The Association of Professional Futurists (APF) was founded in 2002 to validate the competencies of emerging futurists.[1] As analysts, speakers, managers or consultants, APF's credentialed members cultivate strategic foresight for their organizations and clients. APF represents the professional side of the futures movement, while groups such as the World Futures Studies Federation, the World Future Society or The Millennium Project, represent its academic, popular, and activists expressions, respectively.
APF emerged as a network of practicing futurists who were utilizing futurology methods.[2] As the field approached the year 2000, it began to renew old calls[3] and issue new ones [4][5] to raise its internal standards in regards to ethics, competencies, and quality of work. While few felt that futurists—an occupational interest group at best—might become a full-fledged recognized profession via certification,[6] the nine members of APF's founding board, including Peter Bishop, Jennifer Jarratt, Andy Hines, and Herb Rubenstein felt that foresight professionals should lead the global discussion about professional futures practice, encourage the use of futures and foresight in strategic decision making, and offer services, resources and training for foresight professionals to advance their skills and knowledge.[citation needed]
Instead of certifying members through coursework,[7] professional futurists chose a pathway to credential its members, based on a peer-review assessment of their competencies. APF Professional Membership is conferred following a portfolio review to those who can, at the minimum, document performance in two of seven professional standards: consulting, organizational function, postgraduate degree, certificate program, speaking, teaching or writing. Full Members may use the appellation of APF after their name. Besides its Full Member program, APF also offers Provisional, Associate, and Student Memberships.
Programs & Publications
APF Annual gatherings have been a key activity since its founding. The first gathering was an "Applied Futures Summit" in Seattle in April 2002, at which founders agreed to establish the Association. The second gathering was in Austin, TX, focused on "The Future of Futures," employing a scenario planning approach to explore the next decade of the field.[8] Each subsequent gathering has focused on a particular topic, such as Design Thinking in Pasadena, CA, or the Future of Virtual Reality in Las Vegas, NV, Global Health in Seattle, WA, Blockchain Futures in Brisbane, Australia, or Resurgent City in Pittsburgh, PA.
APF hosts shorter "Pro Dev" workshops preceding larger conferences, in addition to annual gatherings, such as its September 2019 workshop in Mexico City on the "Praxis of Professional Futurists." As a digital learning platform, APF members also conduct various events online, ranging from Twitterchats, to webinars, to day-long learning festivals that address topics such as the future of museums, the future of machine intelligence, diverse futures, and design thinking. In 2020, APF began to host monthly member-only "Foresight Friday" webinars to showcase outstanding work by its professional members.
APF's flagship publication for members is its newsletter, published quarterly since 2003. The Compass features recaps of APF events, articles on future trends, methodology salons, book reviews, plus member news and promotions. Non-members may view themed or conference editions.
Professionalism
Helping raise professionalism of futurists has been a perennial pursuit of the APF. In 2016, after three appointed studies over nine years, APF released a Foresight Competency Model, a product of 23 members from 4 continents that mapped the personal, academic, workplace, and technical competencies that futurists draw upon to support their work as consulting, organizational or academic futurists.[9]
The Foresight Competency Model addresses the basic question of what one ought to be capable of doing as a professional futurist. At the center of the model is a circle of six foresight competencies: Framing, Scanning, Futuring, Designing, Visioning, and Adapting.
Six Foresight Competencies
Practice
Description
Framing
Defining the focal issue and current conditions
Scanning
Exploring signals of change and cross-impacts
Futuring
Identifying a baseline and alternative futures
Visioning
Developing and committing to a preferred future
Designing
Developing prototypes and artifacts to achieve goals
Adapting
Generating strategies for alternative futures
The Foresight Competency Model[10] also defined sector competencies for different types of foresight professionals, such as consulting or organizational futurists, at the entry, associate, and senior career level. The origins of the Foresight Competency Model arose from previous taxonomies of futures research methods that offered guidelines for carrying out successful strategic foresight,[11][12] developed over four decades.[13][14]
Futurist Recognition
APF's members annually select and recognize significant futures works. The first awards were announced in 2008. The ten 'most significant futures works' in 2008 included Peter Schwartz's The Art of the Long View, Wendell Bell's Foundations of Futures Studies: Human Science for a New Era, Bertrand de Jouvenel's L'Art de la Conjecture (The Art of Conjecture), and Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines.[citation needed]
APF also has an annual student recognition program in which universities offering undergraduate, Masters and/or PhDs in foresight and futures studies can submit up to three student works that the instructor(s) considers being of exceptional quality in terms of originality, content, and contribution to the field.[citation needed]
APF is led by an international board of 12 futurists from five continents along with key volunteers. It is incorporated in the State of Delaware and is formed as a 501(c)(6) business league, with its headquarters in Washington, DC. It is considered exempt by the IRS as it is not organized for profit. APF's Twitter feed is @profuturists
Futurists are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities about the future and how they can emerge from the present, whether that of human society in particular or of life on Earth in general.
Futures studies, futures research, futurism research, futurism, or futurology is the systematic, interdisciplinary and holistic study of social/technological advancement, and other environmental trends; often for the purpose of exploring how people will live and work in the future. Predictive techniques, such as forecasting, can be applied, but contemporary futures studies scholars emphasize the importance of systematically exploring alternatives. In general, it can be considered as a branch of the social sciences and an extension to the field of history. Futures studies seeks to understand what is likely to continue and what could plausibly change. Part of the discipline thus seeks a systematic and pattern-based understanding of past and present, and to explore the possibility of future events and trends.
