ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Bob Johansen, Joseph Press, and Christine Bullen

We are three futurists, focusing ten years ahead and thinking futureback. Bob Johansen is a futurist focused on top leadership in shape-shifting organizations. Joseph Press is an architect, experienced digital transformation advisor, and design futurist. Christine Bullen is an information systems practitioner and researcher who has worked closely with CIOs and other senior executives.

Each of us was disrupted by office shock, which was a significant catalyst for writing this book. In the summer of 2020, Bob moved from Silicon Valley, where he and his family had lived for thirty-five years, to Bainbridge Island, Washington, to be closer to his kids. He went from being a road warrior, on the road several times each month, to working almost all virtual.

Joseph spent a week on the floor in early 2021 not knowing if he would survive COVID-19, which hit him before vaccines were available. The experience and the aftershocks inspired him to envision a better future for industries that had historically contributed to social, economic, and climate injustice. Working in his officeverse with over a dozen global colleagues with similar expertise and aspirations, MakeOurFuture was launched. Dedicated to helping companies transition to more sustainable business practices, MakeOurFuture is a mission-driven consulting cooperative. It offers members opportunities to advise companies in an equitable and transparent business model. For more information, please visit www.makeourfuture.coop.

When the pandemic required lockdowns at home, Christine had been suddenly widowed from her husband of almost fifty years. Her family was 600 miles away and the loss plus the lockdown compounded her sense of isolation. Having researched and taught in the field of information technology, Christine was well acquainted with the tools needed to support distance relationships, so she quickly transitioned to using these for both work and family. The family part was straightforward: she set up a schedule of visits, and that was a great support. But the work, which required interacting with several government offices that were now empty of people and were not equipped for distance working, was frustrating.

Bob is a milkman’s son from the small town of Geneva, Illinois. His father inspired him to get there early for everything—a discipline he still practices that fits well with his role as a futurist. His mother taught him to bloom where he is planted. He was the first in his family to graduate from college, attending the University of Illinois on a basketball scholarship. Bob went to divinity school (Crozer Theological Seminary, where Martin Luther King Jr. had attended) on a fellowship for students who were exploring religion but not committed to the ministry. He was at Crozer when Dr. King was killed, and this experience provoked his interest in social justice and the future. He continues to be fascinated by the effects of religion and spirituality, but he is not an advocate of any brand of religion. Bob received his PhD at Northwestern University, where he was based in the Sociology Department and was focused on sociology of religion, the emerging areas of networked computing, and future studies. Bob was one of the first social scientists to study the human, social, and organizational effects of the ARPANET, which was the predecessor to the internet. Office Shock is the thirteenth book that Bob has authored or coauthored. In 2023, Bob will have been a professional futurist for fifty years. He now lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington.

Joseph was inspired by his mother, an art educator and children’s story writer, to follow in his immigrant grandfather’s footsteps to become an architect. After finishing his BS in Economics at Carnegie Mellon, he went to MIT to start a master’s in architectural studies, eventually completing his PhD in Design Technology, a workplace research group in the MIT School of Architecture. Joseph capped his ten-year architectural career by designing the headquarters of AOL Time Warner in Paris. Soon after the headquarters’ completion, he brought this insight into management consulting with Deloitte. After working in the trenches of digital transformation for eleven years, he founded and led Deloitte Digital Switzerland—an interdisciplinary team of strategic consultants and designers who built digital platforms for global, cross-industry clients and supported their transformation to more sustainable business models. Joseph went on to learn about the missing link of most transformation initiatives, leadership, at the Center for Creative Leadership. To deepen his understanding, he cofounded IDeaLs at the Politecnico di Milano. This action-research community of over ten global corporate partners investigates how to engage people with innovation and design to make transformation happen. The first book from the research was IDeaLs (Innovation and Design as Leadership): Transformation in the Digital Era (Emerald Publishing, August 2021). As the lead author, Joseph researched personal and organizational change through the lenses of innovation, design, and leadership. The second book, Storymaking: How the Co-Creation of Narratives Engages People for Innovation and Transformation, examines the processes and outcomes of storymaking. Joseph is currently a visiting professor of Innovation, Design, and Leadership at the Politecnico di Milano. He is also adjunct faculty at the Parsons School of Design / The New School, where he coauthored with fellow faculty A Design-Driven Guide for Entrepreneurs: Strategies for Starting Up in a Multiverse. Joseph currently lives in Zurich, Switzerland, with his wife and their daughter and often travels to see his family in the United States and his older children in Tel Aviv.

Christine’s father came to the United States from Italy and managed to master electronics and woodworking to instill a powerful work ethic in his children. Christine was the first in her family to graduate from college, thanks to an academic scholarship to Barnard College. She worked early in her career at the elite consultancy Arthur D. Little, then received her master’s degree at MIT Sloan School of Management. Her mentors at MIT founded the Center for Information Systems Research, and she was the assistant director there for seventeen years. Christine’s research at CISR covered a wide range of topics with the focus always on the practical question of how information technology can support and improve management. CISR research delved into the future of office work, the future of microcomputers (i.e., laptops and eventually smart everything), the future of telecommunications, and the Critical Success Factor method. More recently she has been a professor of information systems at Fordham University and Stevens Institute of Technology, where she completed her PhD. Christine has authored or coauthored ten books and twenty-six journal articles. She now lives in New York.