2022 – New Futurist Keynotes, Workshops and Consulting

The SARS-Cov-2 (covid 19) pandemic has awoken our curiosity and a fundamental shift in our mindset from what is to what if… All businesses are investing in creating longer views to 10, 20, and 30+ horizons to give them strategic advantage today and I’ve focused on showing world-leading organizations the essential global shifts, essential technologies and strategic foresight methods that will level up innovative thinking, agility and progressive futures design in your business. 

2021 was a significant year for me and my business. In addition to my son turning one and the joy of fatherhood accelerating, I have seen challenging times overtaken by reflection that’s led to incredible personal and organizational growth. 

I became the Chief Futurist and Think Tank leader at Futurist.com – the world’s first futurist website established in 1993 by our Futurist Emeritus Glen Hiemstra. We worked with many clients on strategic foresight and futures design projects through 2021 to help create new organizational capabilities. I feel blessed to have the chance to take such an iconic brand and grow that going forward. A new site is being launched in early-2022 so look out for announcements around that.

I had the opportunity to become a Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (The RSA), an inspirational organization founded in 1754 with notable past fellows include Charles Dickens, Benjamin Franklin, Stephen Hawking, Karl Marx, Adam Smith, Nelson Mandela, David Attenborough, William Hogarth, and Tim Berners-Lee. Today, the RSA has fellows elected from 80 countries worldwide. Check out the incredible work we do at www.thersa.org. I look forward to contributing to the community.

2021 was a busy year for writing. I was featured as the opening chapter author in ‘The Future Starts Now’ that was curated by my great friends Bronwyn Williams and Theo Priestly. I was also interviewed for and featured in ‘Bridge Makers: Becoming a Citizen Futurist’ by April Reagan and ‘The Future of You: Can Your Identity Survive 21st-Century Technology?’ by Tracey Follows – do check out both of those great books and the work by the authors. Most exciting was that I signed a new international publishing deal for my new book ‘Facing Our Futures’ due out in Fall 2022, published by Bloomsbury. I decamped to Palm Desert in California to finish that book and I’m excited for people to read that later in 2022.

I also had the pleasure of delivering dozens of futures focused keynotes to incredible clients, including American Express, Dive In Festival (my first collaborative keynote with Melissa Eshaghbeigi), City of Dublin, Corteva, Ardo, Greater Toronto Airport Authorities (GTAA), Transporeon, BC Securities Commission, TD Wealth, ISACA, IRC Global Executive Search Partners, and many more. The clients that approach me are looking to establish capabilities and gain a wider perspective on the world. The keynotes I present are collaborative and focus on the questions they want to answer. I value all of these clients deeply.

New Essential Futurist Keynotes

As I turn my attention to 2022 and beyond I realize that we have a huge opportunity to be curious and creative in reconsidering how we approach our lives and business. In doing so, I have created three new essential keynotes that will inspire businesses to think outside the box and level up.

I have formulated three keynotes that aim to address the biggest questions I am seeing world leaders ask: How do we design incredible futures? How do we level up innovation in our organization? And, how do we embrace the new digital economies that are changing how our world works? Let me take you through each of them…

Facing Our Futures – designing the next 50 years

Nikolas Badminton takes you through the thinking from his new book ‘Facing Our Futures’ that primes you to think outside of the box on what your futures may bring to your organization. He will teach you fundamentals of futures design, show you the mega trends that are shaping our world and your business over the next 20+ years. Nikolas will take you through how futures thinking creates a competitive advantage:

• Creating a futures mindset – Shift your mindset to embrace uncertainty and curiosity, establish principles for a better world, scan for signals, explore trends and create scenarios for your business in the next 10+ years that positively impact your triple bottom line – people, planet and profit.

• Seeing Global Megatrends – Consider the dynamics of global economic power shifts, population growth and urban movements, the impacts of climate change and the opportunities presented by decarbonization, the water-food-energy nexus, new information economies, and so much more.

• Exploring Exponential Technologies – Take a deep dive into the tech that matters in 2022 and beyond – big data, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, sensor fusion, Web3 and the metaverse, genetic editing, quantum computing and nanotechnology, and more that’s driving transformation of every industry.

• Industry Futures – Understand the evolution of business through sustainability and the circular economy and see the futures of finance and insurance, automotive, aerospace, defense, urban planning and smart cities, transportation and logistics, agriculture and food supply, retail, media and telecommunications, social media and Web3, and more 

Your attendees will never see the world in the same way again. And, that will lead to an incredible shift in thinking towards our positive futures. 

Innovation 3.0 – supercharging your organization

Technological thinking has transformed humanity over the past 10,000 years and today it’s driving cultural change faster than ever. We have a duty to put humanity ahead of the exponential technologies to ensure that our needs are met and dreams are realized. Today, we can harness our innate curiosity and creativity to create solutions to humanity’s biggest problems and deliver value to people, ensure the safety of our planet and create profitable businesses. Nikolas will take you through:

• Building Innovation mindsets –  Learn how we can shift our thinking and organizational bottlenecks and limiting beliefs to build innovation practices with relentless focus and progressive mindsets that create organizational capabilities that will transform your business, drive new thinking, and lead to new products/services and incredible growth.

