In 2012, I founded SciFutures on little more than a hunch that science fiction could be a powerful business tool. I had no proof it would take off as it was the first business consultancy of its kind anywhere in the world. When I told people my half-baked business idea, they looked at me with a semi shocked, semi amazed expressions on their face. I figured they thought I had 12-18 months at best and I’d be soon be looking for a new job with cap in hand. They were right that it was a risky move. It entailed me giving up a successful career as President of an innovative research company (System One formerly BrainJuicer) and my family moving into a smaller home to manage expenses as we figured out what we do to make money.
However, what led me to the idea of SciFutures was a lifetime of deep and visceral connections with the future via stories from writers like Asimov, Greg Bear, Orson Scott Card and Philip K. Dick. Seeing Star Wars with my father at seven years old and watching Star Trek made a huge impression on my developing mind and sparked something deep in my heart that inspired me to want to see those amazing science inspired futures come into being. It eventually became clear to me what I needed to do to achieve that dream when I had an epiphany at a sci-fi creative writing class at UCLA. The epiphany was that if executives had the same deep gut connection as I and many sci-fi lovers have with the future, then surely the chances of those futures being created were far more likely. Perhaps we could use those same forces that moved me so deeply as a child to help remove the barriers to creating genuinely sci-fi like innovation at the world’s largest organizations?
All entrepreneurs have dreams and hopes of what they may achieve but looking back over the past eight years, I am still amazed at what science fiction has been able to achieve, not simply for our company but for our clients and thanks to the 300 sci-fi writers who help us around the globe. We have worked with some of the world’s largest organizations like Visa, Coca-Cola, Hersheys, NATO and ABInBev. We have helped thousands of executives gain insight and clarity by writing their personal sci-fi stories about their organizations and as early as 2013, we sparked genuinely sci-fi like innovation with companies like Lowe’s and the first ever home improvement simulator (the Holoroom) from a story inspired by Star Trek’s Holodeck.
Today, our work is shaping the development strategies of R&D companies whose products touch the lives of billions around the word many times a day. I’d love to share some of these sci-fi like ideas as they are truly amazing but strict NDA’s ensure they will not see the light of day until they are part of the public domain and by then, they won’t feel as sci-fi as they do today. They’ll seem very normal just like Skyping is normal today but was sci-fi in the early 2000s.
Connection with research
So what does sci-fi have to do with research and planning for the future? We need science fiction more than ever to help us prepare as best as we can for the tsunami of change that is coming our way. Artificial Intelligence and Human Augmentation are two of many of the technological developments that are going to radically shape our humanity. While technologies like machine learning and gene editing provide us with remarkable opportunities to elevate our species, like all powerful tools, they come with significant risks to our humanity. And in a time where we need thoughtful action more than ever, we must anticipate the unintended consequences and more importantly, we must do it in a way that creates an emotional and visceral connection so that we change meaningful behavior. Our work attempts to do that.
We need science fiction more than ever to help us prepare as best as we can for the tsunami of change that is coming our way.
Science fiction works hard to grease the wheels of change. We see it in our best work with our clients. We see 100 year old companies suddenly using a new and more visionary language about the future and taking for granted as normal, ideas that were truly provocative even as early as 6 months before they were introduced. We see stories that tame complexity and make dry, technical, abstract and intangible ideas real in a way that helps us feel the very human impact deep down in our gut. It works because the stronger the emotional connection to the future, the more likely our clients are to act. There is strong science to support this. The work of Daniel Kahneman Thinking Fast Thinking Slow and of my previous employers at System One have shown that the stronger an emotional connection is to a piece of content, the more likely people are to act on those feelings.
We take the prominent disruptive forces of change that we work with on a day to day basis with our clients. [These are mostly in the areas of Human Augmentation, Immersive Realities (VR, AR etc.) and AI.] Then, using custom science fiction stories, we create a deeper visceral connection with the opportunities they raise, particularly how they could change the nature of our clients’ businesses with the aim that they help all of us make better decisions that lead to positive business impact and a better future for all stakeholders. What keeps me up awake at night is that we may wake up in say 15 years from now in a dystopian cage and regret that weren’t more thoughtful about these technologies and made better decisions while the cement was still wet. What gives me great hope is that those same visceral and deep emotional connections with the future that I had as a boy in 1976 can be used to create positive futures.
