Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers

This week I'm talking with Stacey A. Robinson, an artist and Afro-surrealist whose work lives at the intersection of hip hop, comics, and what he calls the Afro now. We go back to his earliest memory, drawing every morning at a window as a seven year old, and to the exact record he heard that same year that changed how he thought about art and sound before the genre it belonged to even had a name.

From there we trace his path through Milestone Media, the Black-owned comic company that reshaped what he thought was possible as a young Black artist, into the hidden systemic structure underneath hip hop itself, and land on his argument that Wakanda was never really a picture of the future at all.

00:00 Stacey's earliest memory, drawing by the window 

06:15 Hearing Rapper's Delight at seven years old 

10:27 What Milestone Media meant for a young Black artist

21:18 Not Seeing Black People In Futures

29:24 The hidden systemic structure underneath hip hop 

29:10 Afrofuturism versus Afro-surrealism, and the Afro now 

35:20 Hip Hop Elements As A System

47:13 Digging For Original Samples

54:14 Creating Art Inside Club Energy

57:52 Wakanda As The Afro Now

1:06:35 When Black Creation Gets Erased

1:13:33 Building Afro Futures Through Daily Practice

1:25:16 Joy Beyond Revolt And Rage

1:32:52 Designing Freedom And Leaving A Template

1:35:34 Where To Find Stacy And Closing

The companion Future Proof newsletter issue built on this conversation, The Future Is a Remix, is out this week: 

SUBSTACK: https://befutureproof.substack.com/

LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/future-proof-7303526412311842816/

About Stacey A. Robinson: Stacey is an artist and Afro-surrealist based in Champaign, Illinois, whose work moves across comics, hip hop, and collage. He came up through Milestone Media's orbit and has been shaped by the Black Speculative Arts Movement. Find his work on Instagram and Facebook, and at his own website. [Steve: website URL and preferred handle weren't stated in the transcript, please confirm before this goes live]

PRESENTED BY THINK FORWARD NETWORK https://tfn.one/

RESOURCES MENTIONED SuperShifts, my book on the forces reshaping business and society: https://www.supershiftsbook.com/ Future Proof, my weekly newsletter on foresight and leadership: https://befutureproof.substack.com/ My website: https://www.stevenfisher.io/ My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenfisher/

SUPPORTED BY THE HUMAN FRONTIER INSTITUTE Human Frontier Institute: https://humanfrontier.org/

SPONSOR THIS EPISODE Interested in sponsoring Think Forward or partnering as an affiliate? Email [email protected] to reach a growing audience of leaders and futurists thinking seriously about what's next.

CONNECT Think Forward Show: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/106181361/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thinkfwdshow/ X/Twitter: https://x.com/ThinkFwdShow

If you found something useful, subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

We're Obsessed With You
Join Emily & Kyle as they dive into their favorite personalities's current hyper-fixations

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

ORDER SUPERSHIFTS! bit.ly/supershifts

🎧 Listen Now On: 

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-forward-conversations-with-futurists-innovators-and-big-thinkers/id1736144515

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0IOn8PZCMMC04uixlATqoO

Web: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/

Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.

Tanja Schindler was a competitive Latin dancer at twelve and the family member who set up every television, a split between creative and technical that would define her career. She trained as an electrical engineer, worked the shift from traditional lighting to LED at Osram, and got asked the question every futurist eventually hears, what comes next, before she had ever heard the word foresight. She taught herself scenario planning on spreadsheets, then left Germany to study under Peter Hayward and Joseph Voros at Swinburne's Foresight Institute in Australia, built on Richard Slaughter's original work.

