Futures and trends: foresight, forecasting or futurology

In brief, the market launch of a new product or service takes place months, and usually years, after its original conception and design. By that time, much will have changed: globalisation, politics, technology, state regulation, business and consumers will all take new forms. As the world appears to have become a more uncertain place, so early and expert research into future trends becomes more essential to the design process.

Intuition will always remain vital to the design process, but professional research can often lead to surprising, counter-intuitive results. Done well, futures and trends research can help draw up design briefs that get to the heart of problems and avoid ‘me-too’ solutions.

Market research is important to the design process, but tomorrow’s new, often IT-based products and services are very hard to subject to market research. It’s always a good idea to ask people whether they would like this or that new gadget or service, yet in many cases the answers people give are unlikely to be too revealing. People have very little experience of what they may encounter in the next few years.

The investigation of future customer and user needs, and of future user requirements in terms of usefulness and usability, demands special resources. On the other hand, research-led competence in future business models and technologies can independently lead managers to successful new products and services. In practice, research into the future requires balanced thinking about both the ‘demand’ and the ‘supply’ side.

Futures and trends research is an enterprise more difficult, more professional and less speculative than ‘futurology’. It aims to rise above impressionistic assumptions about the future – assumptions that are frequently derived from popular media. Futures and trends research refuses to confine itself to ‘consumer’ issues, or even to needs. Even the future of consumer users of design is strongly determined by their experience of work – as well as by their interaction with retailers, urban planners, state regulators and other forces. Moreover people are not just needy customers, consumers or users: they also have distinct and varied talents as producers. Their capability to change the world, and not just use it up, must be taken into account.

While trying to avoid stodgy compromises in its pragmatic conclusions, futures and trends research should also try to avoid making extreme or lurid verdicts on the future. It balances the elements of continuity with those of change. Because it recognises that the future lies in our hands, futures and trends research also avoids the exaggerated sense of foreboding that often surrounds issues such as terrorism, crime prevention or sustainability.

Anyone performing futures and trends research must adopt a systematic, numerate and critical approach to other practitioners’ futures and trends research. To do research successfully is constantly to acknowledge and question one’s assumptions, to test them, and to be prepared to revise them in the light of events. It is also to accept that in general forecasts have tended to tell us more about the contemporary obsessions, fears and prejudices of the forecaster than they have about the realities of what was going to happen.

Naturally, in the world of design, futures and trends research must have strong observational and visual components to it. However, to confine such research to the world of visible behaviour, artefacts or screen displays is to fail to meet the rigorous analytical standards that are required. Futures and trends research must be conducted using a variety of media: images need to be combined with statistics, charts, diagrams, quotations and incisive recommendations about what to do – and how and when to do it.

Different techniques

Futures and trends research relies on a number of different but established techniques. These include:

• Technology forecasting: technologists are sometimes reasonably – if unjustifiably – confident about how and when different technologies will emerge and how fast they will be adopted. A number of industry institutions have firm views, backed up with quantitative data, on emerging trends in IT, biotechnology, energy, defence and so on.
• Socio-economic forecasting: trends in ageing, fertility, family, housing and wealth are the subject of many Government and semi-official reports.
• Market forecasting: firms in the marketing world issue regular reports on the future of business and consumer markets, typically forecasting sales, market shares and channels to market.
• Delphi panels: named after the celebrated oracle of ancient Greece, these are panels of specialists who are polled for their opinions on when, how and to what extent future developments will take place.
• Scenario planning: thinking about the future by developing stories about several possible versions of it. Scenarios allow situations to be recognised quickly, and prepared responses to be deployed quickly too. They are best revisited regularly.
• Ethnography: literally, the study of human culture through its artefacts, customs and rituals. In design, a term applied – rather too broadly – to understanding tomorrow’s latent needs through the direct, often user-assisted capture of today’s lifestyles and contexts of use. Methods of capture include:
  • Asking people questions and listening to their replies while they use design
  • Still or video photography of behaviour with different products and different settings
  • Users making camera journals of their actions
  • Users making drawings of the ways they conceive of their relations to things and other people.

