Regrounding (Back to the Futures #12)
January has felt strangely split.
On the one hand, the world seems to have started the year at full speed. A whirlwind of headlines, geopolitical shifts, AI all over, and personal resets all layered on top of each other. Many people I’ve spoken with describe the same feeling: being thrown straight into motion before they’ve even had time to land.
On the other hand, my own start to the year has been slower than usual, and intentionally so. Less sprinting, more catching up. Less reacting, more regrounding.
Alex Honnold might have already aced his year by climbing to the top of Taipei 101 but for the rest of us it can take time to get back on track, rebuild momentum, and revisit some of the foundations that easily blur when the calendar gets crowded.
Part of that has meant taking some of my own medicine. Stepping back into learning in a more structured way. Revisiting frameworks, assumptions, and habits I teach others, not necessarily to reaffirm them, but to see where they still hold and where they need strengthening or challenging. Relearning is humbling work. It reveals blind spots and it sharpens practice, just like the ways we talk about foresight. And it reminds me that foresight isn’t something you “graduate from”, it’s constant work.
This regrounding must also come with clearer boundaries. Saying no more often, being more deliberate about where energy goes and knowing that plenty will happen this year regardless.
Looking back at 2025 through that lens makes the contrast even clearer. Over the year, ANTICIPATE reached more than 600,000 impressions on LinkedIn, engaged more than 2,500 people through talks, workshops, and facilitation, and grew this newsletter to 2,000+ subscribers (hello to everyone out there!). We ran 25 workshops, gave 31 talks, hosted 5 masterclasses, launched Find Your Futures Voice, worked across 12 countries, and supported multiple strategic foresight advisory and research projects (check our Wrapped).
Those numbers matter, but mostly as traces of something else: conversations, rooms, moments where people paused long enough to think differently about what lies ahead. So this first issue of 2026 is definitely not about acceleration but grounding. About reconnecting with why anticipation matters, why futures literacy is a capability worth cultivating, and why slowing down can sometimes be the most strategic move we make.
As the year begins, these are some of the questions I’m carrying:
→ What does it mean to start the year/season grounded rather than rushed?
→ How can we build in habits for unlearning and relearning continuously?
→ And how do we build momentum with healthy boundaries?
Let’s dive in.
LOOKING BACK
📍 YONDERS — Futures, culture & agency (Brussels)
A first visit to Brussels and a meaningful return to the YONDERS project — a European initiative sitting at the intersection of cultural entrepreneurship, education, and social innovation. The evaluation and reflection session at ICHEC Brussels Management School reinforced a familiar truth from futures work: futures are shaped as much by people’s willingness to mobilise as by policies, strategies, or capital. Capacity, confidence, and imagination matter — especially when change starts small, local, and fragile.
📍 Teaching foresight research — Elisava (Barcelona, virtual)
Guest lecture for Phil Balagtas’ Futures Thinking class at Elisava School of Design and Engineering, focusing on the craft of foresight research. Beyond data collection, we explored scoping, exploratory vs. normative work, pattern recognition, and how research actually travels into strategy and decision-making. Teaching remains one of the sharpest ways to refine practice — and to strengthen foundations as the field continues to open up.
📍 Find Your Futures Voice — mentoring in practice
Two parallel mentoring journeys continued these months, each shaped by very different needs: from integrating foresight into a tech and design business, to building a futures-informed coaching practice. The work spans confidence, methods, positioning, and concrete project sparring — always adapting to what the person wants to achieve, rather than forcing a fixed path.
📍 IIX x ANTICIPATE — Futures of Finance (course collaboration)
Ongoing collaboration with Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) on Leading the Future of Finance: Megatrends, Signals & Systemic Shifts. Built on earlier foresight research into impact investing and long-term capital flows, the course introduces futures thinking through the Megatrends PRISM to help finance and impact practitioners navigate colliding futures, systemic risk, and long-term trade-offs with more intention.
📍 Augmenting Foresight — AI, judgment & guardrails
We closed out 2025 with our final masterclass, Augmenting Foresight, co-hosted with Chloé de Ruffray. The focus was not speed or automation, but intent, judgment, and ethics — where AI can support exploration without flattening thinking. A recurring principle: use AI most in explore and expand moments; be far more careful in define and decide moments.
Watch the Masterclass here: https://www.anticipate.dk/store/p/augmenting-foresight
📍 Growing the team — welcome, Nora
Nora joined ANTICIPATE as a strategic foresight intern, strengthening our capacity around research, signals, and project support.
📍 Megatrends across Denmark — public futures literacy
Seven Megatrends talks and workshops across December and January, spanning public ones in Aarhus, Hjørring, Aalborg, and beyond, plus sessions with business networks. These conversations reinforced why futures thinking shouldn’t be confined to capital cities or boardrooms. Megatrends are the excuse; agency, interconnections, and decision-making under uncertainty are the real conversation.