Her core reframe changed how I think about why so much foresight training fails to change behavior. You can teach someone the steps, the trend scans, the scenario decks, and they will still freeze at the edge of the dance floor because nobody taught them to feel the music, to hold uncertainty in the body rather than a spreadsheet. She describes an EU Commission workshop where fifty participants rebuilt five destroyed planets and pitched back a single message to ground control: please do not come; we do not want you to destroy what we built here. She walks through backcasting with her version of the futures triangle, stress-testing a preferred future against collapse and transformation scenarios, and names two weak signals worth watching, teenagers eating pudding with a fork under a bridge because they are starving for social space, and the rise of micro retirement, where young workers refuse to wait until sixty-five to actually live.

If you have ever handed your team a framework, a beautifully built process, a set of steps, and then watched them stand at the edge of the floor unable to move, this hour is for you.

=============================

This Week's Companion Issue

Future Proof Issue 55: The Steps Are Not the Dance. This issue takes Tanja's distinction into the personal register: what it feels like to have every framework memorized and still freeze when the music changes.

Read on Substack: https://befutureproof.substack.com/p/the-steps-are-not-the-dance
Read on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/future-proof-7303526412311842816/

=============================

Chapters

0:00 Creativity Beyond AI
 0:23 Welcome And Tanja's Origin Story
 2:02 Dance Meets Engineering And Disruption
 6:40 Discovering Strategic Foresight In Practice
 10:50 Learning To Dance With Uncertainty
 14:35 Stories That Reframe The Future
 20:55 Building Hope And Shared Agency
 26:20 Mindset Training And Leadership Lessons
 31:40 Running Futures Workshops That Actually Work
 37:10 Rebuilding Planets For Citizen Participation
 43:30 Backcasting And Stress Testing Decisions
 49:50 Weak Signals And New Life Patterns
 52:10 Advice, Legacy, And Where To Find Her

=============================

About Tanja Schindler

Tanja Schindler is the Foresight Lead for Kaufland, bringing an interdisciplinary, philosophy-not-department approach to foresight. She started as an electrical engineer at Siemens and Osram before training under Peter Hayward and Joseph Voros at Swinburne's Foresight Institute in Australia, and later served as Vice Chair of the Association of Professional Futurists. A former competitive dancer, she teaches leaders to feel the rhythm of uncertainty instead of memorizing its steps.

Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanjaschindler/
Kaufland: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kaufland-deutschland/home/

=============================

Go Deeper

📬 Future Proof, my newsletter on foresight and leadership: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/future-proof-7303526412311842816 | Substack: https://befutureproof.substack.com/
🌐 Future Proof Community: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/10084416
📖 SuperShifts: https://www.supershiftsbook.com/
👤 https://www.stevenfisher.io/ | https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenfisher/

=============================

Think Forward Everywhere

🎧 All episodes: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/
🍎 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-forward-conversations-with-futurists-innovators-and-big-thinkers/id1736144515
🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0IOn8PZCMMC04uixlATqoO
▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLionR73qBCQmgCvEI9iFSS4gXPvQl5m3n
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/think-forward-show

=============================

Presented By

PRESENTED BY THINK FORWARD NETWORK https://tfn.one/

SUPPORTED BY THE HUMAN FRONTIER INSTITUTE https://humanfrontier.org/

=============================

Sponsor This Episode

Interested in sponsoring Think Forward or partnering as an affiliate? Email [email protected].

Where in your work right now do you know every step but still cannot feel the music? Tell me in the comments.

If this helped, subscribe, share it, and leave a review, it helps more people find the show.

#ThinkForward #StrategicForesight #Backcasting

We're Obsessed With You
Join Emily & Kyle as they dive into their favorite personalities's current hyper-fixations

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

ORDER SUPERSHIFTS! bit.ly/supershifts

🎧 Listen Now On: 

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-forward-conversations-with-futurists-innovators-and-big-thinkers/id1736144515

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0IOn8PZCMMC04uixlATqoO

Web: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/

Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.

Hauson Le cried in his first foresight session. A Disney executive's mentorship pulled him out of data analytics, and three six-hour sessions later he had found the thing he now says he would let go of entirely if it meant making a bigger impact. Today he builds foresight cultures inside American local government through the Alliance for Innovation, where the fires never stop and the pace of change keeps outrunning the pace of decision.

