How to Future by Scott Smith and Madeline Ashby

HOW TO FUTURE builds on over a decade of experience translating the approaches of foresight—envisioning possible futures through a structured process—into a flexible, design- and innovation-friendly approach which can be used for forging better futures. This book doesn’t predict the future—it provides tools and practices that enable better understanding of possible futures and their impacts, and how to prototype ideas that engage others in these futures. It also describes how to tie these ideas to strategy, think about impact, and cultivate habits of everyday futuring.

Scott Smith is founder and managing partner of Changeist, a futures research and consulting partnership established in 2007 in the United States, now based in the Netherlands.

Having worked for more than 15 years in futures, Scott has consulted to a range of global institutions, including SWIFT, UNICEF, The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, The Royal Society, Nesta, and the Dubai Future Foundation. He has also led engagements with some of the largest and most respected global financial, retail, telecoms, technology and media brands, such as the BBC, The New York Times, AXA, VF, and Comcast. He has designed and delivered futures projects, talks and workshops in over a dozen countries and facilitated projects and workshops multiple languages. 

Scott helped create and lead the Strategic Foresight program for Dubai Future Academy, and lectures in the Innovation & Future Thinking program at IED Barcelona, a course he designed. He was also recently named to the Executive Board of the Center for Futures Studies at the University of Dubai.

Scott has written for international publications such as The Atlantic, Quartz, WIRED UK, and How We Get to Next. He has spoken at major events worldwide as diverse as The Next Web, Lift, Helsinki’s Flow Festival, South Australia’s Open State, Atlantic Council Energy & Economic Summit, Oxford Futures Forum, EPIC, SxSW, Sibos, FutureFest, FutureEverything, NEXT14, 15 and 19, and Frankfurt’s me Convention. He has also contributed work to pieces featured in several cultural exhibitions, including for the BIG BANG DATA exhibition at Barcelona’s CCCB in 2014, and the 2017 Vienna Biennale.

He has more than 25 years’ experience in forecasting, and has lived in three countries over that time. He currently makes his home in The Hague, where his spare time is currently devoted to developing several fiction and documentary projects.