We live in a time of transitions. Between technological advancements and social revolutions, the next decade will bring massive changes to the way we work, learn, and play. To navigate this time of tumult and uncertainty, we’ll need new strategies for resilience and adaptation. We’ll need fresh perspectives to reframe our offerings for the global, hyper-connected world that’s emerging. And we’ll need new stories to weave the fabric of our fragmented workplaces, markets, and communities.

The 2016 Ten-Year Forecast program will explore the changing horizon of worker identities, collaborative production, human settlements, and ecosystems of well-being from the perspective of the young people experiencing this change with fresh eyes. We’ll deconstruct the platforms and social inventions that will inform the business processes of tomorrow, and investigate the new habits and behaviors that organizations of all size can begin tapping into today.

› TRACK URGENT FUTURES Urgent futures are those emerging issues whose scale of impact and potential for changing the human landscape are so extraordinary that we ignore them at great risk. The Ten-Year Forecast will ground you in these futures, uncover signals of world-changing innovation, and empower you to make decisions that matter.

› IMMERSE YOURSELF IN TOMORROW’S STRATEGIES In this age of rapid networked innovation, even the largest shifts in how we work and organize ourselves can feel abstract and ambiguous at times. The Ten-Year-Forecast doesn’t just talk about the future – we bring it to life, with immersive experiences, strategic exercises, and evocative visions of the near future.

› UNCOVER NEW OPPORTUNITIES Our research process is grounded in a three step cycle of Foresight, Insight and Action. Our forecasts draw on signals from the present to create a useful picture of the landscape of tomorrow. By digging deeper with expert panels and curated discussion, we help generate specific insights for your industries and organizations. And with decades of facilitation experience, we create processes for applying those insights to actionable strategies and prototypes for today.

BENEFITS OF THE PROGRAM

For four decades, the Ten-Year Forecast has been a leading source of foresight for a vanguard of business, government, and community organizations. As a platform for tracking today’s latent signals, we help many of the world’s most influential institutions to navigate a complex ecosystem of technological, cultural, and social change, to build resilience and make better futures.

I N S T I T U T E F O R T H E F U T U R E

TEN-YEAR FORECASTJoin us in 2016 as we explore the business landscape of the next decade by asking a question that has vexed people for centuries—what are the kids up to?

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Do millennials care about privacy and security? What new assets will define the investment portfolios of digital natives? What’s really going on with Snapchat and Minecraft?

In ten years, today’s 11-year-olds will be entering the workforce. Today’s 18-year-olds will be taking on positions of leadership in our largest institutions. What’s waiting for them when they get there? What will they expect? What does their experience of the world today tell us about how they’ll reshape our society tomorrow? This year, we seek to unpack the tropes and clichés that have arisen around our adolescents, to uncover both their transformational potential and the rapidly transforming world they’ll inhabit.

Specifically, the 2016 Ten-Year Forecast invites you to:

M A P T H E T E N Y E A R H O R I Z O N

The technological and cultural changes that we experience as highly disruptive today form the foundational assumptions of the next generation’s worldviews. Their identities are expanded by social media and civil upheaval. Their problem-solving skills are forged in online forums with millions of global participants. Their economic priorities are framed by a fragmented global economy, mass automation of existing industries, and the existential threats of climate change.

The 2016 Ten-Year Forecast will map the urgent stories and transformational shifts

of the next ten years, through the eyes of today’s young people, to make sense of the

complex, and find focus in the ambiguity.

N AV I GAT E T H E M A J O R T R A N S I T I O N S

Just as adolescents transition to adulthood, our businesses and organizations face fundamental transitions in the coming decade. We’ll explore the urgent futures that will drives these transitions, including food production and distribution, personal mobility, financial planning, global work, climate adaptation, new learning flows, and high-resolution well-being, among others.

We’ll identify the rites of passage that young people and business leaders alike

will pioneer as they adapt to the shifting needs and opportunities of the world that

awaits them.

R E C L A S S I F Y YO U R B U S I N E S S FO R A WO R L D O F AC C E L E R AT I N G C H A N G E

A changing world requires new stories and perspectives. It requires new classifications and categories for reframing what we make, what audiences we’re engaging, and how we organize our efforts.

This year, we’re creating a toolkit for identifying these new classifications and putting

them to work so you can anticipate new offerings, markets and value propositions for

surviving and thriving in the future world just around the corner.

