With over 28 years’ experience of practicing the science of foresight with major international corporations, government institutions, associations and non-profits, The Futures Lab, Inc. can proudly say that we are experts in delivering revolutionary, actionable visions and strategies for the future of a multitude of industries and geographies. Our passion is to create your preferred future.
Visioneering
Vision is generally defined as seeing the desirable over the possible, but we think that it is more about seeing the seemingly invisible. Hacking examples from unknown space, hijacking unexpected signals, drawing from the unthinkable, leveraging disruption and possible dystopias, creating hybrids and new paradigms. Our goal is to explore and optimize your hidden future potential!
Foresight
To create the winning future, we fuse our unique, robust six-stage science of foresight approaches with complex, non-linear, alternative thinking techniques and intellectual adventure.
Evaluation
To prove its relevance, feasibility and potential, we use an extensive array of evaluation tools, supported by real-world simulation and modeling in living the future workshops, customized in collaboration with our subsidiary – the FutureXperience Lab.
Education
We share our expertise and experience by teaching future futurists through grad courses at the University of Adger in Norway and Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia, USA and present our research at numerous speaking engagements at educational conferences across the globe.
Speaking
As experts in the field of foresight, as applied to multiple domains, we are regularly invited to speak at major international conferences and corporate events. Each presentation is comprehensively researched and customized.
Publishing
While ensuring we do not break any confidentiality agreements with our clients, we transfer the experience from our research to our teaching of foresight and academic publications.
People
We are an international team of highly specialized practicing futurists, technologists, business experts and researchers dedicated to advancing society through the science of foresight.
Derek Woodgate
President and Chief Futurist
An ex-UK diplomat, Dr. Derek Woodgate is an award-winning, consulting futurist, educator, writer, speaker, and curator. He is President and Chief Futurist of The Futures Lab, Inc., a futures consultancy, founded in 1996. The company specializes in creating future potential for corporations and institutions and has consulted for over 170 corporate clients, governments, associations, city, regional management, and universities.
A British citizen, Derek is a resident of Croatia, USA, and UAE, having gained his BA (Hons) at UCL, his MS in Political Economics from the University of Zagreb, and a Doctor of Philosophy (Dr. Philos.) from the University of Agder, Norway, in Engineering and Science.
Derek is a frequent conference keynote, commentator, writer and practitioner on futures-related topics, such as the impact of progressive culture and future technologies on transformative societies, human development, decentralized thinking and knowledge systems, transdisciplinary education and intelligent environments and the changing workplace. Derek is a founding member of the APF, a long-time member of the World Futures Studies Federation (previous conference Chair) and has been involved in numerous UNESCO projects. He is also a foresight scholar at the DMS Academy in the USA and a board member of TAFFD’s Academy of the Future.
In addition to his work at The Futures Lab, Inc. Derek has spent the past 15 years teaching futures studies at universities in Norway, USA UAE and Saudi Arabia and is currently a Visiting Professor at The University of Houston, USA and an Executive Board member at the Center for Futures Studies at the University of Dubai, and a Consultant at PMU, in Saudi Arabia. Derek is part of a Norwegian team for educational cooperation and programs in Rwanda, Uganda and Ethiopia. He is also recognized for creating a new program of courses for children in Uganda underpinned by members of the University of Makarere.
His books include Future Frequencies (2004) and Future Flow (2012), The Augmented Learner (2021) and Calling the Toads – The Burroughs Compendium, together with Lee Ranaldo from Sonic Youth, Beat legend Allen Ginsburg and Presidential Historian, Douglas Brinkley. He is currently writing a new book titled Future Rhythms due for publication in 2024.
Helga Veigl
Futurist
Helga studied for her PhD in Futures Studies at Corvinus University in Budapest. She has taught undergraduate and masters level courses in Futures Studies (The Science of Foresight) and contributed to the development of course content for the Future Studies’ curriculum. She is a seasoned workshop facilitator on multiple foresight projects, with specific emphasis on systems thinking, foresight processes and modeling.
