Making Sense of the Future: An Interview with Cecily Sommers
Cecily Sommers is a futurist and business consultant. In this episode of 12 Geniuses, host Don MacPherson interviews Cecily as she explains her Four Forces of Change model. She shares which of those forces - energy, access to water, aging - will dominate the next decade and beyond.
Cecily goes in depth to describe how three technologies - artificial intelligence, bioengineering, and quantum mechanics - will reshape humanity. Finally, Cecily shares advice for how we can manage the incredible changes the future is sure to bring us.
Season Three of the podcast is dedicated to exploring the future and how life is sure to change over the next decade. This episode provides tools and guidance for how to better understand that future.
Cecily Sommers speaks, writes and consults on emerging trends, markets, and technologies shaping business and society. Cecily works with a wide range of Fortune 500 companies and organizations that are looking to stay ahead of the curve and become future-ready.
Topics Discussed: Early career, moving into the world of business, Strategic Foresight, progress over the last 100 years, emerging new orders, backlash and uncertainty, looking for stability, oscillating through change over time, mechanics of change, the Four Forces Model (resources, technology, demographics, governance), resources that will change the way we live and work, energy sources and storage, extraterrestrial resources, impact of water scarcity and climate change, migration, technologies that will redefine what we know is real, artificial intelligence, bioengineering, quantum mechanics, demographics shaping our future, how science affects demographics, the theme of decentralization, human nature, preparing for disruption and change, practicing the Four Forces in your life.
You can learn more about Cecily Sommers and her work at https://www.cecilysommers.com/.
You can buy her book Think Like a Futurist on amazon.