A practitioner's view of the future of futures studies

Abstract

This article looks at the future of futures studies (FS) over the next 20 years from a practitioner's viewpoint. It begins with favorable developments for FS in the organizational context. The main body covers how FS can take advantage of these more favorable developments. It then anticipates some key methodological and professional challenges and how FS might meet them. It concludes with a few comments about the prospects for a self-actualized FS. The single biggest challenge for FS over the next generation from my practitioner's point-of-view is to get beyond the cyclicality of interest in the future and get FS firmly integrated into the organizational context. Our experience to date convinces me that we have earned "the right to practice," and we must now focus the next few decades on sinking roots "inside". The good news is that there are several developments suggesting that this is not just a preferable but also a probable future. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.