Develop a new skill, hone your foresight chops, or learn to use foresight and insight in your work.
We have a course for all of that.
You will find all of our courses described here. If you have any questions or would like to request a course prospectus, you can do that here.
Request a Course Prospectus
Enrollment Opens in:
Certificates
Our certificate in applied foresight strategy takes students from learning the basics for foresight research, to real-world applications of the techniques. It goes beyond the simple tools typically taught, and provides a full toolbox of interpretive methods, world building techniques, and application strategies to help foresight become an important contributor in an organization. We also cover methods and strategies for incorporating human-centric inputs and AI developed information.
This certificate is suitable for anyone wanting to apply the benefits of foresight in their work, or just get up to speed with true applied foresight strategy.
The certificate is configurable and allows students to pick the elements most useful for them:
The certificate has three core courses and fourth elective option.
Core:
Foundations x Fundamentals
Foresight for Innovation Strategy
Techniques for Applying Foresight Inputs
Elective Options:
Design Ethnography
Future-proofed Insights
FutureTyping & Experience Design
Advanced Foresight Methods
If you are an advanced student, we offer the option to replace the foundations course with an additional elective.
We offer an accelerated version and a longer-format that fits into busy lives.
Online + Offline
Foresight
This certificate is designed for organizational leaders. It focuses on understanding the power of humanized foresight, using the inputs in decision making, and building and managing an organizational culture capable of anticipating change, planning for the future, and participating in positive change through strategy, innovation and design.
The certificate has two fundamentals courses and one elective option.
Core:
Future Ready Mindsets + Culture
Governance Models, Capability Mapping + Integration
Elective Choice:
Radical Human Centricity or Communicating With Foresight
We offer an accelerated version and a longer-format that fits into busy lives.
Online + Offline
Insight+Foresight
Current Courses
Foundations + Fundamentals
Gain a foundation in foresight methods, practice, and application. This foundational course teaches everything one needs to know to become involved in foresight and scenario planning. Comparable to all the other offerings out there, this course comes with a twist: a practical approach taught by practitioners who have used foresight and scenario planning to help corporations, start-ups, make billion dollar decisions. Here you will learn signal scanning, trend building, scenario development, basic storytelling, and AI tool integration. There is an emphasis on practical learning and application, and all students will work on their own first scenario build.
The purpose of this course is to provide a grounding in basic foresight practices used today in a number of industries and applications.
This course is for anyone who wants to learn about foresight and try their hand at the basic skills involved in scenario planning.
Three two hour classes and one masterclass.
Online + Offline
Foresight
Techniques for Applying Foresight Inputs
Want to make use of the trend reports, scenarios, and visions of the future effectively, but don’t need to generate them yourself? This course is for you.
This course is for anyone downstream of foresight inputs. If you want to make the most of foresight elements, from scans, trend reports, scenarios, to strategic advice, but do not need to be involved in their generation, this course will teach you the skills you need. This course focuses on interpretation, analysis techniques, and turning foresight inputs into strategic advice.
The purpose of this course is to train people who do not need to do foresight, to make the most of what foresight can provide.
This course is suitable for managers, strategists, product designers, UX/CX designers, developers, analysts, and business leaders of all kinds.
Two two-hour classes.
Online + Offline
Foresight
Foresight for Innovation Strategy
Optimized for business leaders, members of innovation teams, product owners, brand strategists, and start-up leaders, this course focuses on interpreting, producing, and using foresight and foresight inputs to make strategic decisions. We focus on practical skills and how to refine strategic decision making so you make the right choice early, without all the failing and fear. This course also covers using human-centric inputs, storytelling to gain confidence and cohesion in an organization, and navigating the various problems of AI inputs into this process.
To help leaders use available information and inputs to develop and use a more robust decision making process.
This course is for decision makers, product owners, team leaders, start-up leadership, and foresight and insight team members looking to develop better anticipatory insights and respond responsibly.
Two two-hour classes with one masterclass critique of real-world examples.
Online + Offline
Foresight
Future-proofed Insights
Traditional market research and innovation insights have a weakness. The moment the study is over, it is out of date. Even in this age of AI insights, this problem persists. The problem lies in the fact that with only old, or aging data and human-centric insights, an organization will only ever be able to react to what they are saying about the near past. The older the data, the more out-of-touch the reaction. This course focuses on the solution: a method of creating insights so they have an anticipatory component allowing organizations to plan, prepare, and develop products, services, and experiences along appropriate development timelines. This way you will meet the customer where they will be once you’re in market, and not be solutioning for people in the past.
