Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers
Welcome to the Think Forward podcast where we have conversations with futurists, innovators and big thinkers about what lies ahead. We explore emerging trends on the horizon and what it means to be a futurist.
Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers
Think Forward EP 136 - Wandering the Future with Cecile Cremer
Welcome to this episode of Think Forward! In this episode, we sit down with Cécile Cremer, founder of Wandering the Future, joins us to challenge conventional wisdom about how we prepare for tomorrow's challenges. With refreshing candor, she explains why she's moving away from traditional trend reports toward a more collaborative approach to future-building. "I truly believe that the future should be co-created with people from all over the world," she shares, questioning how much real influence isolated trend forecasting actually has on shaping our collective tomorrow
• Moving beyond trend reports to co-create futures with diverse perspectives
• The Future Fluent Framework: developing resilience, adaptivity, and consciousness
• Why mindset must precede strategy for meaningful transformation to occur
• Making futures thinking accessible through education and physical trend walls
• Democratizing future literacy by teaching it alongside fundamental subjects in schools
• How even small innovations can create a significant positive impact when guided by futures thinking
• The importance of taking personal responsibility for shaping our collective futures
Connect with Cecile Kramer on LinkedIn or visit wanderingthefuture.com to learn how you can build a more resilient and hopeful future.
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Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.
coming up on today's show.
Speaker 2:I truly believe that the future should be co-created with people from all over the world. So if we keep on writing trend reports, it's just a bundle of data which there is a small group of people who value the trends or the signals that they see, but in the end, how much influence on the future does it have? That's always my question that I ask because I think a trend report could help and it could help people to start thinking about the future, deal with change, transformation. Then we need to co-create it and not make reports and say to people this is what's going to happen and this is what you all have to do, because I feel that it's not like how real change will happen.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Think, think forward. I'm your host, steve fisher, and today I'm absolutely thrilled to introduce you to someone who's been called a child of the future. And trust me, once you hear our insights, you'll understand why. I guess today is the founder of wandering the future. The such futurist has been shaking up boardrooms with a simple yet radical philosophy we need to ask the wrong questions. She argues that we've become so comfortable in asking the right questions that the safe ones that give us predictable, widely accepted answers. We've forgotten how to ask the disruptive questions that actually unlock transformation. And, in this era of super shifts, where everything from AI to climate change is rewriting the rules of business and society, maybe it's time we started getting a little more comfortable with being wrong.
Speaker 1:What I love about her work is how she translates complex global trends into actionable business solutions. She's not just painting pretty pictures of possible futures. She's helping organizations build what she calls future fluency the ability to navigate uncertainty with confidence and turn today's weak signals into tomorrow's competitive advantages. Today's conversation is going to challenge some assumptions. It's going to provoke some new thinking and maybe, just maybe, inspire you to start thinking. All the wrong questions for all the right reasons. Welcome to this episode of Think Forward Wandering the Future with Cecile Kramer. Cecile, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:So we've been exchanging messages for quite a while and you've been working in the field for a while, but could you love for people to hear your journey? So your journey into futures and being an innovator, what has been your path to where you are now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think my dad actually saw it when I was born, just didn't know it then. But I was always like this super creative, curious kid, always asking like why and how and why, and I think that has driven my parents to the edge sometimes. But I think I was 17 when I went to the other side of the world. I did like this social innovation, development aid travel with my high school and that was for the first time when I thought like whoa, there's a whole different world outside here which I don't know anything about. And it got me very curious about other people, how they live, how their futures are going to look like, and but also the fact that we in the western world are so much ahead on some things. But later I realized also we are way behind on other things if you compare. But at that moment I was still like this very talented music student which was supposed to go to music school. But unfortunately I got very ill and then this concept of the future all of a sudden, yeah, got real for me because the future seemed so far away. And then, when I got better, I was actually a little bit obsessed with the future. So I went looking for a study and then I started studying international trend research and creative concept design actually the part of fut but also, how do you translate that in today's world? So that combination of very analytic and very creative was something that I thought like, yes, this is what I need to do.
Speaker 2:And then, in 2014, I graduated and at that point it was one of the first educations like in Europe with this title. But that wasn't like a good thing at the moment because then I wanted to have a job and it was almost impossible, but I was so determined to yeah, to start working in the field that I studied, that I wrote to all the big companies in Europe that were very much into trend research, futuring at that moment so you can think of Trend One, trend Watching all the big names that I think everybody knows in the field. And actually I got like all these little assignments or freelance or part-time jobs and I thought like, okay, this is cool. And then all of a sudden, I thought like so many part-time jobs and I thought like, okay, this is cool. And then all of a sudden, I thought like so many part-time assignments, this is like.