Strategic foresight is a planning-oriented discipline related to futures studies. In a business context, a more action-oriented approach has become well known as corporate foresight.
In futurology, especially in Europe, the term foresight has become widely used to describe activities such as:
Futures techniques used in the multi-disciplinary field of futurology by futurists in Americas and Australasia, and futurology by futurologists in EU, include a diverse range of forecasting methods, including anticipatory thinking, backcasting, simulation, and visioning. Some of the anticipatory methods include, the delphi method, causal layered analysis, environmental scanning, morphological analysis, and scenario planning.
Peter Schwartz is an American business executive, futurist, author, and co-founder of the Global Business Network (GBN), a corporate strategy firm, specializing in future-think and scenario planning. In 2011, Schwartz became an executive at Salesforce.com, where his roles include Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning and Chief Futures Officer.
Strategic thinking is a mental or thinking process applied by an individual in the context of achieving a goal or set of goals. As a cognitive activity, it produces thought.
Clement Bezold is a political scientist, author, futurist and a founder of the Institute for Alternative Futures (IAF) as well as its for-profit subsidiary Alternative Futures Associates.
The University of Houston College of Technology is the second largest among 13 schools and colleges at the University of Houston. It offers 11 undergraduate degrees and 12 graduate degrees throughout four different departments. In fall of 2017, there were 6,520 students enrolled in the college. The University of Houston has a new building in Sugar Land, Texas, for the College of Technology; programs are being moved there and a couple of programs will solely be offered at that campus.
Peter C. Bishop is a professional futurist (futurologist), a retired Associate Professor of Strategic Foresight, and the former Director of the graduate program in Futures Studies at the University of Houston.
Corporate foresight has been conceptualised by strategic foresight practitioners and academics working and/or studying corporations as a set of practices, a set of capabilities and an ability of a firm. It enables firms to detect discontinuous change early, interpret its consequences for the firm, and inform future courses of action to ensure the long-term survival and success of the company.
Foresight: The Journal of Futures Studies, Strategic Thinking and Policy is an international bi-monthly journal published by the Emerald Publishing Group. The name connotes the term "foresight" as it is used in futures studies. Established in 1999, the journal provides a powerful framework and set of techniques that allow for understanding trends and drivers shaping the world, exploring alternative futures, setting priorities and formulating strategies for action. Foresight is a valuable source for futurists and foresight practitioners who should be at the forefront of discovering practical ways to manage 21st century life under growing complexity with a long-term perspective. The journal offers a much-needed forum for sound thinking about the future and socio-technological innovations, and focuses on themes and issues shaping the future, new quantitative and qualitative methods, as well as case studies with novel approaches. The journal is edited by Prof.Dr. Ozcan Saritas since 2009.
Sohail Inayatullah is a Pakistani-born Australian academic, futures studies researcher and a professor at the Graduate Institute of Futures Studies at Tamkang University in Taipei, Taiwan.
Causal layered analysis (CLA) is a future research theory that integrates various epistemic modes, creates spaces for alternative futures, and consists of four layers: litany, social, and structural, worldview, and myth/metaphor. The method was created by Sohail Inayatullah, a Pakistani-Australian futures studies researcher.
The Institute for the Future (IFTF) is a Palo Alto, California, US–based not-for-profit think tank. It was established, in 1968, as a spin-off from the RAND Corporation to help organizations plan for the long-term future, a subject known as futures studies.
Puruesh Chaudhary is a futures researcher, development and strategic narrative professional. She has a master's degree in International Negotiation and Policymaking from Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. She is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad. Chaudhary is the founder and president of the non-governmental organization Agahi, a media development and capacity building initiative in Pakistan.
Andy Hines is an American futurist, head of graduate studies in Foresight at the University of Houston, and author of several books on strategic foresight.
Pero Mićić is a German professor for Foresight and Strategy at Steinbeis-Hochschule Berlin, as well as author, public speaker and management consultant. He is the founder and CEO of the FutureManagementGroup AG. Mićić lives in Eltville, Germany.
Horizon scanning (HS) or horizon scan is a method from futures studies, sometimes regarded as a part of foresight. It is the early detection and assessment of emerging technologies or threats for mainly policy makers in a domain of choice. Such domains include agriculture, environmental studies, health care, biosecurity, and food safety.
Heiko Andreas von der Gracht is a German academic, futurist, author, and an expert in the fields of Foresight and Technology management.
↑ Hines, Andy (2004). "The History and Development of the Association of Professional Futurists," The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies: Professional Edition CD-ROM. Foresight International. ISBN0-9757354-0-3
↑ Hines, Andy; Gary, Jay; Daheim, Cornelia; and Luke van der Lann (2017). Building foresight capacity: Toward a Foresight Competency Model. World Futures Review, 9(3), 123-141.
↑ Markley, Oliver (1983). Preparing for the professional futures field: Observations from the UHCLC futures program. Futures, 15(1), 47-64. https://doi.org/10.1016/0016-3287(83)90072-1
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