Future Forecasting

Wild Times: In which social service nonprofits save the day.

By Elizabeth Merritt

Introduction to This Scenario A wild card scenario explores the kind of low-probability, high-impact event that can disrupt the best-laid plans. Though you shouldn’t obsess about these possibilities, including a few wild cards in your …
The Future is Climate

By Sarah Sutton

Until we perfect my AI-powered digital avatar, I rely on an informal network of correspondents to cover critical events taking place around the globe. In today’s guest post, Sarah W. Sutton reports from the Global Climate Action Summit …
A New Equilibrium: Making the best of a world that’s a lot like today, only more so.

By Elizabeth Merritt

Introduction to This Scenario “A New Equilibrium” describes a future that might result from existing limits and challenges as they play out in coming decades. Using mainstream projections from credible sources, we envision where our …
A Suggestion Box is Not Going to Fix a Riot

By Calder Zwicky

I love a good immersive futurist exercise. One of the earliest CFM events involved recruiting museum people to create museum narratives for Superstruct, the Institute for the Future’s Massive Multi-player Online Forecasting game. But …
Exploring a Fragmented Future

By Elizabeth Merritt

The second installment of TrendsWatch 2018’s scenarios of 2040 is now up on the web for discussion and comment! Fragmentation is woven from some of the anxieties shared by museum people when I asked, “What are your fears about the future?” …
Fragmentation: Underground activists fight for equity, privacy, and economic reform

By Elizabeth Merritt

Introduction to This Scenario “Fragmentation” weaves together some of the anxieties shared by museum people when we asked, “What are your fears about the future?” While we hope that these depressing themes don’t all play out at once, each …
Introducing the TrendsWatch 2018 Scenarios

By Elizabeth Merritt

Why Tell Stories About the Future? Plans based on one anticipated future are brittle: they are prone to failure if the underlying assumptions turn out to be wrong. Many a strategic plan has met its demise as the economy shifts, popular …
Museums In 2040 Webinar

By American Alliance of Museums

Watch this recorded webinar, hosted by Blackbaud, exploring several potential futures for museums through scenarios published by the American Alliance of Museu…
TrendsWatch 2018: Our Bright Future

By Elizabeth Merritt

Check it out! The first sections of TrendsWatch 2018 are now up on the Alliance website. This year, in honor of CFM’s 10th anniversary, I’m putting together a Scenario Edition of the report designed to help organizations “futureproof” …
Future Proofing Museum Business Plans: Creating sustainable models for natural history research collections.

By Elizabeth Merritt

This article originally appeared in the May/June 2017 issue of Museum magazine. Last December, I co-taught a workshop in the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History’s newly renovated David Friend Hall, surrounded by a gorgeous exhibit …