Speaker 2:Now I'm a sort of an independent futurist and I think at that point I felt more like a trend researcher because I was very green in the field, of course. But over the years and I think it's like from the moment I graduated till now it's 11 years I grew into wandering the future, the name of my company, and not, yeah, from all these back office, these little assignments to really cool a big project, also working on our own products, frameworks, keynotes all over the world, and that helps my mission of spreading future awareness and helping the world and new generations to have all the skills to be resilient and adaptive to the future. Yeah, that helps my mission very well.
Speaker 1:So trends we talk a lot about trends on the show and it's obviously part of my spectrum framework. Any, any futures framework, any method incorporates that. But there's a lot of somewhat mystery magic science. You know there's weak we talk about weak signals. How do you, how do you find trends? How do you, how do you look for them, how do you synthesize them? Like what's any, any magic process or things that you can, you could share as you get people fluent with the future?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I actually have to say that when I work with clients, I move a little bit away from trends, because I still feel that, um, that people that are not so much in the field ask me like what's the next trend color, or what should I wear next week or what products should I put in my store. So I feel the word trend is still a little bit challenging if you really want to make people aware of future thinking. Challenging if you really want to make people aware of future thinking. So I try to balance using that word. But I mean if you want to help people think about the future or create strategy, you need them to build this framework where you can create strategy.
Speaker 2:I think in all over the years, I also developed like this extra sense for it.
Speaker 2:But for people who want to start with it, I always say, like you have to have your eyes open, you have to have this like radar on your head, like spinning around looking at all the things that you see, and I do that with a database.
Speaker 2:So I have this huge database myself. I traveled the world a lot and there I met a lot of people. I have this future network from people all over the world who say like oh, cecile, I saw this or oh, I saw that, and in the beginning it was a lot of work, but I think the rise of AI helps me even faster with diving into all this information and the weak signals and the trends. But it's actually about reading, looking, listening, talking to people. That helps me create this overall vision of what is out there, and I think it's also important to always be aware that you cannot see or that you do not see everything. Whatever work you deliver, you always have to make sure that you try to make it as inclusive as possible, because we all have this blind spot of the things that we do not see.
Speaker 1:So you have a human intelligence component to this, instead of just the web searches or there's a you know and you also mentioned that you call them trend hunters people that are out there gathering their kind of the forward observers in the like, an intelligence, like looking out the scouts for things. Yeah, it's the synthesis. You're right. I think a lot of it is synthesis opportunities with AI, you could scrape things and ingest things into LLMs and continually have it learn, but you have to also know how to ask the right question and how to ask it in a way that extracts that information. And it's hard, it's a hard. People look at the trend reports and a lot of people base their work on somebody else's work. They don't add it to it, which can be challenging too, because it brings in any kind of bias or any kind of gaps that are not considered.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's why I actually moving a little bit away from the trend reports and it's nothing.
Speaker 2:I don't want to say anything bad about trend reports, because there are some very good ones out there, but I feel like trend reports it's sending information to other people and I truly believe that the future should be co-created with people from all over the world. So if we keep on writing trend reports, it's just a bundle of data which there is a small group of people who value the trends or the signals that they see, but in the end, how much influence on the future does it have? That's always my question that I ask, because I think a trend report could help and it could help people to start thinking about the future. But if we really want to have this transformation in the future, in our behavior, in the way we deal with change, transformation, then we need to co-create it and not make reports and say to people this is what's going to happen and this is what you all have to do, because I feel that that's not like how real change um will will happen so you also emphasize the importance of mindset before strategy.
Speaker 1:So why do you believe like mindset shifts are foundational, like? Why do you? What do you?
Speaker 2:I think, um, I mean, if you take a human being, every human being on this whole earth, they, they don't have like this intrinsic motivation to change.
Speaker 2:That's just the fact that we are not made to change like, oh, let's do something else today or let's do something else tomorrow. So we are actually always searching for this safe haven of things like having the same things, like having routine. So change is not something supernatural for humans. So if we really want to have this system-level change, I am convinced that it starts with being able to make this switch in our mindset. So if we don't create this, what what I call future fluent mindset, then everything we do like this change will never be intrinsic motivated. And then I wonder how good and how sustainable this change is if it's not from the mindset of this change is really needed to have a better tomorrow. Fill, fill in the blanks like better tomorrow, healthier tomorrow, happier tomorrow. So that's why I say like we need to start opening our mindsets for, uh, change for future, and that whatever we do is on the basic of this, this, this.