Why it matters to business

Some of the benefits of futures and trends research to business decisionmakers are listed below. The kinds of company managers – beyond chief executives, managing directors and marketing directors – most likely to find those benefits are in brackets;

• The opportunity to anticipate and, better still, initiate trends in the production, distribution, delivery, purchasing and/or use that surrounds particular designs (relevant to facilities, operations, procurement and IT managers)
• Better-informed briefs for design, as they relate to future market segmentation and differentiated market positioning for the planned product and/or service
• A consciousness of new media for communications and transactions (finance and human resources managers)
• A consciousness of emerging rivals (finance managers)
• More accurate business plans in relation to likely costs, rates of take-up, revenues, etc (finance managers; facilities, operations, procurement and IT managers).

A particular benefit of futures and trends research to manufacturers of business and consumer products is the opportunity to anticipate and initiate trends in:

• Installation and training
• Documentation
• Maintenance
• Repair
• After-sales service
• Recycling and disposal.

Like marketing people, R&D managers should be interested in each of these benefits. Operations, facilities, finance and HR managers can use futures and trends research to stay ahead in the design of the services that nowadays tend to accompany products once they are sold.

Futures and trends research can help providers of business and consumer services by creating the opportunity to anticipate and initiate trends in:

• Staff education
• Channel design
• Information and user experience design
• Recovery from service error.

Since services are, ultimately, a people business, HR managers are likely to benefit as much as marketing managers from the futures and trends research that should attend new service designs.

Why it matters to public services

The benefits of futures and trends research to the whole public sector include:

• The refinement and focusing of existing services in terms of future patterns of demand on the part of business investors, voters and their families, and tourists.
• Better-informed policy for the design of new services
• Better design for the employees delivering services, whether existing or new
• Better information and user experience design
• Better recovery from service error
• Better use of the public sector’s purchasing power
• A consciousness of new media for communications and transactions
• Better integration of the public sector with the private one
• More accurate budgets in relation to likely costs, rates of take-up, revenues, etc.

Trends and futures research benefits educators by allowing them to anticipate and initiate trends in:

• Online education
• Project documentation and presentation.

Two incidents in the history of the future

Project: Ford Mustang

Client: Ford

Designer: Lee Iacocca and a styling team led by Joe Oros

Year: 1964

Context: Ford launched the Edsel, then the world’s most market-researched car, in 1958. Production stopped, with a loss of $350m, in 1960, after only 76,000 models were sold. Action: The failure of the Edsel forced a drastic rethink. Lee Iacocca, appointed general manager in 1960, decided to segment the company’s future car buyers not by income group, as had been done previously, but by lifestyle. Iacocca recognised that the post-war baby boom was due to peak in the 1960s, and targeted sporty two-seaters at them. Results: The Mustang, launched in April 1964 with sales projected at 240,000 a year, became Ford’s best-selling post-war car. By March 1966 it had sold a million.

Project: Anticipating the rise in oil prices that occurred in 1973/74

Client: Shell

Designer: Pierre Wack and Shell Group Planning Division

Year: 1972

Context: Shell’s early scenarios, which merely charted the consequences of changes in the oil price, were of little use. Another challenge facing Shell analysts was getting the company’s leadership to believe that radical discontinuities in energy supply were probable. Action: Shell’s planners developed seven scenarios in 1972. ‘Energy crisis’ considered the effect of Western oil companies losing control of world oil supply. To convince Shell’s board that a crisis was possible, the planners also presented scenarios containing no discontinuities at all. Results: In 1973 the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) put an embargo on oil supplies to the West. Shell’s leadership, already persuaded that a future free of discontinuities was in fact highly unlikely, was the only major oil company board prepared for the resulting rise in energy prices.

Challenges

General challenges

In futures research it is vital to properly balance the elements of continuity and discontinuity that surround trends. Is the trend under discussion really new, or – as is often the case – is it just a more or less important new form of a previously underestimated but longstanding development? It is always a good idea to consider the history of a trend, and of ideas about a trend, before assessing the trend’s likely evolution in the future.

You must also accurately estimate the timescales that surround trends. Just exactly when will a trend turn upwards or downwards? How long will it last?

