Futuring is the systematic, interdisciplinary and holistic exploration of how society and the world will change over time. Scenario development is a major part of futuring work.

The process can:

• Create shared understanding of future possibilities,

• Reveal future trajectories or destinations that are otherwise hidden, 

• Produce rich, textured scenarios of the future, employing narrative- and story-based elements, and

• Spotlight new priorities for research and policy in the present.
  
  

In order to explore the possible, the preposterous, and the preferable, we use a creative, structured futuring process. This typically involves guided exercises, often in a workshop format. 

Depending on the goal of the activity, objective guardrails (e.g.,  a particular greenhouse gas emissions pathway) can help to channel the creativity toward a desired target topic. 

The outcome of the structured activity is typically one or more story-based scenarios. We use stories, because they allow us to move beyond descriptions and toward textured visions that we can imaginatively inhabit.

The future will be a strange place, compared today, especially anything after 2070 (if not sooner). Technology change, social change, environmental change - this world may be unrecognizable to our parents, let alone our grandparents.

A Radical Future is a vision of the future that pushes the boundaries of social, environmental, and technological limits - possibly exceeding them. To do this work we often deliberately try and explore strange, unfamiliar, and contradictory futures. This can help to reveal future possibilities that we might not otherwise consider.

To paraphrase Jim Dator, an eminent Futures scholar: The only useful ideas about the future should (at first) appear to be ridiculous.