Speaker 1:You mentioned the futures fluent framework Now that focuses on adaptability, resilience and awareness. Can you talk about those principles? How does this differ from other types of approaches?
Speaker 2:It's different because it starts with saying that the future, like a future mindset, is not a one-time thing. It actually this framework. This arose from the idea that I am really allergic to the word future-proof and all everywhere I saw like future-proof, future-ready. I thought like how is everybody just accepting this word as if it's okay, because this word like future-proof future, future ready that states that you can start with the future or thinking about the future or getting skills, and then at one point you're ready. And then I thought like no, this is like, this is not what it is and we need something that shows that it's like this iterative process and that it changes over time. So that's how I came up with future fluid framework, which states that it's a state of mind, which is which moves and forms from the outside. So, as you said, you have to have, like this mindset of resilience, because this world is a challenge for a lot of people. So you should build future resilience, ready for the fact that change is not always easy or always happy change, but that you should be aware and be, like almost armed for the future. And then this adaptivity. That's also from this mindset that you need to train your brain to be adaptive to change and I think, like COVID, showed that that's something that was really needed in times of what I what like in the field is called wildcards. So you need to train your adaptivity to things that you cannot oversee or things that you weren't prepared for, but still have to make this switch in your mind so like, okay, this is now the reality. How are? How am I responding to this? And I truly believe that you can train that in your brain. And then the third one, the consciousness. You can train that in your brain. And then the third one, the consciousness.
Speaker 2:I always tell clients, people I talk with, that the future isn't a concept. So if you are conscious that the choices you make today are an influence on the future, even if it's like super small because sometimes people say to me like yeah, but I'm just like this one, really little person in this big world, what influence do I have? I always say yeah, but if you're conscious that even the smallest influence is an influence, then you can also take responsibility for this future that you are building yourself with the choices you make today. And I think, is it 100% different from all the other approaches?
Speaker 2:Probably not, and that was also not my goal, but I just wanted to create this awareness that I believe that you're never done with creating like this mindset of preparing for being prepared for the future, as you cannot be prepared fully, you always have to like train it, like you have to breathe in and out every single day, every single moment, because otherwise you die. And if you don't make future affluent thinking a part of your being, then I don't want to say I'm afraid for our collective future, but I think then we can create like this happy, healthy future where we can all take this positive role. And if I say it now that I say it, it sounds a little bit like utopia, but I think if we don't strive for the most preferable future, then we end up with the probable future, and I don't think we should want that.
Speaker 1:I'm very protopian. I don't know if I'm utopian. I'm definitely versus the dystopian that we see all the time. But, like, how have organizations, or just the individuals, applied this? Like, have you been able to kind of get this into organizations?
Speaker 2:Yes, I start showing this and talk about what I talked about right now, and then I combine this with the future horizon scans, which are based on this future fluid framework.
Speaker 2:So then I let people with. I have, like all these little assignments for the different focus, so future, resilient future, that activity, future consciousness, so I have these little assignments to make them feel what I I mean with it or how they could train this. And then, and then I I start with this future horizon scan where I let them of course I accompany them within this process, but I let them create possible futures because I want to. As I said, I think the only future that we can make is a future that is co-created with those who need to be part of or, like, need to do something in that Okay, and I help them. I always say we don't predict the future, but we imagine the future, and I help them imagine with this framework in mind, because then, all of a sudden, they can open up easier to think about five or 10 years ahead, and I have all these little methods and little challenges to help them really like get in this mindset of future fluent balance the visionary kind of thinking part of this.
Speaker 1:How do you connect it back to like? Because we always, as futurists, you know people want to do something now. Right, it's like you know, whether through backcasting or a, how do you bring actionable implementation into this?
Speaker 2:That's a good question and I think I can be really happy about my study because, as I started in the beginning, I did this whole futuring study but it was combined with creative concept design Actually, that is the skill that I learned that can bring it back to today. So, from this really far-fetched vision like visioning, future visioning, I then go into this almost I think you can call it almost design thinking process, where this future vision is the starting point to create concepts or products or a strategy that can be used today. But we start, like, with going all the way to the future and then bring it back to okay, if we create this world now, which we think of within this future horizon scans, think of within these future horizon scans, what would the product look like in 2050, in 2040, in 2030, and then in 2025? And that's also a cool thing about it, because then you can create this product or service or strategy today, but you translate it already.
