Alireza Hejazi's blog

Have you ever wondered why so many "assumption-based" forecasts have been proved to be untrue? Have you considered that there could be more "evidence-based" ways of forecasting? Have you ever felt that "assumption-based" forecasting was just too much of a struggle and in many cases failed to trigger timely actions?

We cannot set aside our values, feelings, ideas, and interests, even for an instant, but a question that may receive some attention in efforts to put a value on foresight profession is how to calculate the real worth of a futurist. What is worthy of acknowledgement and praise for a professional futurist?

Against the common belief that the success or failure of foresight entities is determined by the strategies they take or their management ability in running a business, I want to highlight that larger forces in the environment, typically unseen by managers, allow some foresight entities to succeed and others to fail.

What working people often need is some way to learn exactly what they need to learn, when they need to learn it. It’s time to change the old paradigm of “degree factories” and welcome the prototype of “innovation centers” at our colleges and universities.

WorldFuture 2012 is an opportunity for all the attendants to discuss one of the long-awaited questions that should be addressed in the field: the problem of professionalism. Can we really dream, design, develop, and deliver a credible code of professionalism for futurists and foresight practitioners? It seems we can.

Getting to the Better Future can be a source of inspiration for every futurist. In his book, Renesch has offered a vision for new possibilities for the future of the world, a vision in which business can play a determining role.

An enjoyable experience of scanning more than 70 trends related to work and entrepreneurship made me conclude that there are five driving forces shaping the future of work: technological developments, globalization, demographic shifts, social trends, and paradigmatic changes.

We usually think about difficult problems of future and alternative strategies for coping with them, but we rarely find effective solutions.

Since the beginning of my studies on Strategic Foresight, I’ve been compiling a list of mind-challenging questions that can be raised as research topics and may be addressed by the students of foresight or futures studies at MA and PhD levels.

Today, the increasing number of futurists, scholars, business planners, and others in the futuring field is a good sign of the usefulness of Futures Studies for humanity, just as Dator wished so 26 years ago (Dator, 1986).