New comments on World Futures Society meeting (Chicago July 18-20)

Brian Smith
Lead strategic analyst, IMCOM Center for Future Installation Strategies

This is the second of two entries I am making this week as a guest contributor on The Army’s Home.

I attended the World Futures Society conference in Chicago on 18-20 July in support of the Center’s task to identify future trends and assess what they mean for the Army and the IMCOM. The conference was WFS’s annual gathering of professional “futurists” and professional forecasters from around the globe where they share results of research and discuss methods for generating strategic forecasts.

Interesting trends and forecasts that I drew from the meeting include:

• Immigration is driving US population growth as the domestic birth rate has leveled-off. This will be key for continued economic growth in the future.
• Regulatory issues are becoming increasingly transnational, trans-institutional and trans-discipline. Collaborative approaches among agencies will become increasingly important for them to be effective.
• US economic growth is going to be driven by research and innovation as opposed to cost advantages and that the gap between research and innovation in this country and other advanced economies will narrow.

We will be including some of these pieces in CFIS’ Strategic Context Report that we are in the process of developing, so look for it on the CFIS AKO site at https://www.us.army.mil/suite/page/608884

You can find out more about the World Futures Society and the proceedings of the meeting at www.wfs.org. If you are on Twitter, I tweeted some of the sessions in which I participated under #wfs.