What Is Finance Management?
December 3, 2024
Article · 12 min read
This course is part of Futures Thinking Specialization
Instructor: Jane McGonigal
12,832 already enrolled
Included with
(261 reviews)
Recommended experience
Beginner level
This course is for everyone.
(261 reviews)
Recommended experience
Beginner level
This course is for everyone.
Describe your preferred future
Create artifacts from the future
Build an action roadmap to change the future
Organize a community to change the future
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4 assignments
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When you get better at thinking about the future, you get better at changing the future.
This course will help you take all of the foresight skills you’ve developed so far and apply them to making real positive change in your life, in your work, and in the world around you. You’ll learn how to create and share “preferred futures”, which are highly persuasive, compelling visions of the changes you want to make real. You’ll use your preferred future to identify obstacles, recruit allies, collect resources, and plan action to make your vision real. You’ll also practice making “artifacts” from the future, which are creative representations of how everyday life might be different in the future. Artifacts can inspire others to join you in your quest to make a preferred future real. Leading futurists from the Institute for the Future will share with you their favorite future artifacts – and walk you through the entire creative process it took to make them. Every action we take today changes the future. This course will help you identify and take the actions that make the BIGGEST, most strategic impacts on the most urgent challenges you and society face. Many thanks to the Enlight Foundation and the Enlight Collaborative, which provided a grant to support the creation of this course.
Welcome to Urgent Optimism! If you're ready to act now to change the future, you're in the right place. This week, you'll learn all about preferred futures. A preferred future describes exactly what changes you want to make in the world, and it helps you strategize to make those changes real. Let's go!
5 videos5 readings1 peer review2 discussion prompts
You've defined the future YOU want to make. But who else shares your vision? This week, you'll learn how to find and analyze images of the future. An image of the future is any popular expression - in movies, books, TV, videogames, comics, religion, political manifestos - of what the future might be like. It can help you understand: What futures do others hope for? What futures do they fear? How can you present your preferred future in the most compelling way?
4 videos4 readings1 assignment2 discussion prompts
This week, you'll learn another persuasive technique: how to make "artifacts from the future". An artifact is a real-world object that brings the everyday details of a possible future to life. A good artifact can blur the line between the present and the future, sparking "a ha" moments and conversations that lead to action today. We'll show you how we made our favorite artifacts. By the end of the week, you'll be ready to create your own!
4 videos1 reading1 assignment1 peer review1 discussion prompt
Finally, it's time for the most practical tool in Institute for the Future's toolkit: the Action Roadmap. This week, you'll learn how to work backwards from your preferred future to plan actions you can take today, this month, this year, and this decade to make the biggest impact on the future. We'll show you our action roadmaps. Then you'll show us yours!
6 videos4 readings2 assignments1 peer review
You've made it! Let's celebrate your new Urgent Optimism skills with one more action: a Pledge to Make the Future. Learn how to use the tool, make your own pledge, and bring your community together to make many pledges that can truly change the future.
2 videos2 readings2 discussion prompts
We asked all learners to give feedback on our instructors based on the quality of their teaching style.
The Institute for the Future is the world's leading futures thinking organization. For over 50 years, businesses, governments and social impact organizations have depended upon IFTF global forecasts, custom research, and foresight training to navigate complex change and develop world-ready strategies for the future.
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Reviewed on Feb 1, 2024
Fantastic Course! Filled with tools to help you make the world a better place!
Reviewed on Apr 11, 2020
Brought all the previous learnings together and learned lots of tools to carry the concepts forward.
Reviewed on Jun 30, 2020
It´s interesting, the professor gives useful tools, i think they could make it shorter, there's repeating parts that could be avoid, also I haven't got my diploma.
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