THE INDUSTRY STANDARD SOURCE FOR TREND AND SCENARIO ANALYSES
CREATED BY PROFESSIONAL FUTURISTS
A TEAM OF PROFESSIONAL FUTURISTS WORKING FOR YOU
WE WORK 24/7 ON UPDATING AND ADDING NEW CONTENT
At the heart of our solution is an exceptionally rich collection of in-depth analyses of future phenomena, all available to you as our platform subscriber. Our in-house team of 10+ futurists work relentlessly on adding new high-quality pieces of content and keeping existing ones up to date.
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Futures Platform offers the world’s largest repository of in-depth analyses of future phenomena. Each trend analysis is published in an easy-to-digest article format, including an introductory video, additional readings and AI-generated feed of related news & signals. You may also create your own phenomena as you like.
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Our rigorous analysis process draws from the methodology of future studies, and includes approaches like horizon scanning, driver mapping and scenario analysis. Each phenomenon is peer reviewed before publication.
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Every card on Futures Platform’s foresight database is assigned a type according to its anticipated future development path. We normally categorise future phenomena into four general types - Strengthening, Weakening, Wild Card and Weak Signal.
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We ensure a rich coverage of topics by applying a 32-domain taxonomy of the world, including domains such as energy, values and ethics, food, public governance, and climate change. Each of these domains are continuously being monitored for potential new phenomena to be analyzed further.
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For each of the 32 domains, our futurists have created a foresight radar, giving a handy way to start exploring and understanding related phenomena. You may create & edit your own radars with or without the existing templates.
MEET A FEW OF OUR FUTURISTS
Dr. Tuomo Kuosa, Director of Futures Research
Associate Professor, Strategic Foresight
Max Stucki, Futurist
Content Analysis Manager
Shiori Ota, Futurist
Senior Foresight Analyst
LEARN MORE ABOUT TREND ANALYSIS BY FUTURISTS
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Recently published trend analyses
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What's included in a trend analysis
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Foresight radars created by futurists
RECENTLY PUBLISHED TREND ANALYSES
Each analysis is run through a systematic research process conducted by professionally trained futurists. For each analysis, we identify, among others, key drivers, potential paths of events, key scenarios, and main implications. Each analysis is peer reviewed before adding onto the platform. Read more about the typical contents of a trend analysis further below.
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November 14th, 2024
Strengthening Trend. Young people across African nations are increasingly turning to demonstrations to advocate for better governance, economic reforms, and social justice. The internet and various social media platforms amplify the organisation and impact of these protests.
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November 12th, 2024
Strengthening Trend. Phishing attacks are becoming more sophisticated and common, with attackers using Phishing-as-a-Service (PhaaS) platforms and generative AI to create more convincing fake messages, calls and videos. Posing as trusted contacts, attackers lure targets into revealing data, installing malware, or spending money.
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November 15th, 2024
Strengthening Trend. Elite overproduction is a phenomenon that occurs when a society produces too many highly educated and wealthy individuals, with not enough positions to satisfy their ambitions.
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November 13th, 2024
Wild card. Eldercare in welfare states is at risk of collapsing. As the population ages and the number of elderly grows, public systems may struggle to support care demands, potentially pushing greater responsibility onto families.
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November 4th, 2024
Strengthening Trend. Overtourism is causing a growing anti-tourist sentiment among locals in some popular destinations. Online hypes create high tourist influxes in specific destinations, leading to overcrowding, rising living costs, environmental damage, and the disappearance of local culture and vital resources.
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October 29th, 2024
Strengthening Trend. National governments are increasingly recruiting civilians and criminal hacker groups for cyberattacks, a practice known as crowdsourcing cyberattacks. This trend allows individuals worldwide to participate in military conflicts outside their own home region, blurring both legal boundaries and the geographic confinement of the conflict.
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October 24th, 2024
Wild card. Public scepticism towards AI and automation could fuel a resurgence of neo-Luddism, an anti-technology movement. Neo-Luddites, echoing their 19th-century predecessors, challenge unchecked technological progress, aiming to protect human labour and societal values.
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October 24th, 2024
Strengthening Trend. Many companies have begun to act increasingly on their social and environmental responsibilities, which has been utilised further in integrating their social impact initiatives in their brand identities. The larger role transparency and sustainability play especially for younger generations may establish these practices as a new norm in the future.
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October 17th, 2024
Strengthening Trend. Digital espionage is reshaping global power dynamics, targeting both governments and corporations. While state-sponsored cyber espionage seeks strategic intelligence to influence nations, corporate espionage mandated by nations is becoming a tool in hybrid warfare.
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October 15th, 2024
Weak signal. A surge in natural disasters has diminished insurance options in disaster-prone areas. For the past two decades, the world has experienced around 400 natural disaster events per year. This has led to significant premium hikes, reduced coverage, or a complete withdrawal from high-risk markets.
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October 10th, 2024
Wild card. A cyber blitz, also known as “Cyber 9/11”, denotes an all-out cyberattack on a country’s critical digital and physical infrastructure, causing severe disruptions from the large-scale failure of electric devices.
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October 11th, 2024
Strengthening Trend. Large brands face the challenge of being perceived as inauthentic by consumers in relation to sustainability, while small brands risk losing authenticity if acquired by large companies. Recent boycotts highlight the challenges brands face to maintain authenticity in the near future.
