At Autodesk, our team focuses on strategic foresight. Strategic foresight is a practice of looking systematically at the future, understanding fragmented indicators that suggest possible futures, and developing a point of view about how to respond. We use imagination to envision how our customers will work in a future world (typically about ten years out) and backcasting to move from the future world to the present. As an alternative to backcasting, we can look at the state of the practice today and forecast how our customers' work will evolve over the next decade. Our team's focus is squarely on the future.
Darren Brooker is a story strategist at Autodesk. Storytelling is related to strategic foresight in that storytelling helps frame Autodesk's future direction. By co-developing strategic narratives, Darren and other members of our team help ensure that our employees are equipped to engage with our customers in a dialog that further develops a shared view of the future. The best way to reach a common understanding is to tell a story that both customers and employees can relate to. Stories provide the waypoints as our technology evolves. Many of you regularly see Darren's work as part of Autodesk University keynote presentations.
As part of pondering the future, Darren recently shared three articles about the future:
| Paradigm Shifts Co-Chief Investment Officer & Co-Chairman of Bridgewater Associates, L.P., Ray Dalio posted on LinkedIn that the ways we work, a.k.a. paradigms, often only last for about 10 years. |
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| Intel's Neuromorphic System Hits 8 Million Neurons, 100 Million Coming by 2020 IEEE Spectrum reports that researchers can use rapidly improving chip technology to make systems that learn and see the world more like humans. |
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| Forget lower jobs growth, the number of people who’ve stopped looking for work is much more worrisome The Conversation reports that while the sudden slowdown in jobs growth after many months of strong numbers is worrying and signals a weakening U.S. economy, a more long-term concern is the persistently low labor force participation rate that has not recovered in the decade since the onset of the Great Recession. |
Thanks, Darren.
Our customers' future includes dealing with changes in the future of work and advancing technology. Our team considers how these changes will apply to designing and making. What are your thoughts on these topics? Feel free to respond to [email protected] or post a comment.
Autodesk has always been an automation company. Today, more than ever, that means helping our customers automate their design and make processes. We help them embrace the future of making, where they can do more (e.g., efficiency, performance, quality), with less (e.g., energy, raw materials, timeframes, waste of human potential), and realize the opportunity for better (e.g., innovation, user experience, return on investment). Technologies like generative design signal "what's next" as in a new paradigm for design. Believing that automation and robots will augment human capabilities rather than replace workers, chip technology that makes our computer-based assistants more like us is a welcome advancement. As automation will change the nature of work, we are working on the future of learning so we can help our customers upskill to other jobs in the world of designing and making. We want our solutions to address the way our customers work in the future by leveraging the technological advances that are underway now. This will provide the opportunity for better.
The future itself is alive in the lab.
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