Making Futures Work – A Practical Guide to Strategic Foresight and Speculative Design

Summary of the Book:

Making Futures Work by Phil Balagtas is a powerful, accessible introduction to Futures Thinking—a discipline that blends design, strategy, and foresight to help individuals and organizations navigate uncertainty and design better tomorrows. Drawing on real-world applications from companies like Apple, IBM, Autodesk, and Disney, this guide breaks down the seemingly abstract world of foresight into practical tools and actionable frameworks. Balagtas equips readers with the mindset and methodologies to anticipate change, design for long-term impact, and build a culture that embraces future possibilities rather than fears them.

What You Will Discover in the Book?

In this insightful and highly usable guide, you will learn how to:

Use Strategic Foresight to anticipate emerging trends and risks
Apply Speculative Design to explore the relationship between technology, culture, and humanity
Leverage Design Fiction as a tool to prototype alternative futures
Prepare your team, clients, or stakeholders to think beyond short-term outcomes
Facilitate futures workshops and gain buy-in from your organization
Build a Futures Culture that outlives individual projects and becomes part of strategic planning
Through case studies, frameworks, and Balagtas’s experience as founder of the Design Futures Initiative, you’ll gain the confidence and clarity to integrate futures thinking into your daily practice.

Why Should You Read This Book?

If you’re a designer, innovator, strategist, product leader, or changemaker facing a volatile world, Making Futures Work offers a new lens for thinking long-term. This book demystifies futures thinking and makes it actionable for people working in fast-paced, design-driven, or innovation-focused environments. It’s especially useful for those wanting to move from reactive strategy to proactive foresight. Whether you’re shaping products, policies, or entire organizations, this book gives you the tools to create futures with intention, imagination, and rigor.

About the Author:

Phil Balagtas is a globally recognized design futurist and founder of the Design Futures Initiative and the Speculative Futures network—one of the largest communities in the futures and speculative design space. He has worked as a design leader at top-tier companies including McKinsey, Atari, and Autodesk, and is passionate about helping organizations embed foresight into everyday design and strategy. Through his teaching, speaking, and community-building, Phil continues to shape the global conversation around future-forward innovation.