Think Forward EP 133 - Hope Engineering with Nik Badminton

Nicholas Badminton brings a refreshingly grounded yet visionary perspective to futures work, sharing his journey from growing up around a slaughterhouse to delivering over 450 keynotes worldwide as a renowned futurist. His approach focuses on breaking dominant narratives, finding overlooked implications, and helping organizations build futures fluency through practical, integrated methods that drive meaningful transformation.

• Began his futurist journey when his father gave him "The Usborne Book of the Future" at age eight
• Accidentally became known as a futurist after building a reputation for writing about humanity and technology
• Developed a modular keynote approach that connects global megatrends to industry-specific futures
• Created events like Future Camp and Dark Futures to explore cutting-edge thinking in collaborative settings
• Focuses on "hope engineering" - combining possibility thinking with futures work and positive psychology
• Advocates for simple, practical futures thinking that can be integrated into daily organizational operations
• Emphasizes human creativity over AI in futures work, noting AI's inability to connect weak signals creatively
• Worked with major organizations on futures projects that informed multi-billion dollar investments
• Helps organizations develop internal futures capability by mentoring staff and integrating foresight practices
• Values working with children and young people to develop futures thinking abilities early

Connect with Nicholas at futurist.com or find him on LinkedIn to learn more about his work in futures thinking.

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Episode Transcript

Nik (00:00):
Coming up on today's show and I'm about pushing the
boundaries, you know, and itgets me in trouble.
It really gets me in trouble,like not, not, you know, not
pulling the party line and notbelieving the dominant
narratives.
In fact, I'm teaching peopleand a lot of the coaching and
stuff that I do, and then what Ido, working with clients, is

(00:23):
how to break the dominantnarratives into pieces and then
finding what's in the gaps.
Right, what are we notconsidering?
What are those implications inthe organization?

Steve (00:37):
Welcome to the Think Forward Show.
I'm your host, steve Fisher,and today we're joined by
renowned futuristist, nicholasBadminton.
With over 450 keynotes underhis belt and a unique background
that includes growing up arounda slaughterhouse, nick brings a
refreshingly grounded yetvisionary perspective to futures
work, From hope engineering toorganizational psychology and

(01:00):
even the future of chocolate.
We'll dive into how Nickconnects these seemingly
disparate dots to help leadersnavigate uncertainty with
optimism.
So get ready to explore what ittruly means to build futures
fluency in a world hungry formeaningful transformation.
Welcome to episode 133, hopeEngineering with Nicholas Badman
.
Nick, welcome to the show.

(01:24):
Yeah, thanks for having me steveso, uh, we always kind of start
I I know you from your work umyou and I've just gotten to know
each other a lot uh with uhyour your recent work on some
like the hope engineering space.
But your journey's reallyawesome and I'd love for your
people to to know about how youkind of we always talk about the

(01:46):
accidental entry into futures.
You know kind of how thathappened, so how did you kind of
get into this space?

Nik (01:54):
So it's kind of really interesting.
It's kind of quietly purposefulbut absolutely accidental in
terms of being called a futuristright.
So I mean, when I was eightyears old, my dad bought me this
book called the usborne book ofthe future and sort of ignited
my, my interest in technologyand science fiction in the uk,
where I grew up and I left theuk in 2008 to move to canada but

(02:16):
when I grew up in the uk, therewas lots of tv shows, um,
called like tomorrow's world orwhatever that would be looking
or future tech, and reallyreally quite you know, quite a
sort of a, an academic or r&dbased level of of consideration
of what comes next.
So it was always there.
And then science fictionwhatever university I did

(02:38):
applied psychology, computing Iwanted to do something that was
very forward looking.
You know I wasn't thinkingabout foresight or futures or
anything like that, but it wasalways about, you know, future
proofing my career in a way.
Right, so what's gonna, what'sgonna be the big things that
happen in in like 10, 20, 30years?
And you know, I thought humancomputer interaction um, you

(02:58):
know, you know how the internetwas evolving.
Organizational psychology andsomething that people weren't
really talking about artificialintelligence, uh, and it was
like genetic algorithms, uh,single layer neural networks and
some of that theory like wayback in the day and I sort of my
my final year's thesis on, uh,odd, some sub-symbolic grammar

(03:21):
grammar check using single-layerneural networks.
So it was like linguistics aswell.
So I sort of did that andentered my career doing data and
analytics, building large-scaletargeting databases for sort of
marketing and other variousspooky things as well, and I
sort of ended up moving toCanada, moving into the