📍 Culture Connectors — insight, culture & futures
Continuing into another year as part of Culture Connectors (Class of 2026), representing Denmark. Working at the intersection of culture and commerce consistently brings the futures lens back to lived experience — and to the importance of translating what’s happening “out there” into decisions “in here.”
📍 AI, design & value — Formland
Talk at Formland Design & Interior Conference on moving the AI conversation away from hype and toward signals, judgment, and real value creation — especially in creative and manufacturing contexts.
📍 Writing & reflection — foresight in print
Two pieces published: an article for Compass on the art and challenge of selling foresight, and a Futures Digest article from the Ljubljana Forum reflecting on Three Horizons and the tension between ideal, desirable, and plausible futures.
📍 APA Trend Report for Planners 2026 — contributing foresight
Contribution to the American Planning Association’s 2026 Trend Report for Planners, where friction, uncertainty, and instability were treated not as problems to smooth over, but as realities to govern. A valuable reminder that planning is increasingly about navigating volatility — and that futures tools are most honest when they resist false certainty.
LOOKING AHEAD
📍 Pro-bono Strategy Scenario Project — a new way to democratize futures
More on this in the coming week, but this is a rare opportunity for impact organisations and NGOs to carry out a strategic foresight project with us. It’s part of our effort to democratize futures — and also a test of a new “foresight for strategy” process designed to help teams move from uncertainty to choices without pretending the future is predictable.
📍 byStudents — Democratising futures (Copenhagen)
A community evening with Futurists byStudents on who gets to shape the future — and who too often gets left out of the conversation. I’ll be sharing reflections from practice and opening up a dialogue on futures literacy as something we build together, not something reserved for experts.
📍 Anticipatory Governance in Practice — guest talk
A talk on anticipatory governance in practice for a wider programme on governance and long-term public decision-making. A chance to translate the concept away from theory and into what it actually looks like inside institutions: foresight routines, feedback loops, networks, and the ability to stay flexible under pressure.
📍 Climate progress — “critical hope” webinar
A webinar for HK on climate progress and the solutions already moving — and why hope needs to be critical, not naive. When climate conversations become only catastrophe-driven, it narrows imagination and increases paralysis. This session is about spotting progress, keeping nuance, and building momentum for action.
📍 AI talks & panels — signals, not noise
Three talks and panels across February and March focused on what sits around the technology: governance, responsibility, organisational choices, and the difference between genuine signals of transformation and the constant churn of hype. The goal is to support more grounded conversations about value, risk, and intent.
📍 The Future Is… Megatrends in Everyday Life (Gladsaxe)
An open presentation on megatrends as lived forces — not abstract concepts — and how they show up in everyday decisions, work, and community life. This is also part of our contribution to World Futures Day, with a special focus on Young Voices, speaking to youth and families.
📍 Youth futures research + AI
A new research project exploring young people’s relationship with technology and the futures, how they experience agency, anxiety, and possibility in a world where AI is increasingly ambient.
SIGNAL(S) OF THE MONTH
We started the year the same way we often end up returning to: with signals.
For the second year in a row, we shared 12 signals in 12 days, and starting the year this way has quietly become a ritual for us.
Horizon scanning is still the bread and butter of foresight. And when we stop doing it, we don’t usually become calmer or clearer — we tend to get pulled into the noise instead. The loud stories. The urgent headlines. The things that already have momentum.
Signals give us something concrete to think with. Something to anchor our conversations to before opinions harden or narratives collapse into extremes.
FUTURES & FORESIGHT EVENTS
Austin hosts one of the most vibrant intersections of technology, culture, and futures thinking each year. The futures track is shaping up to be particularly strong.
📍 Oceania Futures & Foresight Symposium 2026
A growing futures community bringing together research, practice, and regional perspectives from across Oceania.
📍 World of Beautiful Business Forum — 10-year anniversary
An inspiring gathering focused on regenerative, human-centred, and values-driven business futures.
You can always find more upcoming events we’re tracking (or contributing to) here: https://www.anticipate.dk/futures-foresight-events
SPOTLIGHT
Workshops that explore the futures and move people somewhere
One question we hear often is: “So what is it that you actually offer?”
One of the answers is workshops.
At ANTICIPATE, workshops sit at the core of our Workshops & Immersions offer. They’re facilitated working sessions designed to create traction around a focused question — fast.
Our workshops are experiential by design. Participants don’t just listen or discuss. They work with change. They make sense of uncertainty, test assumptions, imagine alternatives, and co-create tangible outputs that can be acted on once the room clears.
Examples of workshop formats we run
– Megatrends PRISM
– Scenarios for Strategy
– Visioning & Backcasting
– Risk Mapping & Resilience
– Horizon Scanning
– Three Horizons
– Foresight & Futures Thinking (applied)
A recent example is our Megatrends PRISM workshop on Design Education Futures, where global forces were translated into concrete implications for education and practice.
If you’re looking to work on futures together, our inbox is always open.
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