When looking at different views about the future, you need to distinguish between the conventional wisdom of the media, or of the establishment, and the reality of what is developing on the ground. The two are not the same. More broadly, it makes sense to distinguish the subjective perception of change on the part of design users from objective changes – or the lack of them. For example, we all feel that technology breakthroughs come more and more frequently nowadays. But whether this feeling is always fully justified by the facts is debatable.

A further challenge is to work out the direction and tempo of developments in different countries. We live in a more global world, and one where risks, in particular, appear to be global. In that case the relationship between trends that are universal, and those that apply only to particular countries or regions, needs very careful consideration. The hackneyed 1980s slogan ‘Think global, act local’ is no guide to the subtle analysis that’s required.

Challenges specific to particular sectors

Manufacturers of business and consumer products face the special challenge of having to incorporate accurate forecasts early on into the design of production and product. At the start of a project, it’s hard to know exactly what new product should be made for the future, how it should be made, and what similar-but-different products commercial rivals may have in mind. The challenge is always urgent because changes to forecasts and thus to design briefs have a more and more expensive effect on tooling, production and product costs the later they are made. The challenge is always difficult because the ‘front end’ of new product development is ‘fuzzy’. Different factions within a company will have different views of the constraints and opportunities surrounding future designs. This will apply specially to charged issues such as the growing legal obligations that now surround products – whether they relate to safety, reliability, cost of ownership or environmental impact.

Providers of business and consumer services, as well as much of the public sector, face the special challenge of getting the staff responsible for the delivery of the newly designed service to accept the forecasts of favourable customer reaction that inform the design. As Cassandra, the prophetess of Greek antiquity, found out, it is one thing to be right in one’s predictions; it is quite another to be believed. In this sense, forecasting in the realm of services has to be able, within its general purview, to predict the future of human resources. The success of a new service design will depend not just on the precision of the forecasts that back it, but also on the enthusiasm with which staff greet it – and not just at the time of market launch, but every subsequent day. Among consumers, the popular ‘buy-in’ to design has grown in recent years. But for the same effect to emerge among employees, trends research must have an eye to labour markets, the legitimacy enjoyed (or not enjoyed) by management, and the dynamics of power and authority in tomorrow’s workplace.

Future trends

Over the coming years, trends and futures research itself is likely to grow, as perceptions of uncertainty prompt more interest in the future. Already, in the wake of terrorist attacks, there is a revival of scenario planning among government and top management.

Altogether, the feeling will grow that if you aren’t very professional in forecasting, you’ll fall victim to a rival that is just that – or simply to events. And the feeling will be right.

Many forecasters, however, feel too humble to outwit what they regard as ‘fickle fate’. Many repeat that great scientists and technologists never foresaw the long-term uses to which their ideas were eventually put. This climate of pessimism, in which the worst-case-scenario of an unknowable Armageddon dominates, suggests that the average futurologist’s ability to sell dystopian forecasts may be matched only by the public’s appetite for these.

Only by making informed predictions can we learn where our predictions turn out to be wrong. And only through these mistakes can we learn how to make better predictions.

Glossary

Cohorts – Analysis of present/future customers in terms of how particular age groups were formed by their experiences of earlier eras.

Confidence, knowledge, interest – Customers will bring different amounts of these three things to different future markets (compare aspirin with digital TVs, or buying a holiday with buying a mortgage).

Continuity and discontinuity – If there is one continuity carried through, like a red thread, through the past decade of forecasting and forecasters, it is that we can all expect little else but radical discontinuities. How much this view is really justified and how much based on exaggerated perceptions of change is a very moot point.

Cool-hunters – Employed by major corporations, people whose job it is to catch youth trends (particularly trends in black culture), and bring those trends back for brands to adapt.

Customer buying systems – The widely differing ‘moments of truth’ which surround hearing about or seeing the product/service for the first time, the decision to purchase, the customer’s process of product/service research and comparison, the purchase transaction, and installation and service.

Delphi panels – Groups of experts who are asked questions, individually and iteratively, about the future, and about the levels of confidence that they attach to their forecasts.

Demographics and geodemographics – Analysis of present/future customers by gender, age, lifestage, ethnicity, spending and location.

Early adopters and early adapters – Early adopters, the few who first buy a new product/service, are not necessarily the same people as the many who adapt it to the precise pattern of use it finally acquires.