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D E L I V E R A B L E S

T H E A N N U A L T E N - Y E A R FO R E CA S T R E T R E AT

The 2016 Annual Retreat is the Institute for the Future’s signature event, a three-day full-body immersion in the critical dilemmas and emerging opportunities facing you, your organization, and the world between now and 2026.

› DAY 1 | Our cross-sector membership of organizational leaders, strategic thinkers and practical visionaries provides an unparalleled community for navigating uncertain futures. On the first day of the retreat, we’ll seed new relationships and new possibilities, and orient ourselves to the biggest stories of the next ten years.

› DAY 2 | The second day of the retreat presents an intensive investigation of the urgent futures of the coming decade, and the strategies we’ll need to meet them with success. Expert panels, interactive exhibits and rich media will elevate our future stories to create a space for meaningful dialogue, discovery, and ideation.

› DAY 3 | Finally, we’ll ground our world-changing ideas with action-oriented strategies to bring home to our organizations and communities. Our toolkit will help you translate the 2016 Ten-Year Forecast research to the pressing needs of your teams and stakeholders.

T H E T E N - Y E A R S TO R Y

Through a series of videos, ready-made presentation decks, and other rich media, we’ll help you explore and communicate the future trends that promise to transform our corporate and civil world over the next ten years. We’ll introduce you to post-digital native perspectives on today’s youth, and envision the nascent rites of passage that will guide the personal and professional lives of everyone in the 21st century.

T H E I N T E R FAC E S O F T R A N S I T I O N TO O L K I T

As we reenvision our companies, institutions, and community organizations for the consumption and work habits of the next generation, we’ll need to interrogate our assumptions about the roles we play and how we play them. Our toolkit is designed as a standalone exercise to bring the power of foresight back to your organization, offering structure and process for anticipating long-term organizational change.

T H E M A P O F T H E D E CA D E

The annual Map of the Decade gives you the thirty-thousand foot view of everything we cover in the Ten-Year Forecast research, and provides a quick snapshot for debriefing stakeholders and colleagues on the ten year business horizon.

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3M

Assurant

AXA

Beam Suntory

Beijing Hualian Hypermarket Limited

Cox Enterprises

Fidelity Investments

General Motors

Gensler

Grupo Sura

Hallmark Cards

Huawei

Knowledge Works Foundation

Lego

Microsoft

Panasonic

PepsiCo

Qualcomm

RTI International

Swiss Post

United States Postal Service

UPS

Valeo

B E C O M E A M E M B E R TO DAY

To learn more about the Ten-Year Forecast and

Institute for the Future:

Sean Ness 650.233.9517

sness@iftf.org

www.iftf.org

A B O U T T H E I N S T I T U T E FO R T H E F U T U R E

The Institute for the Future is an independent, nonprofit strategic foresight network celebrating more than 48 years of “making the future.” The core of our work is understanding emerging trends and discontinuities that will transform global society and the global marketplace. We provide our network with insights into business and organizational strategy, design and change processes, innovation, and social dilemmas. Our research generates the foresight needed to create insights that lead to action. Our focus spans a broad territory of deeply transformative trends, from food and health to technology, the workplace, education, governance, and human identity. The Institute for the Future is based in Palo Alto, CA.

Cover images: Dylan Hendricks and Flickr user Anoop Kumar

P R O G R A M C O S T

The Ten-Year Forecast program is an ongoing cost-shared research effort. Each participating organization invests $30,000 per year and can join the conversation at any time. Participation in the 2016 program includes attendance at the 2016 Annual Retreat, access to the Ten-Year Forecast signals stream, online access to all the program deliverables, three printed sets of the 2016 Ten-Year Forecast plus the 2016 Map of the Decade, and electronic access to the Ten-Year Forecast website, which includes past forecasts.

P R O G R A M M E M B E R S

In a world where the smallest business can provide insights for the largest corporation—where a handful of social entrepreneurs can start a global movement—Ten-Year Forecast is growing to bring these many voices together in focused future-making. We’ll be creating more opportunities for connecting with diverse participants in the program, adding startups and city governments, community organizers and friends from the academy to our foundational corporate network.

Below is a partial list of current Ten-Year Forecast members:

201 Hamilton Ave. Palo Alto, CA 94301

650.854.6322 www.iftf.org