Hello and welcome!

In this blog I hope to take a look at those trends – national and global, obvious and emerging – that are shaping our future. While there are a lot of articles and blogs looking at short-term trends (especially this time of year!) I prefer to take a longer view – 10, 15, even 20 years from now.

It’s not about predicting the future, it’s about preparing for the future.

We can’t know what’s going to happen in the years ahead. And the farther out we look, the less certain things become. But we can look around at what’s going on now and discern patterns and movements, products and events that may be harbingers of the future. We can look to the past to see how the present emerges.

But it’s not enough to simply extrapolate the present into the future. Tomorrow is not going to be just like today only more of it. There will be unanticipated events, new technologies, unexpected developments – I call then “game-changers” – that will radically alter the landscape and change the trajectory of the future.

So while we can’t know what those game-changers will be, we can anticipate the unanticipated. My goal is to help individuals and organizations gain a clear enough view of the future that they are able to develop strategies for their lives and businesses that are robust enough to adapt to whatever future emerges.

In the coming days I will be posting my thoughts and observations along with information gathered from a wide variety of expert sources. I invite you to join in the discussion sharing your experiences, insights and even predictions. I hope over time to build a community that is collectively scanning the horizon, watching the currents, and preparing to catch the waves of the future.

I look forward to surfing with you!

Lee Cowherd