Disruptive technologies – phrase pioneered by Harvard professor and ceramics entrepreneur Clayton Christensen (The innovator’s dilemma, 1997). In Christensen’s framework, it refers quite specifically to technologies that lead to products which are cheap, simple, convenient, small and portable, even if they are low in performance, and initially seem appealing only to niche markets. Such products disrupt markets, even if they are by no means necessarily based on breakthrough technologies. By contrast to Christensen, technology boosters use the term ‘disruptive’ colloquially. For them, disruptive technology is non-incremental and thus particularly worthy.

First movers – Corporations that decide they would rather ‘bet the company’ on their forecasts, new ideas, technologies, business models and designs. By contrast, ‘fast follower’ companies are merely imitators.

Futurology – Popular and rather derisive term used to refer to forecasting.

Hierarchies of needs – Both present and future needs can be conscious and latent, as well as met and unmet. It’s useful to estimate how hierarchies of needs will change in the future. It’s also useful actually to have read, in a critical spirit, the American psychologist Abraham H Maslow (1908-1970) and his original wartime article on ‘basic’ and ‘higher’ needs (‘A Theory of Human Motivation’, Psychological Review 50, 1943; see http://emotionalliteracyeducation.com/abraham-maslow-theory-human-motivation.shtml). There it is argued not that human beings are designers and makers, but rather that ‘Man is a perpetually wanting animal’.

Impact of use – People will be shaped, in part, by the artefacts they buy and use. Everyone approaches new products/services with mental maps based on their previous experiences.

Lifestyle – 1980s term to describe, but rarely explain, the conduct of consumer behaviour. Easily neglects the fact that developments in the domain of work are often an important cause of changes in the domain of consumption. Has now given way, in the pantheon of marketing, to the assessment of consumers in terms of values (see below).

Market forecasting – Covers the future of business and consumer markets by volume, value, channel, segment, and by competitor and regulator behaviour.

Modes of behaviour – Tomorrow’s purchase and use of a new product or service will depend on the surrounding physical environment, social situation, and, on the part of the purchaser/user, on the ‘mental set’.

Mood boards – Analysis of visual trends, made by designers. Too often, people do this kind of trends research simply by cutting up design and style magazines. Indeed, too many of the world’s designers cut up the same trendy magazines.

Producer talents – The skills, experiences, physical prowess and cultural development which people are able to take advantage of when using a design to its maximum potential.

Quantifying the value of new product/service concepts – Reviewing the likely frequency and duration of use of a new product/service, the gravity of the need it fulfills, and the value for money it offers compared with future competitor offerings.

Scenario planning – Thinking about the future by developing several possible versions of it. It’s important to revisit scenarios regularly to check them. They allow situations to be recognised early on, and so enable prepared responses to be deployed quickly.

Socio-economic forecasting – Looks at how global and national economic and political forces inspire different kinds of responses among different social groups.

Statistics – an indispensable tool wielded by all serious forecasters. Especially in the analysis of risk, one of the problems with statistics today is that people tend to focus on absolute numbers, or increases, without situating them as relative proportions. The figure £1 billion, for example, sounds like a lot of money – but it amounts to less than 0.1 per cent of UK GDP.

Technology forecasting and technological determinism – Technology is part of the future, but only a part. Its likely evolution demands research, but should not be taken as the sole or even the dominant force shaping the future.

Time use – The changing composition of people’s work, transport, leisure and family life, in hours and minutes a day, at nights or over weekends.

Trends – Are more than identifiable patterns of events. Rather, trends consistently inform those patterns because they are deeply rooted in society – even if they are not always registered at the time.

Values – catch-all and now officially repeated mantra, first pioneered by Max Weber (1864–1920). Today the term is often used to distract attention from the realities of government and corporate conduct or consumer incomes, debt and household structure. Values are reputed to change much less slowly than other consumer trends. Yet a value (or supposedly ‘basic’ Maslowian need) such as physical security, which many analysts felt had been transcended in prosperous post-war America, has now made a conspicuous return.

Zeitgeist – Literally, the spirit of the times. A partial mosaic of the future zeitgeist can be built from gathering data on forthcoming anniversaries, elections, sports fixtures, films, television specials etc. Perhaps the dominating aspect of the Zeitgeist, today and tomorrow, is fear of risk and the inflated desire for security that follows from that.

