Tuesday Tips: Where to go to see the future

Before we answer the question, let’s be clear about why we need to do this. Everyone needs to be future-focused these days – we cannot leave this to a small team in our organisations.

You may be old enough to remember the workplace of the 1980s, when factories had quality control departments and companies thought health and safety was for other people. In order to ensure we achieved better quality products and safer workplaces we had to make sure that quality and health and safety were everyone’s issue. That’s accepted as normal today. The same is now true of horizon scanning, future thinking and trend watching.

Today the workplace has changed: we live in turbulent times of disruptive change. And the future has never been as unclear than it is now. In this environment, we need everyone in our organisations to  be involved in looking at the future.

So, back to the question: where should we go to look for information about the forces shaping our world?  The answer very much depends on what industry you’re on, what your job function is, and what interests you.  But there are some general options that provide great starting points.  Here are some of the places our team at TomorrowToday go looking for information about the future.

The best place to start is to follow Graeme Codrington’s Twitter feed: http://www.twitter.com/futuristgraeme

Look specifically at his Future of Work list: http://bit.ly/FutureofWorkTwitter

If you’re not on Twitter, then these Blogs and websites will be good starting points:

• http://futurism.com
• http://www.digitalistmag.com/future-of-work
• http://switchandshift.com/
• http://www.fastcompany.com/section/the-future-of-work
• Strategy+Business blogs: http://www.strategy-business.com/sb-blogs
• http://www.digitalistmag.com/future-of-work
• http://www.iftf.org/future-now/
• The World Economic Forum: https://www.weforum.org/
• http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan
• http://thefutureofwork.net/blog/
• http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/futureofwork
• http://www.kellyocg.com/Blogs
• http://themojocompany.com/blog/
• http://raconteur.net/
• http://www.oldsite.oldsite.tomorrowtodayglobal.com/blog

Magazines:

• The Economist (especially their Technology Quarterly edition)
• Popular Mechanics
• New Scientist
• http://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights
• Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/
• http://www.fastcompany.com/section/the-future-of-work
• http://www.fastcoexist.com/section/futurist-forum

• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRSa16N_0dpnFXgUI1fGoSw – Futurism
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0p5jTq6Xx_DosDFxVXnWaQ – The Economist
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiFme_e-D_34-aEAavlkHPw – FutureThink
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoiTVuiMdqBRMSBGMEcmxCw – The Aspen Institute
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvQECJukTDE2i6aCoMnS-Vg – Big Think
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMbmqUMqzerMSM48pGYMYsg – Gapminder
• https://www.youtube.com/user/FastCompany – Fast Company
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp5hG8rt1z2MJ9aNVxY2Xdg – New Economic Thinking
• https://www.youtube.com/user/MilkenInstitute – Milken Institute
• https://www.youtube.com/user/forbes – Forbes
• And, of course, https://www.youtube.com/tomorrowtodayglobal  – TomorrowToday Global

You can also contact us directly at TomorrowToday for more information on our video series ‘Thinking Like a Futurist’.