Chief Futurist
& Hope Engineer

Nikolas is the Chief Futurist for the Futurist Think Tank at futurist.com, a Fellow of The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (The RSA), and works with trillion-dollar companies, central banks, governments, startups and those willing to challenge our poverty of imagination, awaken curiosity and create incredible futures.

He has worked with hundreds of world-leading companies, including NASA, Google, Microsoft, United Nations, United Way, Bayer, Corteva, Bank of Canada,  American Express, AT&T, Thales International, Rolls Royce, Heineken, Procter & Gamble, Government of Canada, UK Home Office, Government of Cayman Islands, IDEO, and many more.

Nikolas has been a mainstay in the media for the past decade talking about our futures. He’s appeared in the ‘Smart Drugs’ documentary, was an advisor to the ‘Age of AI’ series with Robert Downley Jr and appears in the upcoming series ‘The Secrets of Big Data’ on Discovery. He appears regularly on SIRIUSXM, and on CTV’s Future Friday. His essential research has also been featured by the BBC, VICE, The Atlantic, Fast Company, Techcrunch, Business Insider, Huffington Post, Forbes, Sputnik, Venturebeat, and Global News. He also produces and interviews incredible thinkers on the renowned Exponential Minds Podcast.

In Fall 2022 Nikolas’ new book will be released – ‘Facing Our Futures’ provides executives and organizations with the foundations for futures design and the tools to imagine new futures, create bolder visions, anticipate unforeseen risks, and strengthen strategic planning. Nikolas’ thinking can also be seen in the opening chapter of ‘The Future Starts Now’. Both are published by Bloomsbury Business.

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Nikolas Badminton is a world-renowned futurist speaker, the Chief Futurist at Futurist.com, Consultant, Author, Media Producer, and Executive Advisor. He has delivered futurist keynotes to and worked with executives and the C-suite at over 300 of the world’s most impactful organizations and governments.

Nikolas and the Futurist Think Tank help executives learn strategic foresight practices that shape the visions that shape impactful organizations, trillion-dollar companies, startups, progressive governments, and multi-billion dollar investment funds.

Nikolas’ keynotes are always customized for what you need and ignite your audience’s thinking to shift midgets from WHAT IS TO WHAT IF… The result is the ability to be curious, explore possibilities, and imagine incredible futures for all.

All keynotes are available in-person at your event or workplace, full virtual from Nikolas’ Future Casting studio (4K streaming and high-production), or in hybrid format using your studio or event space.

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World leaders, impactful organizations and governments engage Nikolas Badminton and the Futurist Think Tank to help them build the skillsets needed for strategic foresight, anticipatory organizational capabilities and the ability to be curious and consider the futures ahead of us deeply.

The Futurist Think Tank works with executives to

• Discuss of global megatrends, secondary research and scanning for signals.
• Identify disruptive industry trends.
• Seek challenges and seeing unforeseen risks.
• Build WHAT IF… futures scenarios.
• Write speculative fiction and designing experiential futures.
• Backcasting and risk anticipation.

The result is bolder future visions of that might be and imagined future states that allow teams to anticipate unseen risks and create stronger strategic plans that guide the companies forward.

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Progressive organizations develop strategic foresight capabilities to strengthen strategic planning, innovation initiatives, and operations. In fact, organizations that build anticipatory capabilities, strategic foresight practices, and future-proof their business have been found to outperform the average by a 33% higher profitability and a 200% higher growth. Those organizations that do not can face performance discounts of 37% to 108%.

Nikolas Badminton and the Futurist Think Tank works with the C-suite and executives to provide Strategic Foresight services, including:

• Foresight training
• Foresight workshops (using our proprietary Foresight Development Framework)
• Future product exploration
• Discuss of global megatrends, secondary research and scanning for signals.
• Identify disruptive industry trends.
• Seek challenges and seeing unforeseen risks.
• Build WHAT IF… futures scenarios.
• Write speculative fiction and designing experiential futures.
• Backcasting and risk anticipation.

Contact us to discuss your project needs.

Nikolas Badminton provides coaching to C-suite executives on augmenting corporate strategic planning and risk analysis with foresight processes and capabilities. His ongoing counsel and collaborative methods create the ability for executives to more deeply consider our futures and bring incredible value to their organizations.

In addition, monthly and quarterly signals and trends reports can be provided with active coaching on the implications of

• Global megatrends, secondary research and scanning for signals.
• Disruptive industry trends.
• Unforeseen challenges and risks.
• WHAT IF… futures scenarios.
• Exploration of speculative fiction and experiential futures.
• Backcasting and risk anticipation.