The purpose of this course is to upskill insights workers so they can incorporate some foresight principles into their insights practice and help their organization anticipate rather than simply react.
We developed this course for design, UX, CX, and user researchers working in large corporations or for students in the same areas looking to gain skills for work in design, innovation or start-up settings.
A standalone course of two two-hour lectures and question sessions and 1 practical masterclass
Taught by an anthropologist with 15+ years of design/innovation ethnography experience.
Online + Offline
Insight
Upcoming
Advanced Foresight Strategy
The basic scenario systems taught all over the world are only the beginning of an effective applied foresight approach. Learn alternative methods in scanning, trend development, driver analysis, scenario articulation, scenario development, and storytelling. This course is unique in its combination of advanced foresight theory and practical application. Students learn new and alternative methods for each stage of the process, learn to use a constellation of analytical techniques, and develop skills in research design, communicating with stakeholders, and writing effective scenarios. This course also provides an introduction to quantitative foresight methods and the advances in qualitative evaluation systems.
The purpose of this course is to turn people familiar with foresight processes into master applied foresight practitioners in corporate and governmental settings.
Students for this course will be limited to individuals with demonstrated knowledge of foresight fundamentals and applications.
Three two-hour courses
Online + Offline
Foresight
FutureTyping + Experience Design
Futuretyping is about clarifying possibilities and making the future states we imagine, and want, more concrete. There is a lot of utility in going beyond speculative stories, and exploring the future in images, artifacts, and experiential opportunities. This enables us to further shape our critical thinking, choices, and actions, in addition to capturing feedback and inspiring others more easily. The purpose of futuretyping is hone a capacity to shape the future, expose and leverage old/new techniques from architecture, industrial and experience design, and the anthropology of the possible.
Overview
This course introduces FutureTyping — a practice combining design fiction, futures design, and rapid prototyping to produce tangible artifacts and images from possible futures. Rather than describing futures in abstract terms, participants will learn to materialize them: creating provocations, prototypes, and narrative artifacts that make future scenarios concrete, testable, and communicable. These outputs support hypothesis formation, early-stage research, stakeholder testing and validation, and internal communication for R&D, design, and innovation teams. The course emphasizes hands-on experimentation and storytelling as core methodological tools, not creative add-ons.
Learning Goals & Outcomes
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
Apply design fiction and futures design principles to produce artifacts representing plausible future states
Use FutureTyping outputs to form and test hypotheses in early-stage innovation and R&D processes (focal points for requirements gathering, testing, validating, and decision making)
Select techniques and fidelity levels appropriate to a given research, validation, or communication objective
Design experiments that use future artifacts to elicit stakeholder reactions and surface latent assumptions
Construct compelling narratives around future artifacts to support internal alignment and decision-making,
Critically evaluate the evidentiary value and limitations of design fiction as a research method
Topics Covered
Foundations of design fiction and futures design as research methods,
The FutureTyping process: from signal to artifact
Techniques for artifact creation: diegetic prototypes, future news, product mockups, experiences, speculative documentation
Integration of generative A.i and other emergent techniques
Using artifacts for hypothesis formation, testing, and validation
Storytelling and narrative framing for future artifacts
Facilitating stakeholder engagement and reaction-testing sessions
Integrating FutureTyping outputs into R&D, design, and innovation workflows
Ethical and epistemic considerations in speculative and provocative design
Range of case studies, critical discussions and artifact “assessments” , guest lectures and hands on Futuretyping activities.
Participants work towards building a portfolio of FutureTypes ranging from images, artifacts to systemic maps, environmental designs and experiences.
Offline
Foresight
Future Ready Mindsets + Culture
Insight and foresight inputs can only be useful when your organization has the knowledge and working culture able to make use of them. This is a time where data-centric approaches and AI research are flooding teams with information that seems relevant, but actually pushes you further from your customers and the strategic levers you need to work effectively.
This course helps leaders learn how to foster a culture of innovation, and how to add anticipatory, horizon-based thinking into the working practices of their teams.
Suitable for executives and team leaders, this course teaches the ideas and techniques needed to build a robust organizational cultural capable of working towards a more positive future.