His core insight reframed how I think about resistance to change, mine included. Show leaders the facts and the methods, and they will agree it all matters. Then they will not move. In his words, not touching the heart leaves people saying yes, I see the path you laid out for me, and I just have too much at stake right now. So he runs a simulation that compresses years of disruption into fifteen minutes, until the room says this is exactly what it is like to work in local government now. We get into the culture that always wants to be the first to be second, why growth is the blind spot cities carry toward 2040, the AI risks city managers actually name, and what it would take for residents to stop describing their city as a vending machine and start describing it as home.

If you have ever laid out a clear path for a room that agreed with every word and then did nothing, this hour is for you.

=============================

This Week's Companion Issue

The companion Future Proof issue built on this conversation, Anxiety is Not Foresight, lands Thursday. It is Part 3 of a four-part series called Reading Yourself Like a System, and it takes Hauson's argument into the personal register: why worry creates such a convincing impression of preparation, and how to tell them apart.

Read on Substack: https://befutureproof.substack.com/ 

Read on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/future-proof-7303526412311842816

=============================

Chapters

0:00 Why Facts Alone Fail Leaders 

0:24 Meet A Civic Futurist 

4:40 Finding Agency Through Foresight 

8:55 Why Local Government Is The Front Line 

14:35 Anticipatory Government Versus Firefighting 

20:55 The Growth Mindset Blind Spot 

23:55 AI Risks Data Trust Thinking 

31:10 Experiential Futures And Emotional Barriers 

34:55 What A Future Ready City Feels Like 

37:35 How To Get Involved

=============================

About Hauson Le

Hauson Le is a civic futurist with the Alliance for Innovation, where he delivers strategic foresight training, research, and capacity building across American local governments. Trained in the University of Houston's foresight program after an executive mentorship that pulled him out of data analytics, he is an award winner from the Association of Professional Futurists for his experiential futures work, and one of the few people building genuine futures capacity inside city government rather than writing about it from the outside.

Connect with Hauson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hausonle/ 

Alliance for Innovation: https://www.transformgov.org/

=============================

Go Deeper

📬 Future Proof, my weekly newsletter on foresight and leadership, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/future-proof-7303526412311842816 and in full on Substack: https://befutureproof.substack.com/ 

🌐 Join the Future Proof Community for conversations about the future: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/10084416 

📖 SuperShifts, my book on the forces reshaping business and society: https://www.supershiftsbook.com/ 

👤 My website: https://www.stevenfisher.io/ 

My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenfisher/

=============================

Think Forward Everywhere

🎧 All episodes: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/ 

🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-forward-conversations-with-futurists-innovators-and-big-thinkers/id1736144515 

🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0IOn8PZCMMC04uixlATqoO 

▶️ YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLionR73qBCQmgCvEI9iFSS4gXPvQl5m3n 

💼 Follow the show on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/think-forward-show 

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thinkfwdshow 

X: https://x.com/ThinkFwdShow

=============================

Presented By

PRESENTED BY THINK FORWARD NETWORK https://tfn.one/

SUPPORTED BY THE HUMAN FRONTIER INSTITUTE https://humanfrontier.org/

=============================

Sponsor This Episode

Interested in sponsoring Think Forward or partnering as an affiliate? Email [email protected] to reach a growing audience of leaders and futurists thinking seriously about what's next.

If residents described your city, or your organization, as a vending machine, what would it take for them to describe it as home instead? Tell me in the comments.

If you found something useful, subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

#ThinkForward #LocalGovernment #StrategicForesight

We're Obsessed With You
Join Emily & Kyle as they dive into their favorite personalities's current hyper-fixations

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Human Frontier Institute


Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

ORDER SUPERSHIFTS! bit.ly/supershifts

🎧 Listen Now On: 

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-forward-conversations-with-futurists-innovators-and-big-thinkers/id1736144515

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0IOn8PZCMMC04uixlATqoO

Web: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/

Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.

