Detect trends and emerging issues, co-create a 360-view of the future together with your team, and track the signs of change are 3 actions you can take right now to build a continuous foresight program.

Besides making the process easier and more comprehensive, Futures Platform's online solution can also lead to valuable strategic ideas that would not have emerged otherwise. In this article, we point out seven ways digital tools are helping teams of professionals who need to know what lies ahead.

According to the Nature, there are around 3 trillion trees throughout our planet. That's about half the number of trees we had 12,000 years ago. And we chop down 15 billion more trees every year. That's without a doubt a lot. But these tree-planting drones could help us get some of it back.

Nanobots are small "robots" ranging from 1 to 100 nanometers in size. Scientists are exploring different applications of nanobots in medicine and healthcare, to fight cancer as well as to unblock blood vessels.

Back in 2014, Ray Kurzweil, famous futurist and "Googler," made a stark prediction: by 2029, we would have human-like computers. Now, only a decade away, we look at whether this prediction still makes sense.

Almost everything we do involves some sort of decision. We don't usually break down problems into all its constituents. Fortunately, artificial intelligence can be our friend - let's look at different ways in which it will help us with decision making in the future.

Human life expectancy is on the rise. Whereas the average person born in 1960 could expect to live to 52.5 years of age, someone born today has an average life expectancy between 79 and 83 years of age. The question many of us ask is: how far can we push the boundaries of our human lifespan?

For many, Africa may seem like a continent with a sealed fate. But Africa is a vast continent, replete with nations growing and developing rapidly. Despite challenges that continue to assail it, Africa seems set to play an increasing role in world affairs. The question is, will African nations be able to follow the example of many Asian nations and do it sooner rather than later?

A team at the Tel Aviv University in Israel has achieved a major breakthrough by 3D-printing a heart with human tissue and vessels. In the future, this technology could be used to repair damaged hearts or to print entirely new ones, to be used for transplants.

Microplastics, very small plastic fragments, less than 5 millimetres in length, can be found in several places. And there’s a lot of it. A 2015 study showed that there are between 93 and 236 metric tons of microplastics in the world’s oceans. They have also been found in freshwater ecosystems, in the soil, and even in the air. Even more worrying, they have been found inside a lot of animal species.

We always seem to be playing a cat-and-mouse game for all of our scientific advances. A bacteria or virus appears, and we develop antibiotics or antiviral drugs to deal with it. One worry is that our overprescribing of antibiotics will continue to lead to an increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria, with possibly devastating consequences.

Programming was considered in the 60s and 70s a "geek activity," today it has become one of the high-paying jobs. But programmers are no less susceptible than everyone else when it comes to losing their jobs. In this article, we ask the question, "will programmers still have a job in the future?”