What do I do next: Trends

FAQs

General questions

1 Surely you don’t think you can really predict the future?

Of course one cannot predict accurately every aspect of the future. But one can reduce the role of intuition about it – by eliminating unlikely scenarios, and by knowing just when to extrapolate a trend and when to anticipate its reversal.

2 Surely the future is just history repeating itself?

The future of society is a social affair. It is not a pendulum, a wheel, a roller-coaster, an undulating wave or a simple business cycle. It is not subject to the random mutation and natural selection that obtain in the world of biology. Because it is an accumulated synthesis of past trends, the future always contains elements of both continuity and discontinuity.

3 Surely human nature never changes?

To be 50 years old in 2014 will be different from being 50 today, and indeed to being 50 a hundred years ago. The ageing and increased longevity of the population is just one example of how what it is to be human is changing. Children are physically and mentally stronger today than they were in the past. The age of puberty is falling, but the zone of youthful and sometimes infantile consumption and behaviour now extends way beyond the teenage years.

4 Surely design must be intuitive or it is nothing?

Design is not alone in dealing with aesthetics: even aesthetic trends can be forecast to some extent, as fashion industry forecasters insist. But the intuition upon which art and even design rely is no match for the structured methods that exist in trends and futures research.

5 Surely forecasters just use management-speak and distorted statistics to put their biased point of view?

That depends on the forecaster. Many sources are hard to understand, expensive and mendacious. Others fail to provide statistics, or their sources. In the selection of authorities on the future, one must be discriminating.

Manufacturers

6 How do you integrate technology forecasts for my industry with social and economic ones?

Not everyone can perform this integration, but it can be done. It’s best to situate technology and even economics in the social context of experiences and perceptions. Of course future economic growth, market segments, competitor behaviour and technological advance will have an impact on product specification and price. However, in the emotionally charged context that we face for some years to come, tomorrow’s feelings, sensations and sensibilities will shape the world of artefacts profoundly.

Everyone

7 Surely, by their nature, the unintended consequences of new designs are hard to forecast?

That’s true, but consequences can be foreseen a lot of the time. No pilot test can truly approximate to the full-scale implementation of design, but studying what users do with prototypes yields revealing results. Design without experimentation cannot be innovative.

8 Because of their influence, forecasters are in a position not just to predict trends, but also to create them. Surely they are not genuine populists, but rather elitists, manipulating consumers?

Trends and futures research has become quite a competitive market, and certainly an international one. No single forecaster or forecasting consultancy can really claim that its influence over major corporations has been decisive in terms of moulding consumer behaviour. By contrast, advisers to governments on trends and futures are undeniably influential.

Top tips

1. Instead of compartmentalising them off from each other, get forecasters, marketing people, distributors, customers, users and designers to think about the interaction between society, design, technology, competitors, distributors, markets and regulators.
2. Collect but suspect forecasts based on technological determinism. Handle them sceptically and constructively.
3. Get out there with customers and users – and those who aren’t. Get out in the physical context of their purchase or use of design. Interview them, take pictures or videos of what they are doing with design, listen to what they say. At the same time, while inspired by users, refuse to become a slave to the claims they make. What they say may turn out to be little guide to what is really going on.
4. Once you think you’ve identified a trend, abstract out its extraneous aspects so as to concentrate on its essential features. To do this, tunnel down from the way the trend appears in everyday life in the present to its underlying dynamics. How the trend appears will often differ from the fundamental drivers behind it.
5. Compare both historical and international examples and counter-examples of the trend. Ask yourself: why the similarities and differences? How have counter-trends modified trends in particular instances?
6. Use only those parts of history that are relevant to the forecasting problem at hand. Do, however, check the history of the literature on the trend. How has the literature evolved over time, and what circumstances and events coloured it in any particular era? Where is it headed now, and what, if anything, can be learnt from it?
7. Once you are at the heart of the trend, tunnel up to the way it appears in real life by developing a series of useful linking concepts. These concepts should allow you to reconstruct the present and anticipate the future of the trend.
8. Think carefully about how fast your trend will pan out, and whether it is likely to interact with other trends you have isolated.
9. Convert your forecasts into design opportunities and constraints. Then convert these into recommendations, as part of a design brief.
10. Test your ideas in writing, as prototypes, among your peers, with Delphi panels and in action among customers, users and those who aren’t. Rework your ideas accordingly.