Paul Baier has spent the last few years in the rooms where large companies decide what to actually do about AI, and he has trained something like 15,000 people within those organizations. So when he says the technology is almost never the bottleneck, it lands differently than it would from someone selling a platform. He grew up in Ohio watching the Midwest get hollowed out by forces everyone could see coming, and nobody managed to get ahead of, and he brings that same unsentimental realism to what is happening now.

His core reframe changed how I talk about this entire moment. Stop treating AI as a technology, the thing executives buy and plug in down through the organization, and start treating it as a capability, the thing you have to grow, with new skills and processes and systems attached. A technology leaves you the same shape. A genuinely grown capability changes you. We get into why this is the first tool in history that arrives with zero cost, zero learning curve, and high value all at once, what it means that roughly 24 million people ever learned to write code while eight billion can now simply describe what they want, why enterprise usage keeps climbing while measurable returns stay stubbornly flat, and where the surplus from all this automation is actually going to land. Paul also makes an argument about this bubble that I had not heard before: that it runs on usage rather than hope, which makes the disruption ahead more real rather than less.

If you have deployed AI somewhere in your organization and are still quietly waiting for it to matter, this hour is for you.

=============================

This Week's Companion Issue

The companion Future Proof issue built on this conversation, Everyone Gets a Superpower, lands Thursday. It is part of a four-part series called Reading Yourself Like a System, and it takes Paul's capability argument into the personal register: why the power is now universal, but the rewiring is rare.

Read on Substack: https://befutureproof.substack.com/
Read on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/future-proof-7303526412311842816/

=============================

Chapters

0:00 Usage Beats Hype
1:39 Paul’s First ChatGPT Moment
5:08 AI As An Enterprise Capability
8:32 Democratized Coding And Recursive Tools
10:02 Tech Giants And Governance Reality
11:52 Where Jobs Shift And Surplus Flows
18:30 Secure AI Training And Change Management
23:45 Agents And The Widening Advantage
34:22 Adapt Tomorrow With These Habits

=============================

About Paul Baier

Paul Baier is CEO and co-founder of GAI Insights, an analyst and advisory firm focused entirely on what enterprises actually do with generative AI, and an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School where he teaches this material to senior leaders. He writes on AI for Forbes and hosts GAI World, running in Boston September 28 to 30. His path runs from enterprise technology and sustainability consulting into full-time research on how organizations adopt intelligence.

Connect with Paul: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulbaier/
GAI Conference: https://www.gaiworld.com/

=============================

Go Deeper

📬 Future Proof, my weekly newsletter on foresight and leadership, here on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/future-proof-7303526412311842816/ and in full on Substack: https://befutureproof.substack.com/ 
🌐 Join the Future Proof Community for conversations about the future: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/10084416/
📖 SuperShifts, my book on the forces reshaping business and society: https://www.supershiftsbook.com/ 
👤 My website: https://www.stevenfisher.io/ | My LinkedIn: ttps://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenfisher/

=============================

Think Forward Everywhere

🎧 All episodes: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/ 
🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-forward-conversations-with-futurists-innovators/id1736144515
🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0IOn8PZCMMC04uixlATqoO
▶️ YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxPaMTfnbnI&list=PLionR73qBCQmgCvEI9iFSS4gXPvQl5m3n 
💼 Follow the show on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/think-forward-show/
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thinkfwdshow/
X: https://x.com/ThinkFwdShow

=============================

Presented By

PRESENTED BY THINK FORWARD NETWORK https://tfn.one/

SUPPORTED BY THE HUMAN FRONTIER INSTITUTE https://humanfrontier.org/

=============================

Sponsor This Episode

Interested in sponsoring Think Forward or partnering as an affiliate? Email [email protected] to reach a growing audience of leaders and futurists thinking seriously about what's next.

