Welcome to Futurist.com, site of futurist speaker Glen Hiemstra
What is your image of the future? What will change your business or community the most? Technology? Globalization? Energy? What are you missing? Here is an example.
Less than one year from now, the first Baby Boomer turns 65. Then, every 8 seconds someone in the U.S. will turn 65 - for 20 years. 
It's a global story. This age tsunami will change impact housing, transportation, technology, entertainment, employment, retirement, recreation, travel, social services, heath care, markets. It will change your life, whatever your age.
How do you get ready for such trends? How do you shape the future instead of just waiting for it?
Glen is a futurist speaker, futurist consultant, writer, blogger, internet video producer and host, and Founder of Futurist.com.
Glen is the author of Turning the Future Into Revenue: What Businesses and Individuals Need to Know to Shape Their Future (Wiley & Sons), and co-author of Strategic Leadership: Achieving Your Preferred Future. To arrange for a futurist keynote speech, contact us.
Sustainability 2.0
Is the sustainability trend impacting your organization? Are you being asked to be more sustainable? What does that even mean? Most people say it means producing goods and services without permanently depleting the earth's resources or polluting its environment. Is that possible? What if it is not enough? What if the real question is how we can make not just the environment sustainable, but jobs, medicine, travel, houses, whole communities, the world? How would we create that future? What advantage can you gain?
Explore Futurist.com
Futurist.com writings: Blog, Articles.
Futurist.com Online Video: short videos on a variety of topics, and audio-video archives
See what customers say about Glen.
See what other publications are saying about Futurist.com
Futurist.com is dedicated to disseminating information about the future. Whether you are interested in how we innovate our way to economic recovery, the future of energy, the future of health care, the future of transportation, the future of housing, future trends in technology, climate change, or any of the other compelling issues of our time, you will find answers here. Futurist.com is also dedicated to creating preferred futures, and offers expertise in long-range planning.
Long-Range Planning
How do we do long-range planning? Here is an example. A couple of years ago the Consumer & Commercial Products Division at John Deere wanted to create "pictures" of 2020. Using a series of workshops with several teams, preceded by in-depth research, we worked with advertising artists to create pictures of customers, products & services, and sales channels in 2020. This information became crucial input to the strategic planning process. In the public arena we've used similar activities to create scenarios of transportation in 2030, both for states and for the nation.
Future of Technology
The three biggest areas of technology development are well known - information technology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology. Have you considered this trend - the web is becoming the stream. Less attention is paid to static information, more to information that is flowing constantly. You've got to produce, and live, in the stream. Before too many years the concept of being offline and "going online," will be obsolete. It may even disappear from the language.
About Us
The future has lessons to teach us, if we listen to it. Learn more about our value proposition, what we believe, the founder of Futurist.com Glen Hiemstra, and about our projects and speeches. Many additional writers contribute.
Recent Blog Posts
The Future of Outsourcing
Recently I had the chance to sit down with Kate Vitasek, author of the new book, Vested Outsourcing, with Mike Ledyard and Karl Manrodt. Outsourcing is a controversial but fundamental business activity – as Kate notes Peter Drucker used to say “Do what you do best and outsource the rest,” and the idea of [...]
Climate Science Video – Is it Convincing?
As we watched the last days of the Olympics the past few days, I zeroed in on television ads sponsored by the American Oil & Gas industry – lots of these ads – and by the American coal industry. Both emphasized, with patriotic overtones, how important they are to creating jobs, and to achieving national [...]
Back to the Future Transportation
One of the amusing, and sad, things about discussions of the future of transit in the U.S. is that it is so often discussed in one of two ways, both intended to make it seem rather outlandish. First, it is discussed as something vaguely foreign – sure, they have widespread transit in Europe, but [...]
Energy in a box
The Bloom Box is the talk of the day, after the break out on 60-Minutes yesterday. This is a new fuel cell approach, already in use in some larger scale test operations, such as providing 15% of EBay’s electric needs. Very encouraging, if the mass-production costs are realistic. Not a lot of technical [...]
Glacier Retreat in Time-Lapse
Impressive time-lapse film of glacier retreat, promoting an upcoming NOVA program which aired a year ago.