(03:43):
advertising world, focusing onconsumer Around.
About that time a great friendof mine moved from Berlin to
Vancouver and I hadn't seen himin a few years, but he was a
designer for Nokia and he wasplaying around with early
versions of virtual reality andstuff that Parmalaki and people
were playing around with the devkits and whatever and literally

(04:05):
like building vr headsets outof old ski goggles and uh and
smartphones, right.
So we started playing aroundwith that.
And then I, you know, out inthe back of advertising I was
getting terribly bored of thisshort-range strategic thinking
and kind of very sort of boringexecutional marketing projects

(04:25):
and I started building outkeynotes.
So I started doing keynotes.
I started just at localcolleges and universities in
Vancouver where I was living anddoing TV and radio and I was
getting a reputation for likewriting for like the Huffington
Post and Forbes and the suchlike, just talking about the
future of humanity andtechnology.

(04:46):
And then this guy I know, boris, he introduced me to someone as
a futurist at a drinks eveningand I was like that's bizarre.
And he was like no, no, no, no,that's what you do, right?
And sort of tongue in cheeksort of thing.
And I sort of went back and Isort of looked at it a little
bit more and I was okay, well,whatever, I'm gonna throw it

(05:06):
onto linkedin.
And then there's a lot of people.
A lot of people were like, comeon, like, and anyway, what was
really interesting is, over time, as I started, I was doing
signal scanning, I was doing onscenario exploration, I was
running events.
I ran an event called cyborgcamp with amber case and my
friend Karis ran another event.

(05:27):
From now, I did somethingcalled Future Camp for three
years and Future Camp was likean unconference, so for two days
people would get together anddo demonstrations, have open
discussions, have debatesthere's some keynotes in there
as well about everything fromyou know biohacking all the way

(05:48):
through to the future of musicor whatever.
And yeah, it sort of stuck overtime and really focused.
And uh, and my next doorneighbor ran a speaker agency,
funnily enough, and he said, canyou talk about the future of
agriculture?
I, I'm like, sure I can.
I grew up in an agriculturalbackground.
I worked in dairy farms and myfather ran a slaughterhouse and

(06:11):
he was like, oh, this is perfect.
And so my sort of speakingcareer sort of kicked off.
I've done 450 keynotes sincethen and so I really really
focused on building it out.
And here I am today with lotsof different friends and
opportunities to reallyformalize this.
And this is, I feel, a careerthat I've been meant for since

(06:34):
that age of eight years old whenI got that book, the Book of
the Future, because I'mstimulated, I'm interested, it's
creative, it's analytical, it'sright brain, left brain, it's
everything.
And it's the right level of,you know, it's right brain, left
brain, it's it's everything.
And, uh, it's the right levelof interaction with clients as
well 450 keynotes.

Steve (06:51):
So is there any?
That is quite a body of workthere.
Um, it's almost like a ted talkof of keynotes.
You could give a ted talk on450 keynotes.
Which, what?
What have you when you firststarted doing those?
What were the stumbles, whatwas the oh wow, I wish I knew

(07:15):
that.
Like that is because a lot ofpeople, including myself, you
know, you speak it and that is,you know the lessons learned in
something like that, like you'retalking to your you know kind
of past self.
Right, it's like even justanybody out there as you coach
like to to get to that type oflevel, yeah, where do you when
you start?

(07:35):
Where, what have you learned?
I mean, that's a lot, a lot ofthings you can learn yeah, for
sure it's kind of interesting.

Nik (07:42):
The last job I had before I quit for time to be a futurist,
I was running, uh, a two-sidedmarketplace, a gig gig economy,
um cunning in north americacalled freelancercom and um the
you know ceo matt had gonethrough the stanford programs
and whatever the he'd beenfeatured in uh, pete diamandis's

(08:03):
bold book and a number, anumber of different things.
It was really great.
There's a really great company.
Matt's uh wicked, smart and theteam were really good and
driven and we're very much aboutcreating awareness and getting
adoption of your views on thisplatform.
Anyway, that aside thepresentation formats that he
used and that we we ultimatelyused as well and obviously I I

(08:23):
riffed on that where we're of aformat that was that was very
sort of easy to understand andkind of epic in its way.
You know, the whole sort of umsetting up the picture and
talking about how to, how tobuild together.
And I built that on top of afoundation of having done a lot
of speaker training and a lot ofpresentation training when I

(08:44):
was management consultant, whenI worked, worked in advertising
and the such like.
So I sort of ended up at thispoint of being really really you
know compelling at puttingtogether keynotes that can get
people thinking, and obviouslyit's evolved over the last 10 or
so years of professionalspeaking and now you know I've
got really sharp sort ofkeynotes.