• Embracing Non Zero Sum – See how global industries are waking up to learn from each other – energy, finance and insurance, agriculture, transportation and logistics, high technology, media and more. There are no winners and losers – just a vibrant and collaborative non zero sum business landscape where we all grow together and humanity wins.

• Exploring Exponential Technologies – Take a deep dive into the tech that matters in 2022 and beyond – big data, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, sensor fusion, Web3 and the metaverse, genetic editing, quantum computing and nanotechnology, and more that’s driving transformation of every industry.

• Applying Strategic Foresight – Create the ability for your organization to see the signals of change, identify critical trends, and develop scenarios that will supercharge thinking in your organization in creating positive futures.

Your attendees will shift how they think about their work and the positive outcomes we strive to achieve.

New Digital Economies – the transformation of work, business and life

Since the early 1990s the Internet has been a backbone for innovative new businesses, ways to connect people across the planet and innovative technologies. It’s been tumultuous and defined by the people that want information to be free, the digital economy to be regulated, and to establish new and wildly profitable businesses.

Today we have more opportunity than ever to reconsider how our world works and to challenge our thinking. Nikolas will take you through the odyssey of opportunities and factors that will redefine our world:

• Foundations of Digital – Uncover the forgotten history of digital technologies and the moments that have created the information-driven economies that we see dominant in 2022.

• Cultural Shifts – Understand the future of our work and life, the social connections and the attention economy that defines communities, the increased power of the individual, and generational shifts – from Gen X to  Millennials to Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and beyond – and the monoculture that binds us all.

• Digital Technologies – See how our world has the opportunity to transform over the next 10  to 20 years through wild advancements in eCommerce and finance to Web3, decentralization and the Metaverse. And, see beyond the hype to a new reality.

• Strategic Foresight – Understand futures design and create the ability for your organization to see the signals of change, identify critical trends, and develop scenarios that will supercharge thinking in your organization in creating positive futures.

Your attendees will find new opportunities for engagement and digital transformation.

These are presented to inspire you to consider what we can do together. Over the last decade I’ve built a reputation for developing custom keynotes for clients. 

So, let’s talk and please reach out to discuss your event – I’d love to hear from you.

Foresight Training, Workshops and Consulting

Over the past two years we have developed training and workshops that prime the leaders in your organization to think like futurists and establish foresight capabilities that extend your ability to anticipate unforeseen risks, imagine and design your futures, and create resilient strategic plans.

In addition we take that learning and galvanize it with custom futures research and collaborative design with our client-specific workshops.

We’ve been lucky to work with great clients – here’s a much appreciated testimonial from a valued client:

“Working with Nik is an absolute pleasure. He landed in projects and got up to speed with the world of acronyms and grasping the realities of a global engineering company in no time. He is a talented future expert with a natural gift for futures and strategic business thinking. He made a huge impact for us to get the conversation about foresight going in North America but also the world. He helped us on 3 different projects successfully, sometimes with extremely short deadlines. He is very productive, inventive and strategic and shows a great deal of initiative and attention to detail and listens to what people have to say. Nik is always upbeat, with a great attitude & possesses all the skill sets that you would want in a highly productive team member. I can’t say enough good things about Nik.”

Catherine Roy, Design Lead, Thales International

Reach out to discuss the needs for your organization.

About Nikolas Badminton

Nikolas Badminton is the Chief Futurist at futurist.com and a world-renowned futurist speaker, consultant, researcher, and media producer. He helps trillion-dollar companies, progressive governments and the media shift their mindset from “what is” to “WHAT IF…” The result is empowered employees, new innovative products and incredible growth that leads to more revenues and a more resilient future.

Nikolas advised Robert Downey Jr.’s team for the ‘Age of A.I.’ documentary series, starred in ‘SMART DRUGS – a Futurist’s journey into biohacking’, and features on CTV, Global News, Sirius XM regularly. His mind-expanding research and opinion can be found on BBC, VICE, The Atlantic, Fast Company, Techcrunch, Business Insider, Huffington Post, Forbes, Sputnik and Venturebeat. 

Nikolas provides the opening chapter – ‘Start with Dystopia’ in a new book – ‘The Future Starts Now: Expert Insights into the Future of Business, Technology and Society’ on Bloomsbury. His new book ‘Facing Our Futures’ is due out in 2022 on Bloomsbury and equips executives and world leaders with insights and foresight tools to anticipate unforeseen risks, strengthen strategic planning, and imagine disruption. 

Nikolas is a Fellow of The Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce – The RSA. The organization has been at the forefront of significant social impact for over 260 years with notable past fellows including Charles Dickens, Benjamin Franklin, Stephen Hawking, Nelson Mandela, and Tim Berners-Lee.