Worrying about the future is quite a popular pastime at the moment. New scenarios, forecasts, and what-if exercises abound. Yet, as many practitioners know, such popularity is cyclical and most foresight efforts to assuage anxieties about the future will crash into the wall of disappointed expectations and the normalisation of relative degrees of turbulence over time. “What do you mean there is no clear goal, nor ironclad means to get there?? What’s the point? In any case, craziness is the new normal.” Perhaps this is a bit like the illiterate person who discovers that the literate person doesn’t have a lock on the truth even though they can read. A similar situation prevails for those who are futures illiterate - they expect foresight to deliver what it cannot. Furthermore, in a world where few can read and write the realm of the written word is inherently limited. Introducing futures literacy, as the competency that is built on the foundation of the diversity of reasons and methods for imagining the future as revealed by applying the theory of anticipation, changes the context for all efforts to imagine the future.
Riel Miller: Why Futures Literacy Improves the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Foresight: How to take advantage of the theory of anticipation
- Date
- 22 January 2026
- Time
- 12:00-13:00 CET
About
Speaker
Riel Miller
Founder, xperiodx global
Riel Miller is one of the world’s leading authorities on the theory and practice of using the future to change what people see and do. An internationally recognised innovator, project initiator, and process designer, he has spent over four decades working across public and private sectors to transform how organisations engage with uncertainty and change. He is widely published on topics ranging from futures literacy and strategic transformation to technology, governance, and education, and is an accomplished keynote speaker and facilitator.
Riel began his career at the OECD in Paris in 1982 after completing a PhD in Economics at the New School for Social Research. He later held senior roles in the Ontario public service before returning to the OECD’s International Futures Programme. In 2005, he founded xperidox, an independent consultancy advising clients worldwide on how to use the future more effectively. From 2012 to 2022, he served as Head of Foresight and Futures Literacy at UNESCO. He is currently working with a number of organisations around the world, including: McMaster University, East China Normal University, the University of New Brunswick, University of Witwatersrand, Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, and more.