(09:04):
They're very much based on, youknow, research and signal
scanning and trends and talkingabout scenarios, and then you
know making them come to lifewith stories, right do you look
at the storytelling nature of it?

Steve (09:17):
I keep thinking of like books, like slideology, that
kind of also, uh, dissect, youknow so, like ted talks or
certain really effectivepresentations in terms of
there's not just this act, one,two, three, there's a certain
set of narrative and jumps, andyou know, almost like tension
builds.
And you know, and going themthrough, have you kind of

(09:39):
learned those kind of structuresthrough the time that seem to
work for you in yourstorytelling?

Nik (09:44):
Yeah, I mean there's a lot of different theories.
You know, the beginning, middleand end being the simplistic
thing, right.
But you know I learned a modelcalled the Kipper model Okay, a
little fish head model when Iwas in a management consultant
role.
You know, you get the hook andyou say what you're going to say
and the three things thatmatter and the proof points and

(10:06):
the three proof points under theproof points, and then you
summarize and then you sell itthrough and, um, my, you know
it's evolved to be something inand of its own right, very much
around.
You know, I've got afoundational story at the
beginning.
So, for example, last week Iwas, I worked with the world
intellectual propertyorganization, so I told, told
the story, uh, and I always.

(10:28):
The story is about history andand it roots itself in where we
are today.
So, from big ideas and how theycame to be, um, and what the
effects were of those ideas andhow it proves that futures
thinking is really valuable.
So a whip pro or white pro, Ishould say we, uh, we explored
the history of the hyperloop andthe bicycle.

(10:49):
In fact, the history of thehyperloop predates the bicycle.
Um to like 1799 to vacuum tubebased.
Uh yeah, railways.
Um back in the uk, I think itit was George Medhurst and
Isambard Kingdom, brunel, andthen the bicycle was about 1830.

Steve (11:10):
So around 1830.
You do vacuum tube subways inthe 18th century, the late 18th
century.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nik (11:17):
So I dig deep, right, and I dig deep.
Yeah, that's great.
The people are like what youknow?
It's that aha moment, it's tosit up and pay attention and
then you sort of ask thequestion so, hands up, who rides
bicycles?
Hands up, who's been in acommercial hyperloop?
Like no one right?
Hands up, who rides bicycles?
There's over a billion bikes inthe world.
A lot of people have got morethan one bike and discuss, right

(11:39):
.
So it's like that.
When I talk about technology, Italk about Douglas Engelbart
designing the mouse and desktop,publishing, hypertext, linking
network, computing, modems, awhole number of things, and how
Xerox kind of riffed on thatidea, didn't find the value of
that until a young entrepreneurcalled Steve Jobs came in and

(12:01):
gave them a small amount ofstock to be able to use all of
their ideas.
Apple is a nearly $3 trillioncompany and now Xerox is about
$1.1 billion company.

Steve (12:14):
It's still around.
I was going to say the brand.
Is it still around?

Nik (12:17):
Exactly, exactly.
Anyway, these bets and thesegambles that we make on our
future With my keynote I sort ofanchor it in that idea and then
I always start off in globalmega trends.
That sets the tone and really,you know, frames the dynamics of
the bigger world and typicallywhat I found over the years,
because I, you know, I do focuson tech a lot.

(12:37):
I go into, you know, growth ofdata, ai tech, and I've been
talking about that for like the15 years.
I've jumped on the bandwagon aswell.
I've got some various things.
But then you go into differenttrend areas privacy and security
, sustainability, whateverindustry people are in, whether
it's transportation or financeor insurance or whatever, and

(13:00):
build it up.
And so, out of the over 450keynotes I've done, they've all
been customized to a certainextent and now they're modular.
There's lots of differentmodules.
I was just writing a keynotethis morning for some patent
lawyers and they just want to godeep on the craziest things
that are going to be coming next.
So it's a very different kindof keynote.

(13:21):
It's all about the mostabsolutely mind-bending you know
, novel, novel computing,neuromorphic computing, you get
into connectomes and and proteinfolding, a whole bunch of
different stuff.
So I sort of got to go down and, over the last sort of you know
, 10 to 15 years of doing this,I've just collected all of these
signals and all of these tracksand and, and.