Reading list

Big Potatoes: the London manifesto for Innovation, 2010, on www.BigPotatoes.org

James Woudhuysen and Joe Kaplinsky, Energise! A future for energy innovation, Beautiful Books, 2009

Worldwatch Institute, State of the world 2015: confronting hidden threats to sustainability, http://www.worldwatch.org/state-of-the-world-2015

Tyler Cowen, the great stagnation: how America ate all the low-hanging fruit of modern history, got sick, and will (eventually) feel better ISBN: 978-0525952718 Dutton Books 2011

Bjørn Lomborg, Smart solutions to climate change: comparing costs and benefits ISBN: 978-0521138567 Cambridge University Press 2010

Mark Penn with E Kinney Zalesne, Microtrends: the small forces behind tomorrow’s big changes ISBN: 978-0446580960 Twelve 2007

Frank Furedi, Wasted: why education isn’t educating ISBN: 978-1847064165 Continuum International Publishing Group 2009

Peter Schwartz, Inevitable surprises: thinking ahead in a time of turbulence ISBN: 0743239105 Free Press 2003

John Brockman (ed), The next fifty years: science in the first half of the twenty-first century ISBN: 07538171701 Phoenix 2002

Francis Fukayama, Our posthuman future: consequences of the biotechnology revolution ISBN: 1861974957 Profile Books 2002

Michio Kaku, Physics of the future: the inventions that will transform our lives ISBN: 0385530803 Doubleday 2011

John Naughton, A brief history of the future ISBN: 075381093X 1585671843 Overlook Press 2001

Further information

Companies (This list is intended only to provide examples of companies operating in this sector, and should not be taken as a recommendation of their services.)

The Future Foundation, one of the UK’s leading research-based, commercial think-tanks, with a focus on consumer markets.

Future Foundation (HQ), 81 Alie Street, Whitechapel, London E1 8NH

tel: +44 (0)20 3008 4889

email: info@futurefoundation.net

website: www.futurefoundation.net

The Futures Company, one of the leading strategic marketing consultancies. Part of the WPP Group.

6 More London Place
, Tooley Street, 
London SE1 2QY

tel: +44 (0)20 7955 1800

email: unlockingfutures@
thefuturescompany.com

website: www.thefuturescompany.com

Seymour Powell, product designers who conduct professional, mostly design-related studies into the future.

The Factory, 265 Merton Road, London SW18 5JS

tel: +44 (0)20 7381 6433

email: design@seymourpowell.com

website: www.seymourpowell.com

The Local Futures Group, a research and strategy consultancy that provides a geographical perspective on urban regeneration

43 Eagle Street, London WC1R 4AT

tel: +44 (0)20 7440 7360

email: info@localfutures.com

website: www.localfutures.com

Global Business Network, the grand-daddy of scenario planning, international, venerable and very up to date. Part of Michael Porter’s Monitor Group.

Michelin House
, 81 Fulham Road, 
London SW3 6RD

tel: +44 (0)207 838 6500

email: info@gbn.com

Academic/public service organisations

Science Policy Research Unit, arguably Britain’s premier academic resource on the future of science, technology and innovation.

University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 9RF

tel: +44 (0)1273 686758

website: www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/

Kent Business School and Richard Scase’s Britain in 2010: the changing business landscape (Capstone, 2000) was widely acclaimed. Scase is Emeritus Professor of Sociology & Organisational Behaviour at Canterbury Business School.

The Universityof Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7PE

tel: +44 (0)1227 827726

websites: www.kent.ac.uk/kbs and http://www.richardscase.com/

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the prestigious economists report on countries and industries, and run research programmes on ageing, energy and future studies.

2 Rue André Pascal, F-75775 Paris Cedex 16 France

tel: + 33 1 45 24 82 00

email: oecddirect@oecd.org

website: www.oecd.org

Economist Intelligence Unit, the research reports arm of the Economist empire, covers countries, and offers free papers on www.ebusinessforum.com.

