A Postcard to the Futures (Back to the Futures #17)
Dear futures,
Three years ago today, ANTICIPATE was launched.
As an experiment and not at all with a finished model for what it would become, but with a name, a direction, a lot of stubborn curiosity, and a manifesto that tried to capture why this work mattered.
The "final" version was called ANTICIPATE Manifesto v0.5, which already says something. Not quite final or finished really, more of a working hypothesis than a declaration (a reason why it's also not available to the public). Three years later, that hypothesis has been tested in many different rooms, with many different people, across many different kinds of projects. It is still being tested.
And it probably always will be a work-in-progress, just like the futures themselves.
There is also something else that has become encoded into the spirit of ANTICIPATE: the recurring and conscious decision to ask whether we are still on the right path. To take our own medicine and to do a bit of foresight on ourselves. To pause, look around, look ahead, and decide whether this is still a project worth saying yes to.
I, Mathias, try to do that every year around this date. I don't necessarily expect the answer to be no, but it's because I do not want ANTICIPATE to continue simply because it has become the default. There is a real difference between drifting into another year and consciously choosing one. Between keeping something alive out of habit and saying, with intent, that this work still matters, this direction still has energy, and this is still a path worth walking.
So, futures, here we are again. And the answer is yes. Yes to another year, a yes to the project, the experiment and a yes to the work. A yes to continuing to build, question, experiment, and evolve.
Some parts of the original manifesto now feel a little vague, while other parts come across as almost comically ambitious. Some parts I would probably rewrite in simpler language today, but a surprising amount still feels true.
“ANTICIPATE is a strategic foresight consultancy that operates at the intersection of people, change, and futures.”
“Our mission is to empower organizations, regardless of their size, to anticipate and better prepare for futures characterized by uncertainty, complexity, and disruption.”
“We take a proactive approach, aiming to reorient and reinvent organizations, their strategies, and their innovation efforts before they are forced to do so.”
“We strongly believe in leveraging collective imagination and capacity to enable broader systemic change.”
“The futures, by nature, are not urgent. Our goal is to make the futures relevant in the present.”
“The present is a temporary condition, yet we often act as if it will persist indefinitely.”
“We operate in the friction field between today and tomorrow, certainty and uncertainty, structure and chaos."
Those last two lines still hit me, because in many ways, ANTICIPATE was created out of a frustration with how easily people and organisations get trapped inside the present. Not because they are unimaginative, but because the present is loud and demands attention. It rewards urgency and it makes short-term adaptation feel safer than long-term transformation.
What I have learned, again and again, is that foresight at its best creates a different kind of space, where people can notice what is changing before it becomes obvious. In this space, they can test assumptions before the world tests them on their behalf and they can rehearse different futures, not to predict them, but to act with more intent in the present.
That was the idea then. Three years in, it is still the idea now.
What has changed is that the idea has become more real. In the past three years, ANTICIPATE has worked with everything from one-person to small team futures immersives and workshops for small organisations to larger strategy, innovation, and capability-building projects for globally recognised companies, public entities, think tanks, foundations, and agencies. There has been client work, pro-bono work, public writing, trainings, talks, tools, reports, experiments, collaborations, and partnerships across continents.
Some projects have been polished and visible, while thers have been quiet and internal. About everything from futures literacy and capacity building to strategy, innovation, leadership, impact, cities, sustainability, democracy, health, culture, technology...
Across them all, the ambition has been the same: to help people and organisations stay in shape for the futures. Through structured imagination, honest dialogue, sharper questions, better signals, stronger facilitation, and more tangible ways of connecting long-term change to decisions made today.
Having a vision or a manifesto is one thing. Working on it every day, building a practice around it, testing it with real people, and making it come alive in real projects is another. That is the part I am most proud of. Not because everything is finished. It is most definitely not and it most definitely hasn't been a simple journey. But because, three years later, I can look back and recognise the thread.
The work has grown and so has the community around. The sense of possibility has expanded massivley. And, increasingly, ANTICIPATE is not just one person with a manifesto. It is becoming a wider constellation of collaborators, clients, partners, friends, participants, facilitators, thinkers, designers, researchers, and practitioners who each bring something to the work of making futures more tangible, more inclusive, and more actionable.
That feels worth celebrating.
Looking back, the past month has been full in the best and most intense way. We ran a foresight masterclass for a German pharma company. We were part of Future Days in Copenhagen, where we co-hosted a futures breakfast, hosted a city scanning stop, and facilitated the first edition of ACT Futures Mosaic. Then I went to Brazil for a smart city conference, where we delivered a keynote and joined a panel. More reflections on all of that will come after the summer, once there has been a bit more time to digest it properly.
For now, it mostly feels like a good reminder that foresight is about creating the right kinds of encounters.
Looking ahead, the summer is not exactly quiet. We are working to wrap up a project for Livity and Google, and this is really where the "we" comes in, a proper team effort across the board. That is a small but important milestone in itself. Today, on ANTICIPATE’s three-year anniversary, we also started a new project on the futures of foresight in the age of AI.
We have also recently become involved in coaching executives from B2B company in futures thinking, using different tools across a series of sessions. There is also more coaching underway, another training in August for the German-based pharma company, and a second cohort of The Foresight Facilitator coming up soon.
That last one deserves a little extra mention, because The Foresight Facilitator is for people who do not just want to understand futures and foresight, but want to become better at guiding other people through futures conversations. Because facilitation is often where foresight either lands or disappears.
You can have a strong framework, an elegant set of scenarios, or a beautiful trend deck, but if the room does not open up, if people do not feel invited to think differently, if the conversation becomes too abstract or too safe, then the work rarely moves.
The Foresight Facilitator is about that craft. How to hold uncertainty in a room. How to design workshops that do more than generate sticky notes. How to help people move between signals, assumptions, tensions, implications, and action. How to create enough structure for people to feel safe, and enough openness for something new to emerge.
There are still a few spots available for the next cohort: https://www.anticipate.dk/store/p/the-foresight-facilitator
So, futures, three years in: countless projects, many experiments, a few detours, many generous people, a lot learned, and much still unfinished.
But rereading that original manifesto today, it is striking how much of it has slowly, imperfectly, and sometimes unexpectedly been brought into fruition. The version I wrote three years ago probably needs an update soon. ANTICIPATE has changed and so has the world has changed.
Foresight itself is even changing. But the underlying commitment still stands: to make the futures relevant in the present. To help people and organisations act before they are forced to. To bring more imagination, responsibility, and long-term thinking into the rooms where decisions are made.
Hopefully, we will find some time to invite people in and celebrate properly soon.
For now, thank you for being part of the first three years. And incredibly excited to see where we will be one, three, and ten years from now.
All the best,
Back to the Futures is your monthly glimpse into what we’re doing at ANTICIPATE. If you’d like to collaborate, bring foresight into your work, or just stay more plugged into the futures space, we’d love to hear from you at hi@anticipate.dk.
Until next time, stay curious.
— The ANTICIPATE Team
