Writing about futures

My 2020 book “Zukünfte - Offen für Vielfalt” summarizes, in accessible language, what I have learned about dealing wisely with what lies ahead. It is meant to make readers curious about doing their own futures work and offers many concrete suggestions for doing so. It includes a bit of theory, many methods, and concrete projects.

I am still proud of my contributions to Riel Miller’s book “Transforming the Future,” published in 2018. I was able to act as a sparring partner for Riel on the first chapters, edit the case studies in chapter 4, and contribute a chapter of my own about our quality-of-life process in Frankfurt. In June 2018 I then organized a book party for it in Berlin.

Ten years earlier, my dissertation “Long-Run Growth Forecasting” had appeared, incorporating many ideas from the project “Global Growth Centres 2020,” which I had the opportunity to lead at Deutsche Bank. In the dissertation, I used the statistical method of panel cointegration to extract as much information as possible about the future from time series on economic growth, physical capital, human capital, and openness.

After leaving Deutsche Bank, I devoted myself more and more intensively to futures research, still in the singular at the time. In "Zukunftsforschung für Staaten" I emphasized the value of broad-based, open processes of communication across disciplines and ministries, as well as flexible networks. Among the ten methods presented in the study was causal layered analysis, which still plays an important role in my work today.

At the think tank “Center for Social Progress,” founded in 2008, everything initially revolved around participatory vision processes on the topic of quality of life. We analyzed processes in other countries and ran our own. In studies such as "Die Kraft gesellschaftlicher Visionen" we shared our findings.

At the moment, I am exploring what Futures Literacy Laboratories can achieve and how the achievement of these goals can be assessed. The 2022 study "On the Evaluation of Futures Literacy Laboratories" offers an initial overview. The Futures Expeditions with young people are being evaluated systematically.

My most recent contributions all revolve around Futures Literacy and the method of Futures Literacy Laboratories.

"Zukünftebildung – neue Kompetenzen für den Umgang mit dem Später" is a chapter for the book "Transformatives Inklusionsmanagement: Theoretische Markierungen und gelebte Beispiele eines neuen Forschungs- und Handlungsfeldes," edited by Oliver Koenig.

In the podcast "Eine Zukunft ist nicht genug" from Lernlust, I speak with Bergheim about learning in and about futures, and in Tech&Trara by Moritz Stoll about "How we can make our futures visible. Together with Lena Tünkers, I spoke about alternative futures in a UNESCO webinar. Together with Martina Oettl, the webinar of Bertha von Suttner University focuses more broadly on Futures Literacy.

In the article "Raum für Neues" in the 2019 journal for organizational development, I explained how a high degree of Futures Literacy helps people recognize meaning and significance in complex systems and thereby remain capable of acting (the full article is available on request).

In the members’ magazine of the Baden-Baden Entrepreneur Dialogues, in "Neue Lösungen aus dem Zukünftelabor," I report on two laboratories that Martina Oettl and I ran for alumni and the current cohort.