in 3D. 42,777 forces and signals, read as a system.

The early rate for the 6th edition of the Strategic Foresight Masterclass Series closes tonight at 23:59 Lisbon / London time. The 5th edition is running right now with Paulo Carvalho. Today is Session 3, and the 65 participants are working through a Scenario Planning Lab that runs across all five sessions. The 6th edition starts on 7 January 2027: five live Thursdays, 12:00–14:00 London, on Zoom, with recordings and the SFMS certificate. It moves from foundations and frameworks to mapping methods, scenario planning, and a lab where scenarios become strategic options and a first Three Horizons roadmap. Two ways to join: Core · the live masterclass · €280 today (€350 standard) Pro · the masterclass plus twelve months of Futures.360 Pro · €632 today (€790 standard) Programme and enrolment: https://lnkd.in/e2REnX63

The 20% early rate for the 6th edition of the Strategic Foresight Masterclass Series ends this Thursday, 15 October. Five live Thursdays, 7 January – 4 February 2027, 12:00–14:00 London, on Zoom. In ten hours you go from scattered signals to a foresight deliverable: a scanning dashboard, a set of scenarios and a first Three Horizons roadmap. More importantly, you leave with a method you can run again on any strategic question that matters. Two ways in: → Core · €280 (instead of €350): the live masterclass, recordings, slide decks, a starter template pack, feedback on your work and the certificate. → Pro · €632 (instead of €790): everything in Core, plus twelve months of Futures.360 Pro (the book "The Power of Future(s)", the templates, the complete Studio, all the Media) and the self-paced programme Futures Literacy and Strategic Foresight. Built for strategy, innovation and policy professionals, and for consultants who need foresight that ends in decisions, not just reports. Early rate until 15 October: https://lnkd.in/e2REnX63

Welcome to the seventeenth edition of the Insight & Foresight Brief! Last week the Brief opened with the Paulo Carvalho's book to be launched in November. This week it opens with one of the book's arguments. On Wednesday we published an essay on Chapters 2 and 3 of The Power of the Future(s), about time, and about why so many failures of foresight begin as mistakes about it. Then the scan, in the same shape as last week: ten signals, each kept short, and two edges. One of them reads this week's signals through the essay's own geometry. In this issue: - The Geometry of Time — horizons, cones and pace layers - From the daily scan — ten signals and two edges - Learning in 2027 — early rate to 15 October Learn more: www.ifforesight.com https://lnkd.in/edRHQRfx

What if we could take a picture of the future? There are no facts in it. Nothing in it has happened yet. And still, every decision we will ever make, to invest, to hire, to build, to wait, is a decision about the future. That is the paradox Foresight lives with. We cannot know the future. We can learn to read it. This short film is a teaser of our founder and CEO Paulo Carvalho keynote "The Future as a Landscape". Its argument is simple: the future is not a point to be predicted. It is a terrain to be explored. And like any terrain, it has a structure you can learn to see. - Megatrends are the big waves. Slow, powerful, already in motion. You will not stop them. You can only learn to surf them. - Trends are the moving features of the terrain: shifts with evidence and momentum behind them. - Weak signals are the blur at the edge of the frame, the first faint traces of something that may one day be central. - Wildcards and black swans are the earthquakes the landscape does not advertise. Sudden, improbable, decisive. - Uncertainties are the forks, the places where the futures diverge. That is where scenarios begin. Serious Foresight never returns a single picture. It returns three or four, each a plausible landscape built on the same structure. And when those structures are told as narratives, scenarios become stories. Stories are what people carry. They are how anticipation becomes action. Go further - The full film. The complete eight-minute version of The Future as a Landscape is available on Futures.360. - SFMS6. The Strategic Foresight Masterclass Series, 6th edition: five live Thursdays online, from 7 January to 4 February 2027. - Futures.360. IF’s strategic foresight practice environment: methods, interactive templates, guided projects, and the full film. - The Power of the Future(s). My new book, released chapter by chapter on Futures.360 ahead of its public launch in November. Explore the options: www.ifforesight.com

Paulo Carvalho new essay on Chapters 2 and 3 of The Power of the Future(s), with the geometry that holds it together, is on Substack.

Most strategies don't fail for lack of data. They fail for lack of capability to anticipate in a structured way what could change. The 6th edition of the Strategic Foresight Masterclass Series starts on 7 January: five live Thursdays, 12:00–14:00 London, through 4 February 2027. Learn Futures literacy and Strategic Foresight, form the fundamentals to the core concepts (Magatrends, Trends, Weak Signals, Wildcards, Uncertainties, Scenarios, Visions, etc.), a toolkit of Foresight methods and the capability to design and apply a full strategic foresight project. Together we scan the signals, build scenarios, stress-test the strategy, and turn it into a foresight deliverable you can take back to your team. Attention: the 20% early rate is open until Thursday 15 October. Apply here: https://lnkd.in/e2REnX63