Speaker 2:Okay, if we start with this product today. So for, for example, we created all concepts for um and monastery and old monastery, so we did this whole research and then we had this vision about what is the future of this um. Also, it is like this area. So I would almost say it's like this um, not only the object, not only the monastery, but the whole environment. So it was almost an environment concept. What does this concept need? Like in 2050, but also today, and then you actually you can start building this product or or idea today, but you also know what you need to do to have it like in 2030. So you have this growth strategy already in the products that you make today.
Speaker 1:You know, this passion, which we both share, is making futures thinking accessible at all. So you talked about some examples. How do you work on this to democratize it, especially within the audiences? How do you make sure that they're connecting to it and ongoing in an ongoing basis?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's the most challenging and difficult thing. But what I do a lot, and hopefully a lot more is projects in education. So we develop three different educational programs now. One is for the ground school, One was for high school and the other one was also for high school. Now it was for ground school till high school. So I really want to start with the like from the beginning, by creating programs and products that can be used in schools already.
Speaker 2:I hope that I can be of added value to already help kids with this skill of future thinking. And that's difficult because I think all the ideas are there, but especially here, not only in the Netherlands. I think it's a broader challenge, but I can, of course, talk the best about where I'm from. What you see is that law and regulation often hold things back, because I think there are so many good initiatives besides what I'm trying to do that want this future thinking in the classroom, for example, but it's all going so, so slow.
Speaker 2:So what I try to do is share a lot. I do a lot of open source things or share methods or share insights for free, because I believe the more we spread it, the more momentum our field of work gets and then often that opens hopefully the right doors to really make this impact on the level that it's needed to make sure that as good as everybody needs to have their language development, their math and whatever everybody has on ground school and up. I hope that if we talk to each other in five years I think that's very positive, but let's say 10 years, that it's like just this subject in schools which is like not even a discussion anymore, but it's just like this class that everybody needs to follow within educational land.
Speaker 1:I would love if they built something like that into curriculum here in the United States. I've always said like two things people should be learning in high school or middle school. Middle school here is like 11, 12 years old, and then there's high school all the way to 18. So having a mindset of this teach them how to do futures, think about the future. And then also personal finance, like how to manage their money and not get into scams or rack up debt. Both things will be better off for the future right. You'll be prepared and you'll be financially, not in a debtor's prison.
Speaker 2:I actually made some fake news. I think it's one and a half years ago.
Speaker 1:Cool.
Speaker 2:And it was about the fact that from the first I think yeah, first of in 2025, that futures thinking would be an obligated class in the Netherlands in ground school. I had so many reactions to that, really cool conversations, and then I thought like, OK, now something is going to change. I even had like conversations with head of UNESCO and like with the Ministry of Education, and in the end, nothing happened and I actually think that's sad, because I thought this was the right momentum. I think the post went viral. I made like this you could not even see. I copied this and I like photoshopped this, this news message into it, and I thought like, yeah, this should like go, yeah, this should even go more viral than it did and it should change something. But it didn't.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, so an artifact so you could so an art, a speculative piece, like an artifact of the future type of object. So what do you see? As the you know you've founded Wandering the Future and what's been some of the most rewarding things you've worked on, like the kind of projects that futurists do, like what do you do and what someone who might be wanting to do, and for their, for their organization, for even wherever they are, um, like what are the things that you've done that you know help you shape a better tomorrow?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah deep.
Speaker 1:Some deep stuff right there yeah, for 11 years.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of that came by. One of the things that was also in my early years which I think is one of the most rewarding things I did that was for the Ministry of Education in the UAE. I actually developed the educational future journey for 50 female students there. They came to Eindhoven, actually in the Netherlands, like the tech city Silicon Valley of the Netherlands they call it. I think not really.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's like this tech era in the Netherlands and 50 female students came there and we developed this program where they did like an innovation challenge in eight days. So in the morning they went to companies to challenge in eight days. So in the morning they went to companies to go in company and see how things worked. And we had a cooperation with van Berlo, which is a huge designer here in the Netherlands, and they made up an innovation challenge and I think the question was I have to think really good, because I think that's almost, I think eight or nine years ago but the main research question was what can you develop that makes people healthier and happier in the UAE? And then in these eight days we helped students to to answer that question. So in the mornings we went to companies that were, like, involved in this mornings we went to companies that were involved in this question, so we went to Philips and SML, like all the big companies, and in the afternoon we always had workshops that would help them answer this innovation question. So, for example, about target groups, about company names group, about target groups, about company names, about interviewing, about whatever, like everything that could help them answer this question and then in eight working days, they delivered like this prototype, presented it to von Barlow, and then there was this huge innovation prize and till the day of today, I still get messages from these kids like said, yeah, you change our lives because you really give us the perspective that we as females, can do something. And a lot of them started their own startups after we were in the program and I think that's super rewarding because I, um, I and the whole team got the chance to give these children, these females, which in the UAE, still have a different perspective on their futures. We gave them like, this view on this is what your future can be as well. And the things that they came up with was, yeah, it was really super, super interesting.
