Using social simulations to pre-live provocative future scenarios.
Futures thinking is gaining traction, but, too often, traditional methods and scenarios fall short of building the practical skills and confidence we actually need to face what’s coming.
But what if we could prepare for unthinkable futures, increasing our mental resilience and our ability to adapt to whatever comes? It’s an approach that has been proven to work—in 2010, game designer and forecaster Jane McGonigal invited a group of nearly 20,000 people to imagine and “pre-live” a global respiratory pandemic; when Covid-19 hit, that group was prepared and ready. They had worked through the panic and anxiety of the realities of a pandemic long before they ever experienced one. And, by doing so together as a group, they identified likely patterns of behaviour in that future—and surfaced policy issues worth addressing well before they can arise.
This workshop will use one powerful methodology to take you through the fastest, most effective way to build practical futures skills: social simulations. Scenarios written in the third person can feel distant and abstract. But when you step into a future in the first person, especially alongside others, you don’t just imagine it, you live it—as if you woke up in that future today. This immersive approach helps bypass the brain’s natural resistance to thinking about the future, especially when those thoughts are uncomfortable, so you can engage more deeply, creatively, and honestly with what might lie ahead.
Drawing on neuroscience and cognitive psychology, the session will equip you with the skills and the relevant AI tools to run social simulations yourself and support you to draw on key strategic insights to change the way you do your work (or live your life!) today. In the end, futures thinking should not only help you anticipate different futures, but help you bring about the future you want to see happen.
Note: This session asks you to face futures that may be uncomfortable. These are the kinds of scenarios we often avoid thinking about, only to be caught off guard when they arrive—like the pandemic. Please consider this before joining this session. If you’re up for building your resilience and imagination muscles, and don’t mind going through some discomfort in the process, we’d love to have you in the session.
Learning outcomes
- Practice foundational futures thinking skills and employ relevant AI tools to create future scenarios
- Learn how to organise and run social simulations of future scenarios for groups of different sizes
- Draw strategic insights from experienced simulations and apply them to change practices within your own organisations and communities