The Value Of A Professional Futurist To Event Audiences & Planners
Once you know what a futurist is (or should be), let us explore why they are valuable within organizational strategy and development.
A professional futurist and futurist keynote speaker can inspire audiences to:
Engage fully and fearlessly with what is coming, whether it is good or bad for them and their organization or industry.
Build a more coherent and cohesive idea of how the future is emerging, which reduces the anxieties and confusion from ever-increasing uncertainty and complexity.
Avoid the common tendency to ignore, repress, distract themselves, or hide away from inconvenient truths and disruptions to their industry.
Stop catastrophizing difficult realities or locking on to a single preferred future as if it is "the truth."
Strategically explore the impacts of a plurality of possible futures on an organization or system: the positive, the unexpected, and the deeply challenging.
"Rehearse" different responses to what is coming—what may be breaking down and what may be breaking through—so they feel better able to respond in the future.
Understand the importance of deep drivers of change (and not trends) in their sector or industry—from "outside in" changes such as climate weirding to "inside out" changes such as the yearning for more belogning.
Take more ownership of their role—as an organization or set of execs—in shaping the future of their corporation or entire industry ecosystem.
Understand that their actions will impact all their stakeholders and society as a whole—and so inspire the use of technologies like AI in a responsible way.
Have more confidence in where to start to leverage the insights, ideas, and inspirations from futurism in strategic planning, innovation, human capital, R&D investments, and organizational design.
When To Book A Professional Futurist As A Keynote Speaker For An Event
There are different reasons to book a futurist for an event. Different futurists will fit some of the reasons well and others not so well.
Here are some of the reasons you might want to book a keynote speaker for your event, conference, or gathering (beyond the very basic level of trend spotting, which I don't include as genuine futurist work!).
I usually cover all of them to some degree In my keynotes on forging the Future of Work, the Future Of Leadership, the Future Of HR & Human Capital, the Future Of Tech, the Future Of Healthcare, the Future Of Education, and the Future Of Sustainability & Regenerative Business.
1) To excite people with some of the astonishingly powerful new technologies that are rapidly coming online—AI, blockchain, synthetic materials, quantum computing, etc—and get them thinking about what they could do with them in their business and teams, innovation strategies, and digital and business transformations.
2) To get an audience thinking seriously about the existential risks that all organizations (and humankind) face, from biodiversity collapse to microplastic pollution, from mirror microbes to antimicrobial resistance, from deaths of despair in employees to anxiety in kids—and to galvanize action on these in terms of sustainability strategies and organizational commitments.
3) To galvanize an audience to think about the changing needs, wants, and desires of their customers and other stakeholders (investors, shareholders, politicians, employees, talent, citizens) so they can start to think about how to adapt products, services, strategies, policies, and business models) to fit the future and not fail it.
4) To bring a diverse room of people together around a coherent understanding (albeit inaccurate, as all views of the future are) of how the future is unfolding—either generally or within specific industries or verticals—so they can meaningfully engage in dialogue, collaboration, and innovation at the event and beyond.
5) To challenge an audience to engage with uncertainties, unknowns, and unknowables—and with competing views of the future—so they get better at thinking critically, strategically, and adaptively about things that no one can predict simply by extrapolating data. Because data is always about the past not the future!
You may also want to read my other posts about professional futurism and futurist keynote speakers:
The Top 10 Reasons To Book A Futurist As A Keynote Speaker
If you'd like to find out more about how I might help your audience grapple with the future and wrestle breakthroughs from the jaws of chaos, send my team a message through the inquire now form.
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