Inventing the Future 2050

Somewhere in your organization, a decision got made this week that will still be running in 2050. Still compounding, still paying out, or still costing you. And I'd bet nobody in that meeting knew it was the one. That's my whole job, finding that decision. People think futurists predict things. Crystal balls, robots, hoverboards? No. Prediction is the entertainment wing of futurism. Decisions are the useful part. Anyone can describe 2050. The question is what you do about it on Tuesday. Here's where I learned that. I spent years working on a city designed for 2050, built for residents who haven't been born yet. And at that scale, one thing becomes very clear. The future doesn't arrive. It gets invented. Line by line, budget by budget, by whoever is willing to place the bet early. I've watched economic gravity shift towards the Gulf and Asia. I wasn't reading about it. I was standing where it landed. So in this talk, I do something to the room. I put 2050 on the screen and ask who will still be working then. About half the hands go up. Then I ask whose decisions will still be working then. And every hand goes up slowly. That's the moment the talk really starts. Then we walk backwards from 2050, force by force, the machines, the demographics, the energy, the money, until we hit something on this year's agenda. There's always something. The room gets very quiet when they find it. Because most of what gets called a megatrend is noise dressed as insight. The real signals are quieter. And they're already moving. That's the talk. It's built to open a main stage. And it makes the next two days of your agenda feel like they're about something.