Speaker 2:So somebody developed something. Of course it was a prototype, not non-working, but they had this idea that there was a robot that could go into the body and then could make like this sort of army around cancer and then then it could not spread. And of course it's like conceptual and it needs to have a lot more research, but like just the idea that these kids thought of that. And there was also another one. They got the first prize.
Speaker 2:I think they developed this working suit for workers in the UAE and for those who have been there, they are often like in this super heat and, yeah, it's not always easy and they developed this costume or this working uniform which had all these buttons that could cool them down or, in the night, when it cooled down, that they could heat it up or that they could push it like this, this emergency button, and then people would come and help them. And like the idea that these young people, in eight days it came up with these like disruptive, hopeful innovations, I thought like, okay, then we did something good that in such like such short time, thinking about the future and thinking about creating products that can increase the quality of life of target groups of people and, hopefully, all multi-species focus.
Speaker 1:That is something that I hope to do many, many times more, because I think that will make the change of creating a hopeful and happy future so going looking backward to like if to recommend people just kind of starting this journey right, like there's just they're by themselves, they're in an organization, how do they start this journey to futures literacy? I mean, look, what are some first steps you'd recommend to cultivate this mindset? We talked about the mindset earlier. But, like, what are some kind of practical ways to you know resource things they could get, they can you, they can do?
Speaker 2:I always say make it physical, because we rounded off a very big project with a social living corporation and we trained all the strategic employees on futures thinking and the first thing what we did is we created a futures lab and they had no space for it, no time, no, la-di-da, you know all the the check boxes why they shouldn't do things, but I think there's always a solution to it.
Speaker 2:So what we did is we built like this trend evidence wall with them to make it visible.
Speaker 2:So make the future visible in your company, and it can be as big or you can have this huge innovation lab where you do all organize all these things.
Speaker 2:But it can also be as simple as a wall where you pin down the most important subjects for you and your company and where you just like pinpoint all the urgent matters, where you just say, like once a month, for like I would say once a week, but if you say that's too much, once a month, come together around this evidence wall, say what have you seen, what have you heard, what is going around in your mind, what did you see in the newspaper, and just build like this organic, visible future presence in your company and then people can experience and feel that it's like something that is really valuable and then hopefully that creates like more FTEs and more budget to be serious about it, because otherwise it's just like ticking the box of. We need to do this today? No, it needs to be part of who you are and it needs to be part of your company's idea and therefore start with making things visible.
Speaker 1:So what I like to ask everyone is the legacy question. I think I'll probably do a paper at some point just looking at everybody's answers. But you know, you've got a lot of years ahead in your career and you've got a lot of things you want to accomplish. But when you're sitting on the beach and you're looking back and you know quiet contemplation of a life and career well done, you know, well done. How would you like the work to be thought of? Remember like how would you like what you get? What would you?
Speaker 2:like to make sure people have you know, skills or the tools to see that they have an influence on their own future, and I hope that I gave people what they needed to take responsibility of creating this hopeful future for this multiple-species ecosystem that we are. Besides that, I hope that I will be remembered as this professional that people could feel and see that really worked from this intrinsic motivation of creating a better tomorrow and not from this highly commercial point of view where I sold the same trick to 100 companies a day, because that's not what I do. I hope to be remembered as this person that really wanted to add something valuable for all those people that will hopefully join and live on this world when I'm already not here anymore.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's a good answer. So how can people find you Like? You know they want to work on initiatives with you, engage with your work. Maybe you know, bring you on like or even just learn how to build a more resilient future.
Speaker 2:They can find me on LinkedIn, so they can just find me on Cecile Kramer. They can look at my website, wanderingthefuturecom, which is under construction, but that you can find my phone number and my email address so you can just be in touch. And, as I said, I want to be very approachable and available to everyone, because I feel like I do this from this intrinsic motivation. So I always try to answer and make time for those who want to build on this happy future with me.
Speaker 1:Great Well, thanks for being here and until next time.
Speaker 2:Definitely. Thanks for having me, thanks for listening to the Think Forward podcast.
Speaker 1:You can find us on all the major podcast platforms and at wwwthinkforwardshowcom, as well as on YouTube under Think Forward Show. See you next time.