15 Regent Street, London SW1Y 4LR

tel: +44 (0)20 7830 1007

email: london@eiu.com

website: www.eiu.com

Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, the Institute has more than 15 researchers dedicated to helping private and public organisations make better decisions. Its website is translated into English.

Nørre Farimagsgade 65, DK1364, Copenhagen, Denmark

tel: 00 45 33 11 71 76

email: cifs@cifs.dk

website: www.cifs.dk/en/

Futuribles, headquartered in Paris, has for years explored what it calls ‘possible futures’. Its website is translated into English, and abstracts of papers published in the journal Futuribles are free.

47, Rue de Babylone, 75007, Paris, France

tel: 00 33 15 36 33 770

website: www.futuribles.com

Gartner, headquartered in Connecticut, Gartner has 700 analysts worldwide and is one of the best-known forecasters of IT. It pioneered the concept of ‘hype cycles’ in the field.

Tamesis, The Glanty, Egham, Surrey TW20 9AW

tel: +44 (0)1784 431611

email: inquiry@gartner.com

website: www.gartner.com

IDC, same-size rivals of Gartner in IT. Worldwide HQ is in Framingham, Massachusetts.

British Standards House, 389 Chiswick High Road, London W4 4AE

tel: +44 (0)20 8987 7100

website: www.idc.com

Forrester Research, with an international network centred on Cambridge, Massachusetts, Forrester is a smaller but still reputable rival of Gartner, and IDC.

265 Strand, 
London WC2R 1BH

tel: +44 (0)20 7631 0202

website: www.forrester.com

Publishers

Office of National Statistics – publishers of Social Trends and much besides.

Visitor address: The Library, 1 Drummond Gate, London SW1V 2QQ

tel: 0845 601 3034 / 0203 684 5069 / +44 (0) 1633 817521 (Overseas)

email: info@ons.gsi.gov.uk

website: www.ons.gov.uk

Harvard Business Review – the most trend-setting US monthly publication on management issues.

Harvard Business School Publishing, Corporate Customer Service Center, 60 Harvard Way, Boston MA 02163 USA

tel: 800 988 0886 (US) 001 617 783 7500 (International)

email: custserv@hbsp.harvard.edu

website: www.hbr.org

John Wiley & Sons Ltd – publishers of the Journal of Consumer Behaviour, Interactive Marketing, etc.

Journals Administration Department, 1 Oldlands Way, Bognor Regis, West Sussex PO19 1UD

tel: +44 (0)1243 779777

website: http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-CB.html

Strategy+business

Management consultants Booz Allen Hamilton publish this quarterly rival to the Harvard Business Review.

101 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10178 USA

tel: +1 212 551 6222

email: editors@strategy-business.com

website: www.strategy-business.com

Websites

World Future Society – founded in 1966 in Washington, this group of sociologists, scientists, corporate planners, educators, students and retirees boasts 25,000 members in more than 80 countries, as well as local chapters in more than 100 cities.

Ave, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, USA

tel: 001-301-656-8274

email: info@wfs.org

website: www.wfs.org

McKinsey Quarterly – as early as the 1960s, McKinsey consulted for the majority of Britain’s top 100 industrial companies. Its influence remains undimmed.

website: www.mckinseyquarterly.com

Worldwatch Institute – America’s ‘deep Green’ think-tank is a top Washington lobbying group and has a research section on energy, economy, nature and people.

1400 16th Street NW, Suite 430, Washington, DC 20036, U.S.A.

tel: 001 202 452 1999

email: worldwatch@worldwatch.org

website: www.worldwatch.org

The Institute for Sustainable Futures – founded in 1996 at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, the Institute evangelises for sustainable design.

National Innovation Centre, Australian Technology Park, Eveleigh NSW, Australia

Tel: + 61 2 9514 4950

website: www.isf.uts.edu.au

Green Futures – started in 1996 by Jonathan Porritt and published by the think-tank charity Forum for the Future, this is the home page of a UK bi-monthly magazine on environmental solutions and futures.

Overseas House, 19-23 Ironmonger Row, London EC1V 3QN

tel: 020 7324 3660

email: post@greenfutures.org.uk

website: www.greenfutures.org.uk