Futures coaching can also be provided for incumbent and incoming Futurist-in-Residence and Chief Futures Officers (CFuO) to ensure a broader worldview is maintained and a connection to the wider foresight community is ongoing.

Contact us to discuss your coaching needs.

Chief Futurist and leader of the Futurist Think Tank Nikolas Badminton presents the Exponential Minds Podcast where he explores ideas with experts from futures thinking all fields around the world discussing how humanity is impacted by the exponential growth in technology and the thinking behind it.

Since 2016 he has been interviewing incredible creators, designers, thinkers and futurists on their philosophies and work. These include – Denny Unger, Kharis O’Connell, Dr. Wendy Schultz, Madeline Ashby, Karl Schroeder, Monika Bielskyte, Leah Zaidi, Dre Labre, Dr. Jake Sotiriadis, Dr. Joseph Voros, Tracey Follows, Bronwyn Williams, Loes Damhof, Ian Burbidge, Carol Anne Hilton, Rotem Petranker, Pia Puolakka, Chris Dancy, Peter Nowak, Natalie Nixon, Melissa Eshaghbeigi, Rocky Ozaki, Sasha Despotovski, Rafeeq Bosch, Cathy Hackl, Ben Feist, Marianne Lefever, Anne Boysen, Glen Hiemstra, Shawn Kanungo, Liza Amlani, and more.

Subscribe on Anchor, Spotify, Apple and Google Podcasts.

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Nikolas Badminton owns and operates futurist.com and is the Chief Futurist of the Futurist Think Tank.

Futurist.com began in 1993, when Glen Hiemstra was working on a project in the greater Seattle area to be called ‘Smart Seattle’. From a project team member, Jan Greylorn, he learned about Mosaic, the first web browser that was going to launch that very year, at which point the Internet would start to become the World Wide Web. He also learned that there was an international registry for what would become Home Pages or Domains on this new World Wide Web.

Glen was primed to hear such news because he had literally been studying the future of communication on the Internet since 1980, publishing some of the early academic work on that topic while in academia. And, Glen had been using the early Internet in my futurist consulting business for years via AOL. So he immediately inquired about registering the domain Futurist.com and was surprised to learn that neither the World Future Society nor Alvin Toffler nor anyone else had registered Futurist.com. So Glen stepped up and did just that.

And now, over 27 years later, as so well expressed by the poet David Whyte, “I turned my face for a moment, and it became my life.”

By 1995 with the help of Brenda Cooper (now an award winning science fiction writer and member of the Futurist.com Think Tank, but then an IT manager for a small city who was experimenting in writing HTML code) Glen had put a website up, and by 1998 it was well established. You can find a version of that early Futurist.com on the Wayback Machine – this is about the oldest version that you can access.

We at futurist.com have always offered free information to the public, written by Glen and guest writers, while also acting as a marketing tool for his futurist business of consulting, research, and keynote speaking. At various times Glen tried to make it more of a team operation, most recently with the creation of the Futurist.com Think Tank in 2013.

In 2018 Nikolas Badminton had the the pleasure of connecting and working with Glen and the Think Tank members in running projects, delivering futurist keynotes, creating content and advising clients.

Over the past 25 years Nikolas benefited from the wisdom gained from studying artificial intelligence and linguistics to delivering large scale data analytics solutions to advancing digital strategy and consumer engagement through advertising and sharing economy platforms. This experience is the bedrock for the futures practice he have built over the past 10 years.

In that time Nikolas worked as a futurist speaker and consultant to keynote and advise over 300 companies, established national TV and radio conversations on the future, published research into the implications of artificial intelligence and technologies’ effect on mental health, and advised A-list Hollywood in producing documentaries. In addition, Nikolas has shared over 750 articles on his own website – www.nikolasbadminton.com – in addition to speaking around the world, working with the most impactful companies, and curating events like Cyborg Camp YVR, Dark Futures and Future Camp.

The parallels between the futures practice Nikolas built and what Glen has been delivering for decades are hugely complementary so we decided for Nikolas to take the reins on running Futurist.com for the next 27 years, and beyond.

Nikolas Badminton FRSA takes on the reigns at Chief Futurist of the Futurist Think Tank while Glen Hiemstra remains involved at a distance as Founder and Futurist Emeritus.

Our futures are certainly bright. Come along for the ride.

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