Category: Develop

Founder and Executive Director
Teach the Future

Presentation | The Futures Playbook

Dr. Bishop is the Founder and Executive Director of Teach the Future, an organization whose mission is to encourage and support educators who want to include futures thinking in their classes and schools at all levels.  In 2013, Dr. Bishop retired as an Associate Professor of Strategic Foresight and Director of the graduate program in Foresight at the University of Houston. He has published two books on Strategic Foresight: Thinking about the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight (2007) and Teaching about the Future: The Basics of Foresight Education (2012), both with co-author Andy Hines. He delivers keynote addresses and conducts seminars on the future for business, government and not-for-profit organizations.  He also facilitates groups in developing scenarios, visions and strategic plans for the future.  Dr. Bishop’s clients include IBM, the NASA Johnson Space Center, Nestle USA, Tetra Pak, the Shell Pipeline Corporation, the Defense and Central Intelligence Agencies, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Texas Department of Transportation, the California Environmental Protection Agency, and the Center for Houston’s Future.  Dr. Bishop is a founding Board member of the Association of Professional Futurists and President of his own firm, Strategic Foresight and Development, which offers training and facilitation to businesses and government agencies. Dr. Bishop came to the University of Houston in 2005, having taught futures studies at the Clear Lake campus since 1982.  Dr. Bishop started teaching at Georgia Southern College in 1973 where he specialized in social problems and political sociology.  He received his doctoral degree in sociology from Michigan State University in 1974.  Dr. Bishop received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from St. Louis University where he also studied mathematics and physics.  He grew up in St. Louis, Missouri where he was a member of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) for seven years.  Dr. Bishop is married with two children and two grandchildren.

Futurist/Researcher
Center for Engaged Foresight

Shermon Cruz is a professional futurist, a climate reality leader, a certified business continuity professional and founder of the Center for Engaged Foresight. He is an active member of the World Futures Studies Federation, the Asia Pacific Futures Network and the Association of Professional Futurist. Shermon specializes on futures education and research, strategic foresight facilitation, planning, governance, city resilience, crisis management and policy management. He was formerly a director of the Philippine Center for Foresight Education and Innovation Research (PhilForesight) at Northwestern University in the Philippines. Shermon combines and integrates culture-based narrative and metaphoric thinking to question and explore alternate futures and to help people create a deeper, more authentic and action-oriented transformation.

Research Scientist
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd

Game introduction | FOSTER-ERM

Mikko Dufva is a research scientist at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd working in the field of foresight. He has done projects related to the futures of work, synthetic biology, platform economy, forestry, mining and use of renewable energy. He is a Doctor of Science in Technology and his dissertation was about knowledge creation in foresight from a systems perspective. He has broad methodological expertise ranging from systems thinking, decision analysis and optimization to interactive planning, scenario analysis and participatory methods. His current research interests include experiential foresight and post-normal times.

A key challenge in foresight is maintaining a balance between long-term visions and present-day relevance. Images of futures have to be demystified and interpreted in the present context.  This presentation reflects upon the challenges faced when creating an educational board game focused on business model development in the context of raw materials and circular economy. The presentation closes with a game session for between 8 and 16 people.

Chairman
Icelandic Center for Future Studies

Presentation |Futures for innovation in Iceland, the Fuzzy Front End

Karl Friðriksson is the chairman of the Icelandic Center for Future Studies and managing director of Human resources and marketing at the Innovation Center of Iceland. He has worked for decades in the fields of marketing, innovation, product development and future studies with emphases on scenario planning. He has extensive experience in strategic planning, future studies and clusters for companies and municipalities, as well as applied benchmarking. Karl is a certified project manager with a professional certification in the field of product development from The Product Development & Management Association in the USA and trained facilitator in field of cluster management from The European Foundation for Cluster Excellence He has authored host of articles, books and other publications in the field of management.

There is growing interest in probing the interaction of the disciplines of Innovation and the study of the future. There is evidence that there is added value in applying methods of Futures Studies at various phases of innovation, but not least of all in the pre-active phase of the development or at the Fuzzy Front End.

Co-President & Director of Strategy, Research and Innovation
KerrSmith Design

Casestudy | Creative State Michigan

Helen Kerr has led of one of North America’s pre-eminent, research driven, innovation and implementation companies for over 25 years. With degrees in both Environmental Studies and Industrial Design, her work integrates design, foresight and strategy. Multi-disciplinary approaches to highly complex problems and experimental exploration have been the undercurrent of her career. Helen is also a professor and researcher in the Master of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation program at OCAD University. She has been principle investigator for foresight projects in the government, healthcare, philanthropic, educational and financial sectors, leading participatory and co-creative processes involving enterprise wide engagement. Her most current project focused on exploring the futures of multi-modal transportation and land use in Southern Ontario for 2071. Helen consulted with the Higher Education Council in Pakistan to introduce integrated design into engineering programmes to achieve more impactful research translation and achieve development objectives. Helen has lectured and written extensively on research, strategy, design and innovation. In May 2012, she was the focus of a CBC documentary film entitled “Great Minds of Design” and was admitted to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts this year.

Presents findings and recommendations of our work have been positioned as a framework for the development of state and regional economic development priorities, strategies and investments to strengthen and grow jobs and businesses across Michigan’s creative and design industries for competitive advantage.