ABOUT INSTITUTE FOR THE FUTURE

Institute for the Future (IFTF) is the longest-running futures organization in the world. A spinoff of the Rand Corporation and Stanford Research Institute (SRI International), IFTF started in 1968 with a founding grant from the Ford Foundation to help society’s decision makers acquire capabilities to identify and cope with large socioeconomic questions before they become critical public problems. Future Shock author Alvin Toffler was on IFTF’s founding advisory committee. Paul Baran, one of the inventors of packet switching, the core technology of the internet, was a founder along with Olaf Helmer, the Swedish mathematician who invented the Delphi Technique. Marina Gorbis, the current executive director, is a regional economist who researches transformations in the world of work and new forms of value creation.

IFTF brings people together to learn the tools of foresight in order to prepare for any future—today. Using innovative research methodologies, IFTF draws on its worldwide network of thought leaders and professional researchers to produce leading-edge foresight. From intimate workshops to global online games, IFTF applies frameworks, processes, and platforms to tap the best insights of groups to imagine—and create—the futures they want for their organizations, their communities, and the world. Since 1970, IFTF has curated this foresight into ten-year forecasts, maps of the emerging landscape, and artifacts of the transformative possibilities across all sectors that together support a more sustainable future.

IFTF researches cutting-edge technologies and practices to help address the pressing issues facing tech, society, and democracy. IFTF’s Emerging Media Lab focuses on the future of virtual and augmented reality. IFTF’s Governance Futures Lab is helping governments prepare for the unintended consequences of new technology. IFTF Vantage works with organizations to become climate positive and future-ready for the coming decades. In collaboration with academics, researchers, activists, and futurists, the IFTF Equitable Enterprise Initiative will map diverse pathways for a broad national transition to a more equitable and worker friendly economy.

IFTF prepares the world to be ready for any future by infusing the present with transformative possibilities. For over fifty years, businesses, governments, and social impact organizations have depended on IFTF global forecasts, custom research, foresight education, and training to navigate complex change and develop world-ready strategies.

Institute for the Future is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Palo Alto, California.