The future concerns us every day. Our own, that of our families and fellow human beings and, of course, that of our companies and brands. We want to live in the best of all futures. That is why we are constantly learning, evaluating our options and optimizing ourselves and our environment to improve our chances. In short, we use our past experience and look to our future expectations.

We often only experience the present as a brief, hectic moment in between. Hectic, because our dynamic and complex environment demands a lot from us humans. We live in fast, globally networked and volatile times. But we rise to the challenges and keep adapting to our dynamic environment - see everything you did in 2020. But this pressure can be exhausting and spoil our BAM. To prevent this, it helps to take an active, creative approach to tomorrow.

Futurology deals with possible, probable and desirable futures from the perspective of the present. The plural makes it clear that "the future" does not actually exist for futurologists. We are moving into a chaotic collective horizon of expectations whose framework conditions are influenced by forces beyond our control. Just think of a timeline. Seen from the present, all the possible and impossible futures lie before us on an equal footing. The dilemma: no one knows which future will happen. That's why we constantly have to make decisions under uncertainty, which in turn have an impact on the course of events. The result is chaos.

Applied futurology helps people, companies and organizations to systematically create plausible futures from this (im)possibility space and make them usable. To this end, a wide variety of signals, trends and perspectives are combined in an analytical and creative way. The results are prototypes of possible futures that show what could be. This knowledge can then be used to formulate desirable target images. We then use all our creative and convincing powers to work towards making them a reality. For example, with a participatory project in which the people in the neighborhood find out how they imagine living together in 20 years and then help shape their neighborhood accordingly. Or with a strategic outlook on the future of our food in 2030 as input for innovation and marketing for a kitchen and furnishing brand.

Regardless of the area of life: Futurology makes futures visible and enables a discourse on desirable, long-term goals and the strategies to achieve them. Through this debate, the future becomes visible, shapeable and designable. And this possibility simply makes ... BAM!