Lessons from Three Decades of Futures Research

This will be a kind of summing up three decades of futures work, ranging from Stanford Research Institute to the Global Business Network and all the books and foresight clients in between, that began here in Toronto with the talk on the Emergent Paradigm that Peter Schwartz and Jay Ogilvy gave in 1980. The presenter will summarize what he has learned since — such as that dark, negative scenarios are easier to write than light, optimistic scenarios — and he will also revisit the Emergent Paradigm work after 30 years of refinement in cooperation with a wide range of companies, governments, and nonprofits around the world.