Helga is an expert in Weak Signals and the application in creating future insights, indicators and scenarios. Helga is the founding member and former Secretary of Hungarian Association of the Club of Rome. She is elected to be on the Executive Board of the World Futures Studies Federation from July 2021.
She is an Academic Researcher and has worked on multiple EU and government research projects on outlining strategies for economic and environmental development. Helga is also the co-author of numerous book chapters and journal articles on Futures Studies theory and practice.
Clive Cooper
Your Future, London
Clive Cooper is the Chairman of Research and Brand Futures with our partners Your Future (formerly Corporate Edge), a world-leading specialist in brands, innovation and design. Clive is an expert in Consumer and Brand Futures, his specialty being futures insights and their practical application in the marketplace. According to Clive, to know the future is impossible, but to anticipate it is critical for truly innovative brand development. In 1997 Clive set up the Brand Futures Consultancy. His clients including Sainsbury’s, Procter and Gamble, Freemans, Granada and Dulux ICI. The company then fused with Corporate Edge in 1999 before later emerging as Your Future in 2004. Clive’s experience includes working on future consumer trends, brand vision and innovation for the following clients in diverse industries such as: Shell, Cadbury’s, Nokia, M & S, Ben Sherman, Hugo, Granada, Barclay’s Bank, Hi Tec Sports, Golden Wonder and Casio. Previously Clive was with Davidson Pearce Advertising, BMP and Grey Advertising, where he served as Deputy Head of Account Planning and as a member of their Agency Management Committee. Clive has appeared on TV, radio and in the national press as well as the marketing media. He is a regular commentator on Brand Strategy and Consumer Trends. He is a member of the World Futures Society.
ADES – The Institute of Advanced Design Studies
Budapest, Hungary
Our partner ADES s a pioneering school of design offering advanced studies in design for sustainability to postgraduate students from all backgrounds. The ADES programme has an emphasis on exploring new ways to assess the total impact and potential outcomes of design manifestations. TFL’s partnership involves supporting the strategic vision of bringing about a new wave of highly creative design thinkers in diverse disciplines through the inclusion of futures literacy. This is achieved by the inclusion of courses on futures thinking and foresight processes, and how to stretch one’s imagination, in order to develop transformative approaches to design for sustainability. The ADES program under the guidance of founder Karina Vissonova, is designed to complement existing education programmes and to increase educational diversity for sustainability across disciplines.
Invendor
Budapest, Hungary
TFL’s partnership with INVENDOR adds a significant and critical contribution to our extended six-stage foresight process insomuch that it helps us deliver additional value to the futures implementation stage. INVENDOR’s expertise and direct experience in business process and organizational development, startup acceleration, financial services and innovation ensure that our futures outcomes are well-grounded in business and economic strategy and that our “rolling back the future” process reflects the radical operational and organizational transformation required to make the futures a reality.
We also collaborate with INVENDOR on their programs for their Innovation Academy, by adding elements of futures literacy, foresight courses and seminars on selected and general futures topics.
INVENDOR founders Zsombor Imre and Antonia Imre both have extensive corporate executive management and entrepreneurial experience gained in companies such as KPMG, Citibank, Mckinsey and IBM.
Ethos Integrated Solutions
Dubai, UAE
Originally established in the UK in 1994, now located in Dubai, UAE, Ethos is an award winning solutions firm operating globally. Its mission is to assist organisations in delivering excellent customer experiences through sharing knowledge, providing guidance and giving the tools to continuously measure and improve. Ethos provides a comprehensive range of integrated customer operations and experiences supported by the latest in AI and digital based systems, which ensures that through the partnership with TFL we are better able to articulate the potential of such systems and operational structures in supporting our futures work and Ethos can keep abreast of emerging and plausible future developments in their field. Etthos has proven to be an outstanding partner for our foresight work with government and other entities in UAE.
Our work is beyond strategic planning, taking a preferred futures approach rather than traditional baseline projections.