Facing Our Futures: How foresight, futures design and strategy creates prosperity and growth

by Nikolas Badminton

Overview

A fascinating insight into how professionals and businesses can develop their foresight and strategy to ensure that they are prepared for an unpredictable future.

Businesses, organizations and society-at-large are all subject to unforeseeable events and incidents that often have a dramatic impact upon prosperity and profit. Due to their unpredictable nature, business leaders and executive teams are unable to prepare for these specific events. But, through innovation, strategizing and an open-minded approach, they can restructure their organization and practices in order to mitigate (or even take advantage of) the impact of such events.

In Facing Our Futures, Nikolas Badminton draws upon his decades of experience as a consultant and futurist to provide readers with the skillset and outlook they need to prepare their organization, team and themselves for whatever obstacles the future may hold. CEOs, executive teams, government leaders and policy makers need to gain a broader perspective and a firmer grasp on how their relevant industry, society or community is evolving and changing. Once they have acquired this foresight, they need to then discover how to fully harness it – by strengthening their foundations, forecasting and establishing a resilient and adaptable strategy.

Facing Our Futures acts as a primer on the value of seeing how bad things can get and the power in imagining these futures. It also provides a proven strategic planning and foresight methodology - the Positive Dystopia Canvas (PDC) - that allows leaders to supercharge their teams to build evocative visions of futures that strengthen planning today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399400237
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	02/14/2023
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.35(w) x 9.45(h) x 0.95(d)

About the Author

Nikolas Badminton is the Chief Futurist and Think Tank leader at Futurist.com. He is a seasoned futurist, researcher, media producer, consultant and Fellow of the RSA. He frequently consults multi-national organizations, governments, media companies and investment funds, having specialized in highlighting the significance of foresight in securing future success.

He has advised hundreds of clients, including brands such as Google, Microsoft, NASA, United Nations, Rolls Royce, HSBC, AT&T, Heineken, American Express and many more. His work has been featured on BBC, Vice, The Atlantic, Fast Company, Techcrunch, Business Insider, Forbes and Huffington Post. Nikolas is the founder of Dark Futures, an annual event which was established in 2013 and has featured over forty speakers in events across North America.

Editorial Reviews

11/28/2022

This dry debut from Badminton, a business consultant and “Chief Futurist” at Futurist.com, offers advice on how to “open our eyes and minds to the possibilities for many futures and new ways of operating in the world... to address the biggest challenges we face.” He details his 10-step “Positive-Dystopia Framework,” which aims to help organizations think through possible challenges by deciding what principles matter to them and evaluating how to respond to burgeoning social or economic trends, but the convoluted explanation of this approach befuddles; for example, it’s unclear how step seven’s instruction to formulate “what if” statements differs from the first step of coming up with hypotheses to contemplate. Elsewhere, Badminton outlines strategies others have developed for considering potential outcomes, such as futurist Charles Taylor’s “Cone of Possibilities,” which visualizes prospects by arranging them from preposterous to probable. To prepare for the future, Badminton suggests businesses establish Chief Futurist positions and encourages readers to adopt “future consciousness” by practicing self-awareness, creativity, and “realistic idealism.” Unfortunately, his ambitions are stymied by dull, plodding prose that fails to meet its goal of inspiring readers, and the Positive-Dystopia Framework is too complicated to be useful. This comes up short. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

“Nikolas Badminton cracks the code on the leadership model for the future in this must-read masterpiece.” —Josh Linkner, five-time tech entrepreneur, bestselling New York Times author, venture capital investor

“In this increasingly volatile and uncertain world it's even more important to be prepared and build resilience in your business through proven methods well explained by Nikolas Badminton.” —Paul Polman, Co-founder and Chair of IMAGINE, former CEO of Unilever

“Whether you are a CEO of an organization that is in transition, or a pioneer that is looking for new ways of looking at the future, this book will give you extensive knowledge and practical tools… A must read for every new or experienced futurist!” —Loes Damhof, UNESCO Chair in Futures Literacy

“Nikolas provides important thinking on exploring realistic and holistic futures that support planning for a resilient human race.” —Youssef Nassef, Climate Adaptation Director, United Nations (UNFCCC)

“Frank, succinct, and fundamentally optimistic, just like Nikolas himself, Facing Our Futures is the manual you need to make sense of, and more importantly, be a part of creating the sorts of collaborative, inspiring, sustainable futures we all want to arrive at.” —Bronwyn Williams, Futurist & Partner at Flux Trends

“There's no doubt that holistic futures design is the missing link for disruptive thinkers. You have to read this book and see how Nikolas takes world leading companies to the next level!” —Shawn Kanungo, Disruption Strategist, Speaker and author of 'The Bold Ones'

“Nikolas supplies the framework to upgrade your strategic planning capabilities and establish futures consciousness in your organization.” —Tom Goodwin, Innovation Leader, Author of Digital Darwinism

“Facing Our Futures is an erudite and practical framework through which businesses can analyze a wide range of future outcomes, and then develop strategies that enable them to outflank the competition over years or even decades.” —David Rodnitzky, Founder, 3Q/DEPT

“An incredibly thoughtful work, pulling insightful resources from diverse fields, written in a skeptic, pragmatic and relevant manner, [which] seeks to discover more truths as data comes in. Very addictive and quenching.” —Saško Despotovski, Managing Director, Hinna Park Capital

“The book can be useful to all readers with every level of education, especially those who seek a deeper understanding of future possibilities and options” —Nuts about Leadership.

From the Publisher