What have you been treating as a technology you bought, when it is really a capability you would have to grow? Tell me in the comments.

If you found something useful, subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

#ThinkForward #EnterpriseAI #AIAdoption

We're Obsessed With You
Join Emily & Kyle as they dive into their favorite personalities's current hyper-fixations

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

ORDER SUPERSHIFTS! bit.ly/supershifts

🎧 Listen Now On: 

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-forward-conversations-with-futurists-innovators-and-big-thinkers/id1736144515

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0IOn8PZCMMC04uixlATqoO

Web: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/

Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.

One hundred and fifty episodes in, this is the conversation Think Forward was built for. Radha Mistry leads foresight at Arup, and before that she built a corporate foresight practice from a standing start inside a global design software company that did not know it wanted one. It began with an audit she invented on the spot: a hundred interviews that revealed people all over the organization already sensing the future, separately, in different languages, with no way to bring it together.

From there, we get into why placement within the org chart determines whether foresight feeds into real decisions or dies as a deck, why a good scenario should be interrogated like a financial model rather than received as an answer, and what it takes to rebuild futures fluency across 18,000 people. Radha also shares the signals she is watching right now, including one about where governments are starting to live online that genuinely surprised me.

If you have ever tried to make an organization take the future seriously, this hour is for you.

=============================
 This Week's Companion Issue

The companion Future Proof newsletter issue built on this conversation, When Everything is a Signal, lands Thursday. It opens a four-part series called Reading Yourself Like a System.
Read on Substack: https://befutureproof.substack.com/p/when-everything-is-a-signal?r=11ae&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Read on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/future-proof-7303526412311842816/

=============================
 Chapters

Timestamps are integrated in the episode.

0:00 Design As Future-Making 

2:40 Craft, Childhood, And Learning By Making 

10:20 Buildings As Long-Term Future Artifacts 

17:05 The Futures We Close Off 

23:25 Preferable For Whom, And Why

28:10 How A Foresight Practice Gets Built 

35:10 The Workshop That Changed The Plan

41:20 Where Foresight Belongs In The Org 

50:05 Scaling Foresight At A Global Firm

58:40 Global Context And Humble Sensemaking 

1:05:15 Signals To Watch And Final Takeaways

=============================
 About Radha Mistry

Radha Mistry leads the foresight practice at Arup, one of the longest running corporate foresight groups in the world, after building the foresight function at Autodesk from scratch. Her path runs from architecture through narrative environments into futures work.
 Connect with Radha: https://www.linkedin.com/in/radha-mistry-63024440/

=============================
 Go Deeper

📬 Future Proof, my weekly newsletter on foresight and leadership, here on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/future-proof-7303526412311842816/ and in full on Substack: https://befutureproof.substack.com/
🌐 Join the Future Proof Community for conversations about the future: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/10084416/
📖 SuperShifts, my book on the forces reshaping business and society: https://www.supershiftsbook.com/
👤 My website: https://www.stevenfisher.io/ | My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenfisher/

=============================
 Think Forward Everywhere

🎧 All episodes: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/
🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-forward-conversations-with-futurists-innovators/id1736144515
🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0IOn8PZCMMC04uixlATqoO
▶️ YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLionR73qBCQm3r2VwXAUnW0yy_8F8mrPR
💼 Follow the show on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/think-forward-show/
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thinkfwdshow/ | X: https://x.com/ThinkFwdShow

=============================
 Presented By

PRESENTED BY THINK FORWARD NETWORK
 https://tfn.one/

SUPPORTED BY THE HUMAN FRONTIER INSTITUTE
 https://humanfrontier.org/

=============================
 Sponsor This Episode

Interested in sponsoring Think Forward or partnering as an affiliate? Email [email protected] to reach a growing audience of leaders and futurists thinking seriously about what's next.