Online/Offline
Foresight
Radical Human-Centricity: Putting People First
Innovation research requires a sensitive knowledge of the user/customer/patient to be effective. Many of the promises of older forms of innovation research from design thinking to market research had some of the pieces, but lacked the methods and practices to make these promises a reality. This course provides practical training in the ideas, methods, and practices to build a truly human-centric insights practice. Applicable in corporate contexts, NGOs, and start-ups, the tools and methods taught in this course are intended to upskill and develop a research and their research team. The course covers inclusion of some foresight principles, advanced ethnographic practices, necessary changes to storytelling and actioning on insights, and a redevelopment of the analytical phases from data collection, sensemaking, to insight writing. The course also incorporates solutions to the problems caused by AI slop and the tendency for internal teams to bypass the insights group with the use of AI chatbots.
The purpose of this course is to help insights professionals expand their knowledge and skills to develop insights that make a difference.
This course was developed for practicing insights professionals in corporate and start-up organizations.
A standalone course of two two-hour lectures and question sessions and 1 practical masterclass
Taught by an anthropologist with 15+ years of design/innovation ethnography experience.
Offline
Insight
Mathew Lincez
Mat is a classically trained industrial designer. He specializes in applying strategic foresight to design, investment and innovation challenges. Over the past 20 years he’s acquired a diversity of global, cross industry experience, helping senior leaders, organizations prepare for and shape the future.
Early in his career, Mat worked with Motorola and Whirlpool corporations, using scenarios to inform strategic innovation, design and engineering pathways. He later held an associate research position at the Beal Institute for Strategic Creativity, a think tank and predecessor to OCADU's SLab. While there, he supported the development of the University’s masters in strategic foresight and innovation (MDes) program. Following the closure of the “Beal” he joined Idea Couture, a global innovation firm, where he founded and led IC/Futures, the firm's dedicated foresight practice. During this time he worked to integrate applied foresight and futures thinking methods into the firm's multi-disciplinary service lines and value proposition, managed a global team of dedicated foresight strategists, and executed hundreds of consulting engagements with Global brands and institutions across food and beverage, consumer packaged goods, consumer electronics, hospitality, pharma life sciences, financial services, not for profit sector and more. Ultimately becoming a trusted advisor to several C-Level executives, boards and innovation teams. Post IC, Mat co-founded Human Futures where he continues to lead the evolution and application of human centred foresight approaches with Global brands, startups, and institutions.
In addition to his corporate advisory work, Mat has led the application of experience design and strategic foresight within the startup, new venture, and commercialization space. Partnering with founders, entrepreneurs, and investors to identify and develop forward thinking use cases, new growth verticals and road-maps that clarify the potential of new technologies, processes, and/or value propositions at the earliest possible stages of development.
Over the years, Mat has maintained his involvement in academia supporting the development of new curriculum, courses and programs while participating as a guest lecturer, visiting professor, and instructor at a number of leading institutions including: OCADU, KAOSPILOT, CEDIM, the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, and the Ross School of Management at the University of Michigan.
Specialties: AppliedForesight, Scenario Planning, Environmental Scanning, Weak Signal & Trends Analysis, Whitespace & Opportunity Mapping, Storytelling, User Experience Design, Research Design, Scouting, Knowledge & Relationship Brokering, Pre-Diligence, Intellectual Property Expansion, Training & Competency Development
Paul Hartley, PhD
Paul is an anthropologist, foresight practitioner, author, speaker, and instructor. For over 15 years, he has worked in applied research. He has provided insights and strategic advice to over 150 companies all over the world, from the Fortune 50/500 to start-ups and VCs. He is the co-founder and CEO of Human Futures Inc., a global insight and foresight partner providing companies, NGOs, and governments with insight, foresight, and strategic advice.
Paul has written handbooks to change the research practice of major companies, contributed insights that have altered the direction of innovation, and supported the development of numerous products, services, brands, and experiences. He has worked for boards and C-suites, partnered with innovation teams, and serves as an advisor to many companies looking to understand their customers more productively.
While doing this Paul has maintained his connections with academia. He writes and teaches the next generation of insights and foresight practitioners.
Paul is the author of articles, white papers, and the book Radical Human Centricity: Fulfilling the Promises of Innovation Research, published in 2022.
Morgan Gerard, PhD
As Chief Resident Anthropologist at Idea Couture, where he led the former Toronto firm’s anthropology and strategic foresight practices, Morgan draws on his experience in innovation and the social sciences to advise project teams at Human Future Studio. Having identified key strategic opportunities leveraged by Burberry, UCB, Abbie, Diageo and others, his aim is two-fold: first, to assist HF teams with the design and implementation of projects plans, ethnographic methods, insights articulation and socializing findings-to-concepts; and second, to enable those teams to help their clients become more resilient, human-centric and confidently creative. Morgan also serves as the editor of the HF online journal, Future Types.