It’s ok to have more than one innovation at a time
Organizations seem so often to have trouble innovating at all, and if they do change, they often just make one change at a time. More rare is a comprehensive rethinking of a product, or system, or business model. But there may be great opportunities for those who can take on a whole system, rethink it, and make something new happen.  The Dutch company 94wines combines a sweep of innovations in its packaging and products. Many of these are innovations that we’ve been keeping an eye on for our

Top 10 ways to “futureproof” your packaging
Here's a special feature we've also published on Leading Futurists LLC's website under our Future of Packaging resources. The advice could easily be interpreted for other products and services that need "futureproofing": To "future proof" your packaging, i.e. to make sure it's right for the immediate and longer-term future, now to 5 or 10 years from now, you should: Serve – Recognize th

So you want to be a futurist
Now and then I hear from people who want to be futurists. They get what I see as "the call" and there's no dissuading most of them who have discovered the field and what (they assume) it has to offer. It's not an easy profession to enter, but there are some ways to find out more, get training, and perhaps get started. These thoughts are necessarily U.S. focused–that's all I am qualified to talk about! How do you get to be a futurist? Futurists are sometimes people with a degr

Use foresight to avoid losing your way
  It’s too easy to swap your organization’s true mission for single-mindedness about preserving and defending the institution as an institution. The clear and broad view you get with foresight can help you avoid that.   Kevin Carey, policy director of Education Sector, an independent think tank in Washington, published an essay, “The ‘Veritas’ About Harvard”

Take a walk in their shoes
A key to success in communicating about change is to know as much as you can about what others are feeling and thinking. So take a walk in their shoes.   There’s probably a gap between your views and what’s on the minds of the people you are trying to reach. What matters to you may not matter to them, and how they think about things is probably not how you think about things. So you have to try to bridge that gap, and get through to people on their terms.   It takes a fight with your