Where in your organization is foresight already happening under another name? Tell me in the comments.

If you found something useful, subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

#ThinkForward #Foresight #StrategicForesight

We're Obsessed With You
Join Emily & Kyle as they dive into their favorite personalities's current hyper-fixations

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

ORDER SUPERSHIFTS! bit.ly/supershifts

🎧 Listen Now On: 

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-forward-conversations-with-futurists-innovators-and-big-thinkers/id1736144515

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0IOn8PZCMMC04uixlATqoO

Web: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/

Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.

A lot of strategy collapses the moment a "guarantee" fails, and the easiest way to find those guarantees is to notice what you never question. We start with something as small as flipping a light switch, then zoom out with futurist Gabe Cervantes, Director of Scalable Foresight at the Institute for the Future, to ask what leaders should do when the assumptions behind business, society, and daily life stop holding up. The goal isn't predicting the future. It's building the habit of challenging what feels inevitable, so you can see disruption earlier and respond with intent.

Gabe shares what he's learned building scalable strategic foresight as a design problem: how much futures thinking an organization actually needs, and who should own it. We talk through a counterintuitive rule, sometimes the most productive futures workshop happens when the boss steps out, because psychological safety is the fuel for "ridiculous" ideas that later become real insights. We also unpack the lonely futurist problem and why "never future alone" protects teams from bias and makes the capability last.

From there we get into generative AI and the future of work. Gabe makes the case for augmentation over automation and effectiveness over raw efficiency, especially when AI can deliver confidently wrong answers with total conviction. He offers a practical way to use AI well in foresight work: challenge, augment, reframe. We close by connecting foresight to lived experience through Gabe's nomadic journey across 16 cities, remote work incentive programs, and the need for "islands of continuity" in a world that keeps moving.

The companion Future Proof newsletter issue built on this conversation, Confidently Wrong, is out this week: https://befutureproof.substack.com/ / https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/future-proof-7303526412311842816/

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Challenging Assumptions With A Light Switch
0:34 Meet Gabe And The 10-Year Horizon
2:25 Measuring Foresight By Conversation
4:20 Building Scalable Foresight In Organizations
7:41 When The Boss Leaves The Room
10:57 Never Future Alone
12:58 Foresight Finds Better Questions
16:30 Generative AI For Augmentation
24:03 Challenge Augment Reframe With AI
25:58 Tipping Point For The Futures Field
28:01 Training Futurists To Drive Action
30:55 The Nomadic Futurist Across 16 Cities
37:39 Islands Of Continuity For Nomads
40:09 Signals We Might Be Missing
41:02 Career Advice And Legacy
45:51 Where To Find Gabe And Closing

ABOUT GABE CERVANTES
Gabe Cervantes is Director of Scalable Foresight at the Institute for the Future, where he helps organizations build the internal capability to think seriously about their own futures instead of outsourcing it to a single consultant or a single report.
Gabe's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabe-cervantes-ab147338/
Gabe's Firm: https://www.cfuturesconsulting.com

RESOURCES MENTIONED
SuperShifts, my book on the forces reshaping business and society: https://www.supershiftsbook.com/
Future Proof, my weekly newsletter on foresight and leadership: Substack: https://befutureproof.substack.com/
My website: https://www.stevenfisher.io/
My LinkdedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenfisher/

SPONSOR THIS EPISODE
Interested in sponsoring Think Forward or partnering as an affiliate? Email [email protected] to reach a growing audience of leaders and futurists thinking seriously about what's next.

CONNECT
Think Forward Show: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/106181361/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thinkfwdshow/
X/Twitter: https://x.com/ThinkFwdShow

If you found something useful, subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

What assumption do you think your organization needs to challenge next? Let me know in the comments.