(13:43):
What's nice is that you know ourbeautiful humans brains, uh,
create these connections betweeneverything.
I think that's the superpowerof being a futurist.
It's like suddenly you canconnect these strange worlds
that don't seem to be connectedto, to create stories, and I
always like to give an examplelike this.
So self-driving vehicles,self-driving vehicles,

(14:05):
self-driving vehicles, if theyhit a certain critical mass,
will mean that there'll be few,if not zero, accidents on the
road, so people won't be dying.
So those people won't beavailable to give healthy organs
for organ donation.
So then you'll have to groworgans in pigs, like human pig

(14:25):
chimeras at scale by the peoplethat grow the food for us today.
And then what do you do withthe bacon that's left over?

Steve (14:35):
For those listening, you're not a big futurist.
He's describing what's calledan implications wheel where you
take first, second, third order.
But I love what you did is youjust went like.
Instead of the traditional like, oh, there's going to be no
more accidents or we'll have abetter economy, less pollution,
you go to pigs.
That's awesome.
Like you go like.

(14:56):
And I think the real gift thatwe've been blessed with as
futurists is that we, like yousaid you talk about the synapses
we get.
Our job is we get them closeenough so people can make the
connection.
You know, as a lot of timesit's so far apart, people just
can't get there.
And I think the skillset thatwe hone through whatever types

(15:18):
of methods we use like you know,I'll do like design, fiction
pieces, you do keynotes, like we, we help them get close enough
so that they can start toconnect with it in in the, in
the mode that they learn.

Nik (15:29):
I think that's um, that's great, that's a, that's a great
example but it also comes fromthe fact that I'd you know, I'd
I'd spoken in uh health andwellness contexts and I'd spoken
at swine conventions peoplethat raised pigs for that's
great.

Steve (15:48):
Yeah, and I love a swine convention hires a futurist.
It's just like you know.

Nik (15:53):
Yeah I great that's vision, right?
I'll be honest, don't don'tlove the industry of uh, of how
pigs are raised.
It's very strange and it's kindof, yeah, it's not, yeah, it's
not for the faint of heart, tobe honest that's that is true.

Steve (16:10):
You said your father had a slaughterhouse.

Nik (16:12):
You grew you he ran a slaughterhouse in england.
I grew up in a 4 000 personvillage and, yeah, um, every two
weeks they'd empty the bloodtanks and it would, uh, it would
smell for about four, fourmiles around the village.

Steve (16:25):
Wow, heavy, those heavy, pungent summers, you know well,
you know and it's interesting,you know you had talked about
what's um about in ourconversations about
organizational psychology, whatthe brain does.
I think about the, the.
What does the village think?
I think about the village like,what does that do to the
village?
But you know, when you talkabout um, like the keynotes are

(16:48):
a key keynote, a key part ofyour work and how you
communicate you know you've donea lot in organizational
psychology exploring that, likehow has that influenced how you
approach force, like how youadvise leaders, how you approach
foresight?

Nik (17:03):
yeah, yeah, because it's it's an interesting angle yeah,
you know, when I entered theworkforce in like 96, 97 and uh,
over the first sort of five orsix years you really get attuned
into how organizations worked.
And then, when I moved fromsoftware into like management
consultancy, you sort of getthis sixth sense of of where to

(17:23):
look in an organization for.
You know the best things thatare going to motivate, you know
the finding of information tomotivate change.
And what's really interestingis you very quickly realize that
even if an organization isdeeply structured, it's always
at the very grassroots levelwhere most of the impact can be
felt.

(17:44):
But most of the solutions existas well.
And as you go up theorganization there are just
people looking for answers thatfind all of the information
obfuscated by the overallbureaucracy of what's going on.
So it's interesting.
I mean I follow all these worktrends of the flat organization

(18:13):
Interesting.
I mean you know I follow allthese work trends of, like you
know the flat organization, youknow no one should be more than
like three people away from theCEO or whatever.
Or you know holacracy, whereyou've got amoebas of R and D
cells.
Uh, you know self-governing andand you know report up
operationally with profit and Rand D budgets and whatever.
They go off and do their things.