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October 3rd, 2024
Wild card. The potential for a third world war is being closely observed as global tensions rise, particularly in view of currently raging conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East and the South China Sea.
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October 1st, 2024
Strengthening Trend. Mega-infrastructure will save livelihoods and economies from the adverse impacts of climate change and increase countries’ collaboration through shared infrastructure. However, it might also cause infrastructure disparity, resulting in climate refugees and migration.
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September 27th, 2024
Weak signal. Zero waste stores and refilling stations in grocery shops are emerging, aiming to reduce packaging waste by allowing shoppers to pack products using reusable containers.
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September 25th, 2024
Strengthening Trend. Traditional revenue models relying on print sales, advertising, and subscriptions increasingly fail local newspapers, facilitating a decline in critical journalism in local communities and increases in media consolidations and political partisanship.
TREND AND SCENARIO ANALYSES
The Futures Platform solution is built on a vast repository of comprehensive analyses and descriptions of future phenomena, created and curated by our in-house team of professional futurists. Here is a brief overview of what each of our 1000+ phenomenon cards contains, all available to you as a subscriber.
Type & Timing
What and when?
Each phenomenon card begins with a title that explains the core of the phenomenon in a few words. Along with the title, the theme tags help users to understand the scope of the trend at a glance. Each phenomenon is assigned into one of four types - Strengthening, Weakening, Wild Card and Weak Signal. Except for weak signals, all trends on our foresight database have an expert-assessed time frame within which the phenomenon is anticipated to either accelerate or decline.
Summary & background
What is it about?
Each trend description has a summary section which explains the key idea of the trend, the current situation, and the most likely future development paths and impacts, all in one paragraph. Following the summary, there's a video by an external party to supplement our analysis and to provide a relevant explanatory overview of the phenomenon in question.
Drivers & scenarios
How it could unfold and why?
A trend analysis card also contains an assessment of key drivers – the underlying key driving forces behind the trend as identified by our futurists. These drivers are also the building blocks of the scenario analysis presented in several of our phenomena. Each such card contains two in-depth scenario narratives that reflect our futurists’ assessment of the two likeliest directions the given trend may take in the future.
Impact assessment
What are the implications?
The scenario descriptions are followed up by a development path section, which lists three to four steps and timelines that could plausibly happen to move us closer to the given scenario. The purpose of this section is to give readers a list of signs and indicators to look out for when monitoring the future development of the trend.
Additional information
Where to learn more from?
Last but not least, each trend descripition also gives the reader a rich and relevant set of directions to go deeper and further in the analysis. Importantly, we provide a list of related other phenomena on our platform. We also provide a list of links to relevant additional indormation and readings, as well as an auto-crawled feed of relevant news and signals, powered by our strong semantic analysis algorithm.
FORESIGHT RADARS CREATED BY FUTURISTS
Once you have identified a number of relevant phenomena, it’s time to start organising and seeing the forest from the trees. For this, the platform offers a versatile foresight radar tool.
All your radars are fully customisable, and you may build one easily from scratch even if you are not that familiar with horizon scanning methodology. We also offer 40+ pre-filled radar templates that our futurists keep constantly up to date.
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Get a thorough understanding of what is likely to be ahead in your future operational environments. With the radar tool and pre-existing content you can start forming a comprehensive control room for the future.
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Once you’ve collected relevant future phenomena on a radar, you enter a collaborative phase of organising and structuring your future outlook by time horizon, likelihood and relevance.
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Scenario planning is about understanding key drivers and events, and organising these into plausible sequences, that is, scenarios. Our platform helps this process and provides pre-existing scenarios created by our futurists.
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Naturally, all of these phases may involve several people, even multiple teams. Such co-creative work has been made easy with the versatile collaboration and sharing features on the platform.
Example radar: Global impacts of the Ukraine war
SUPPORT AND SERVICES
WE ARE WITH YOU AT EVERY STAGE OF YOUR JOURNEY
Along with the platform and the unique content on it, we offer a rich array of guidance and services along your journey, and towards the next level in your organization’s foresight capability.
ONBOARDING AND SUPPORT
With each new subscription we assign a dedicated foresight specialist from our customer success team. We are dedicated to making sure all relevant people from your organisation get a kickstart in working with the platform. This is topped with an annual development plan tailor-made for each customer.
CONSULTING SERVICES
To help you dive even deeper into foresight analysis, we’ve developed an array of additional services, and offer the expertise of our futurists and consulting team for you. Our services range from custom trend packages and foresight workshops to large-scale foresight capability development projects.
WHAT OUR CUSTOMERS SAY
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Comprehensive.
“In todays connected and fast paced world, there is a lot to track as a Foresight team – and we do. Futures Platform’s combination of artificial and human intelligence helps us to overlook as little as possible.“
— Thomas Boermans,
Head of Foresight, E.On -
Very usable.
“Futures Platform's radars and phenomena are very usable as a tool for horizon scanning and can assist the work of the policy analyst. They can be particularly valuable for the two purposes of horizon scanning: long-term planning and policy analysis.”
— European Parliamentary Research Service,
Scientific Foresight Unit (STOA)
HAVE ANY QUESTIONS?
Submit your question or enquiry below, and our foresight specialist will get back to you with more specific details.