Welcome to 2023 everyone

Back in December I shared this post on Instagram and LinkedIn and got a noticeable reaction which started conversations and confirmed we are on the same page here as far as being ready for a CHANGE. 

Moving away from the classic:

• diffusion of Innovation

• data listening

• social listening

• sales numbers

These are important and indicate preferences. But what are other ways we could be validating new trends and foresight principles, in the context of the climate crisis?

I am going to be completely UPFRONT. Because this is the fire inside me, and the Trend Atelier.

Consulting and leading the Trend Atelier community is ambitious and hard, because of the scope of the remit. So I need to be brave brave brave.

The only way I can do this is to always remind myself what the goal is here. What's the deepest thing that I care about? 

I am a highly sensitive person. So caring about people is intrinsic to the answer I'm about to give. 

All I personally care about is the planet and the restoration of our ecosystems. 

That is all I freaking care about because we are in a state of emergency. 

And I have seen in my own lifetime the influence and power design and foresight have to drive change. 

As a practicing futurist and designer, I am inspired by design, functionality, beauty, art, technology, science, popular culture, media and just about everything that shows us where humans are going. These are the spaces I inhabit with clients and collaborators. 

But what really really really drives me is climate and social justice. That's all I truly care about. 

What pisses me off, is that we are still carrying on as if it's business as usual in the world, AND in the field of foresight.

We talk about sustainability, regenerative systems and most of us mean well. And we have for years. But we are still using the same principles and methods that have gotten us into this mess. 

Driven by the need for economic growth. Driven by a mindset that treats nature as separate and us as superior. Driven by our obsession with the new. It causes deep dissonance for us, but we don't know how to change it.

We are still in the same building, but the beams are rotten. We need to either create a new building from the ground up or start a major renovation project. Inconvenience yes, but do we have a choice? I don't think we do. I want to meet these builders who tackle short term inconvenience. I want to be one of them. 

I hope 2023 will be a year of self examination where we question what makes us evaluate, validate and advocate for a trend like our life depends on it.

Because in a weird way it does.

That may sound self aggrandising but hear me out.

As professionals working in foresight, or designers focused on innovation and always future facing, we propel products, services and we affect culture directly. Both by design and by influence.

We influence decision makers, we influence taste and shifting preferences. We are at the epicentre. Everything is designed, and everything is planned for the future in the society we live in. 

But the way we are going about evaluating the importance of certain trends and innovations over others is contributing to our climate crisis. 

I'm just as embroiled as everyone else. But I have a fire inside of me because I feel, and I know, deep inside my bones that time is of the essence. 

FOR REAL, it's time for new foresight principle and metrics of validating trends. Not because they sell well. But because they drive the greater good. Full stop. 

The Climate crisis is not an opinion, it's a fact and a full stop into itself. 

When I posted about this idea of new metrics, people were curious. How does this work? Futuring people are always hungry for the next method or tool. 

As a fellow of the RSA, I subscribe to the Living Change approach. So the methods, tools and principles I am developing as part of the World Building program are designed to evolve. Just like the future, they are a question, prompts, drivers, lubrication tools, some measurements, but by no means a final destination. 

Why? Because if you're looking for a silver bullet. DON'T. That's a control and anxiety mechanism.

Embrace creativity, uncertainty, shared experimentation and actualisation as a strategy. THE strategy that will get us into a new era of foresight. And the planet we are lucky to inhabit. Unless you're Musk or Bezos and have plans to go somewhere else. 

Future foresight is going through a big transition. Years ago I warned to avoid focusing too much on trend analysis as that would be replaced by bots and AI and to really focus on the gaze through which we interpret the world, creativity, intuition, philosophical and critical thinking, far futures, the stuff that deeply makes us human.

Many of us will see a redefinition of our jobs in the next 5 years or less. But there is a magic and opportunity there to redefine the system and our purpose. And let's say, even if we didn't see this work transition, and stayed comfortable, we still have other fish to fry. By the 2030s, living conditions in many parts of the world will make current norms look like past luxuries. That is if we don't take action, like now. 

I want to know that we did our best, for future generations, to change the toxic infrastructure and systems we are embroiled in. It starts with 1 person. Iconic leaders from Mandela to RBG have shown us this.

So it starts with you. And the sum of us all. 

• Have the courage to go against the grain.

• Challenge the status quo including your clients, boss, team. 

• Use new approaches of forecasting and evaluating trends that retire the cult of the more more more, new new new.

• Find your support network.

• Test and iterate. 

• Make yourself and others uncomfortable because it already is anyways. 

• Have the conversations. Not only the affirming ones, but the uncomfortable ones with people who don't agree. 

• Wrestle through it. 

• Don't let peers and managers put you down as if you're insane in the nut brain. 

• We have the science behind us. 

'Hope is action' (quoting Greta Thunberg here). 

It's time. Have no fear. The future belongs to us visionnaries and world builders. 

By Geraldine Wharry