#Foresight #Leadership #FutureOfWork #ArtificialIntelligence #StrategicForesight #ThinkForward

We're Obsessed With You
Join Emily & Kyle as they dive into their favorite personalities's current hyper-fixations

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

ORDER SUPERSHIFTS! bit.ly/supershifts

🎧 Listen Now On: 

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-forward-conversations-with-futurists-innovators-and-big-thinkers/id1736144515

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0IOn8PZCMMC04uixlATqoO

Web: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/

Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.

The future does not fail because we lack ideas. It fails because we cannot commit to turning insight into action. We sit down with a Mathias, a futures practitioner who grew up on a small Danish island, found his way into the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies, and later built Anticipate Futures to make strategic foresight more usable, more teachable, and more accessible to people who are trying to drive real change inside organizations.

We get practical about what actually works: how to move beyond “foresight as a project” and build organizational foresight as a capability, how to find allies so the work does not die when one champion leaves, and why communication matters as much as any framework. 

We also talk about...

• growing up on a small Danish island and how travel shapes global citizenship
• moving from innovation and diplomacy ambitions into futures studies and strategic foresight
• learning by doing at the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies and what practice teaches that theory cannot
• building Anticipate Futures to make foresight accessible, actionable, and present-focused
• using the ACT framework to connect anticipation, creation, and transformation
• embedding organizational foresight so it survives beyond a single champion
• selling foresight as making a business case and finding allies across departments
• making futures education more affordable through lightweight masterclasses
• using hopeful framing to avoid apathy while staying pragmatic
• generative AI as an amplifier and a risk for bland “beige futures”
You can find us on all the major podcast platforms and at www.thinkforwardshow.com as well as on YouTube under Think Forward Show.

Subscribe for more conversations like this, share the episode with a colleague who needs a better future toolkit, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show.

We're Obsessed With You
Join Emily & Kyle as they dive into their favorite personalities's current hyper-fixations

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

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Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-forward-conversations-with-futurists-innovators-and-big-thinkers/id1736144515

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0IOn8PZCMMC04uixlATqoO

Web: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/

Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.

Trends aren’t just a fashion problem. They’re a system for manufacturing novelty, and right now that system is running at TikTok speed. I sit down with Clarice Garcia, a futurist and designer who moved from architecture in Brazil to studying fashion in Milan, only to realize the real story isn’t clothing at all. The story is the logic behind “new,” and what that logic does to sustainability, culture, and our sense of belonging.

We get specific about how trend forecasting works in the fashion industry, why it becomes a worst-case scenario for sustainable consumption, and how microtrends shorten the life span of taste from months to days. We also unpack the luxury contradiction: brands that talk about sustainability while destroying unsold inventory to protect scarcity and symbolic value. That tension forces a bigger question: if we don’t change what luxury and status mean, how can the system ever change?

Clarice then walks me through fashion futuring, her speculative design and futures thinking toolkit built to spark imagination and provoke a values-driven transition toward sustainability. The method uses fiction to create artifacts and narratives, then extracts the values inside them and turns those values into action through backcasting. We explore how the same “fashion logic” shows up in electronics, automotive, and cosmetics, and why values-centered work can reveal real pathways beyond greenwashing and futures theater.

If you care about sustainable fashion, design fiction, systems change, or values-driven innovation, this conversation will stretch your thinking. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves “the new,” and leave a review with the value you think your industry should put first.

We're Obsessed With You
Join Emily & Kyle as they dive into their favorite personalities's current hyper-fixations

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

ORDER SUPERSHIFTS! bit.ly/supershifts

🎧 Listen Now On: 

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-forward-conversations-with-futurists-innovators-and-big-thinkers/id1736144515

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0IOn8PZCMMC04uixlATqoO

Web: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/

Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.

Many of us are navigating a world defined by relentless change—and AI is transforming every part of it faster than we can keep up. But what if the key isn’t resisting these shifts, but mastering how to flow with them? 

Geoff (a storytelling tech veteran and AI integrator) reveals how to turn the chaos into opportunity by cultivating a mindset of fluidity and continual reinvention.

