Making Futures Work

This book describes experiments in innovation, design, and democracy, undertaken largely by grassroots organizations, non-governmental organizations, and multi-ethnic working-class neighborhoods. These stories challenge the dominant perception of what constitutes successful innovations. They recount efforts at social innovation, opening the production process, challenging the creative class, and expanding the public sphere. The cases considered include a collective of immigrant women who perform collaborative services, the development of an open-hardware movement, grassroots journalism, and hip-hop performances on city buses. They point to the possibility of democratized innovation that goes beyond solo entrepreneurship and crowdsourcing in the service of corporations to include multiple futures imagined and made locally by often-marginalized publics.

The widespread belief that tech-savvy, educated millennials are well positioned to handle the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution is unfounded. It does not fully grasp the reality of a flux society, where relevant technological skills and knowledge are continuously changing: no one is permanently tech-savvy. Millennials, like other generations, face the challenge of needing to continually reskill. This has compounded their struggle to begin their careers at a point when there is no longer any guarantee of lifetime employment or retirement at a set age. Shaping the Futures of Work is a timely sociological exploration of the impact of technological innovations on employment. Nilanjan Raghunath proposes that stakeholders such as states, enterprises, and citizens hold equally important roles in ensuring that people can adapt, innovate, and thrive within conditions of flux. A promising model focuses on collaboration and proactive governance. While good governance includes citizen engagement, proactive governance goes one step further, creating inclusive policies, roadmaps, and infrastructure for social and economic progress. This book reveals that lifelong learning and adaptability are imperative, even for well-educated professionals. Using Singapore and Singaporean millennials as a case study, Raghunath examines proactive governance and delivers research and analysis to elucidate career trajectories, pointing to a work ethic that aims to engage with technological futures. Looking at local and global sociological literature to confirm the need for proactive governance, Shaping the Futures of Work suggests that Singaporean millennials – and professionals around the world – need to better prepare themselves for flux, risk, failure, and reinvention for career mobility.

This collection tells the story of an emerging and dynamic Africa, through the eyes of some of the youngest and most promising African entrepreneurs.

What do we know about the current realities of work and its likely futures? What choices must we make and how will they affect those futures? Many books about the future of work start by talking about the latest technology, and focus on how technology is going to change the way we work. And there is no doubt that technology will have huge impacts. However, to really understand the direction in which work is going, and the impact that technology and other forces will have, we need to first understand where we are. This book covers topics ranging from the ‘mega-drivers of change’ at work, power, globalisation and financialisation, to management, workers, digitalisation, the gig economy, gender, climate change, regulation and deregulation. In doing this, it refers to some of the great works of science fiction. It demolishes several myths, such as that the employment relationship is doomed, that we are all heading to becoming ‘freelancers’ or ‘gig workers’ one day, that most jobs will be destroyed by technological change, that the growth in jobs will mainly be in STEM fields, that we will no longer value collectivism as we will all be ‘individuals’, or that the death of unionism is inevitable. The Realities and Futures of Work also rejects the idea of technological determinism—that whatever will be, will be, thanks to technological change—and so it refuses to accept that we simply need to prepare to adapt ourselves to the future by judicious training since there is nothing else we can do about it. Instead, this book provides a realistic basis for thinking about both the present and the future. It emphasises the choices we make, and the implications of those choices for the future of work.

Learn how to get started with Futures Thinking. With this practical guide, Phil Balagtas, founder of the Design Futures Initiative and the global Speculative Futures network, shows you how designers and futurists have made futures work at companies such as Atari, IBM, Apple, Disney, Autodesk, Lufthansa, and McKinsey & Company. This book demystifies the process of Futures Thinking into a language that's practical and useful for both designers and strategists. You'll learn about Strategic Foresight for using ideas about the future to anticipate and prepare for change; explore Speculative Design to deal with the relationship between science, technology, and humans; and Design Fiction to explore and critique possible futures. Balagtas also shares stories from his journey to build a global community and describes how he works with clients to reshape the futures vocabulary. With this guide, you'll learn how to: Prepare your client, team, and/or audience for futures Facilitate and work with the fundamental methods and frameworks Gain advocacy and support within your organization Provide measurable value from the process and outcomes Build a futures culture and team Sustain a culture and support system beyond projects

Learn how to get started with Futures Thinking. With this practical guide, Phil Balagtas, founder of the Design Futures Initiative and the global Speculative Futures network, shows you how designers and futurists have made futures work at companies such as Atari, IBM, Apple, Disney, Autodesk, Lufthansa, and McKinsey & Company. This book demystifies the process of Futures Thinking into a language that's practical and useful for both designers and strategists. You'll learn about Strategic Foresight for using ideas about the future to anticipate and prepare for change; explore Speculative Design to deal with the relationship between science, technology, and humans; and Design Fiction to explore and critique possible futures. Balagtas also shares stories from his journey to build a global community and describes how he works with clients to reshape the futures vocabulary. With this guide, you'll learn how to: Prepare your client, team, and/or audience for futures Facilitate and work with the fundamental methods and frameworks Gain advocacy and support within your organization Provide measurable value from the process and outcomes Build a futures culture and team Sustain a culture and support system beyond projects

Henderson explains how GNP distorts the goal of human development, pointing out misleading assumptions and redefines health, wealth, and progress for humanity's long-term survival.

Beating the Financial Futures Market provides you with a straightforward, historically proven program to cut through the noise, determine what bits of information are valuable, and integrate those bits into an overall trading program designed to jump on lucrative trading opportunities as they occur. It will help you improve both your percentage of winning trades and the bottom line profitability of those winning trades.