In this candid conversation, he shares how storytelling, your ability to craft an authentic narrative, is more crucial than ever in a landscape overwhelmed by content and noise. He debunks the myth of “long-term jobs” in a volatile economy and explains why roles like the “AI orchestrator” are the future of work. From navigating the ethics of AI development to understanding how your organization can adapt quickly and ethically, we explore concrete strategies for thriving amid systemic upheaval.

We chat about many things, including:
- Why “speed of slop” in marketing and design damages quality—and how to combat it
- How AI tools like Claude Coworker are reshaping collaboration and productivity without sacrificing human nuance
- Why the role of the “orchestrator” will become essential in managing complex AI-driven processes
- The importance of mindse, like staying liquid and resilien, in facing political, societal, and technological chaos
- Practical advice for future-proofing your career and business skills in a world where change is the only constant

This isn’t just a discussion about AI; it’s a blueprint for building mental resilience, embracing fluidity, and turning systemic shifts into breakthroughs. If you believe adaptability is your strongest asset, this episode is your essential guide toward navigating the future confidently—whatever it holds.

Perfect for entrepreneurs, executives, creators, and anyone feeling overwhelmed by the rapid pace of change. Tap into Jeff’s insights, leverage AI ethically, and learn how to stay ahead of the curve—without losing your human edge.

Connect with Geoff on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffliving/  and stay tuned for his upcoming book arriving this June. This is your call to embrace the ongoing journey of reinvention—because in a world where nothing stays still, the only way forward is to stay fluid.

Order Now Is Gone: Think Liquid to Navigate Neverending Change (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/Now-Gone-Liquid-Navigate-Neverending-ebook/dp/B0GHNMM383/

You can find us on all the major podcast platforms under www.thinkforward.com as well as on YouTube under ThinkForward Show.

We're Obsessed With You
Join Emily & Kyle as they dive into their favorite personalities's current hyper-fixations

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

ORDER SUPERSHIFTS! bit.ly/supershifts

🎧 Listen Now On: 

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-forward-conversations-with-futurists-innovators-and-big-thinkers/id1736144515

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0IOn8PZCMMC04uixlATqoO

Web: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/

Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.

You can feel the ground shifting under AI right now, but the hardest question isn’t “When do we get AGI?” It’s this: if we can’t prove whether something is conscious, how would we ever know when a machine deserves rights and protection? That single uncertainty turns today’s AI excitement into a genuine ethical dilemma with real stakes for business, policy, and daily life.

We follow futurist and author Richard Yonck from a childhood obsession with technology into the real craft of forecasting, where methods matter more than titles. We pressure-test AGI hype, unpack why LLMs feel human, and confront the ethical trap of building minds we cannot prove are conscious.

• Richard’s path from science writing to futures research and consulting
• How the futurist label evolved from think tanks to LinkedIn noise
• What corporate foresight work reveals about prior knowledge and hidden politics
• Big history and the pattern of rising complexity against entropy
• Why “AGI” is a misleading idea and why human intelligence is not “general”
• Why generative AI and LLMs are powerful tools but limited
• The hard problem of consciousness and what AI personhood could mean
• Ethical risks from digital feudalism to digital serfdom
• Future of work questions including automation, meaning, and UBI
• Why education must shift toward lifelong learning and rapid upskilling
• Hybrid intelligence as the realistic near-term model
• How writing techno-thrillers can explore futures without selling hype

You can reach Richard and find out about his books and more at RichardYonk.com.

You can find us on all the major podcast platforms at www.thinkforward.com

We're Obsessed With You
Join Emily & Kyle as they dive into their favorite personalities's current hyper-fixations

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

ORDER SUPERSHIFTS! bit.ly/supershifts

🎧 Listen Now On: 

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-forward-conversations-with-futurists-innovators-and-big-thinkers/id1736144515

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0IOn8PZCMMC04uixlATqoO

Web: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/

Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.