(18:34):
But there's a truth about allof this is that there has to be
a simplicity to what you teachin an organization for for
change to happen.
So one of the greatest storiesthat I have was I was brought
into a large airline and I wasfocused on business information
management, and so it was aboutdata cleansing, data management,

(19:00):
the application of that and thebuilding of large analytical
infrastructures and whatever.
And they were hemorrhagingmoney.
They didn't know what to do,they didn't have a handle.
They.
They just didn't know what theydidn't know.
And day one I sat down with theexecutive and he goes okay,
biggest problem, we've got,we've got a development team,
we've got we've got the testteam and they can never get
things fixed quickly and they gothrough five, six, seven, eight

(19:24):
rounds of changes before theyfix something or they they can
actually deploy something.
It's just taking, you know, 10times the amount of time that we
needed to do.
It's.
It's costing us a lot of money.
And I sat down and you sort ofsit there and you're okay.
Let's look at the situation.
It's like okay, where, where?
Where is your team?
Where?
Where's the development teamsthat I'd like to see them and

(19:45):
it's like, okay, they're just ina building down the road.
It's like, okay, that's fine.
He goes okay, um, the test teamsat with them.
He goes, no, no, no, they're ina different building about four
miles away.
And I was like, okay, whilst wedo this investigation, can we
co-locate the teams and see whathappens?
And then just like just like.
They're like organizationallysiloed, they're like physically

(20:07):
siloed away from me and we putthem in the same room and things
became like 10 times better.
Wow, um, and it's.
It's interesting and you know,it was moments like that that
made me realize that we don'thave to be over engineered or
smart or suddenly come up withnew metrics of frameworks and
stick them to the wall and sayhere we go.

(20:28):
It's like the rewriting of job,of job descriptions in a
union-based organization, orputting people into the same
room or whatever.
And the same thing applies tosort of sitting in an
organization or working withsomeone and mentoring them.
To be a futurist in residence,it's like what's the one or two

(20:50):
questions you can ask whenyou're planning a project that
just helps people shift.
That idea of like this hasgotten implications in five, 10
plus years.
You know how can we justimplement that and, in addition,
you know how can we then runactivities that feed bigger
thinking strategically from afore bit outside of the, the
range of time in which projectsand programs exist, which starts

(21:30):
gender people to think aboutfutures work.
And I always say you knoweveryone can start off in the
morning looking at oneparticular signal and thinking
about you know what if that wasto affect your business, and
doing that very simplisticallyat 15 minutes every day, even a
lunch time or whatever, it'sgoing to start to really build
that, that muscle, to to thinkabout futures ahead of us well

(21:53):
and it's.

Steve (21:53):
It's also not making futures and foresight work a
specific, like one time onlyaction, like we do an activity
and then we report.
It goes on a desk where it'sgot to be integrated into the
organization.
Which kind of brings me to alot of the work around like

(22:18):
being a futurist in residencehelping organizations build like
a competency, like where we'vekind of covered that kind of
organizational psychology,getting the, the thinking
process, and but what do youfind?
Is there, like let's start withthis how do you coach them to
become futurists in their owncontext?
You talked about kind of thefinding the signals, connecting

(22:39):
the weak signals, and but isthere like a, you know, kind of
a set, like now set process, buta, a method in which you kind
of like like to kind of walkthem through like the maturity,
their kind of journey as as well, because a lot of them have to.
There are sometimes thefuturist team of one right, they
have to get into the culture.
So how do you, how do you, howdo you approach that?

Nik (23:01):
yeah, so so I've been approached and I've been really
lucky over the last few years tohave been approached by various
organizations, but there's acouple of examples.
I won't name the organizationspecifically, but a big tech
company approaches me in 2019,and they were looking globally
at resiliency and understandinghow they could look after their

(23:22):
150,000-plus employees and whatwere going to be some of the
most impactful signals andtrends and if they were going to
move into certain countries andregions, what they'd have to
consider, and so it was a reallygood project.
So I worked very closely withthe individual that was put on
the project and that meant weworked together.
You know we chatted a couple oftimes a week.

(23:43):
We would co-author the reports.
I would teach them thefundamentals and basics of how
to think about signal scanningand and trends identification.
We work through this together.
I'm like the, the, the og, humanco-pilot right, uh, and I think
that's really important in anorganization to like bring these
people in and and you knowthere's a couple of in the last

(24:07):
three or four years, a couple ofpeople that become incredibly
good friends, that have gone onto do, you know, masters in
foresight courses orcertifications or whatever?
Um, because you know it's itgot ingrained in their
organizations.
I'm also working, or have beenworking, with an engineering
company.
I think we've done like 10projects together and now they
kind of use me as a bit of anaccelerant for their thinking

(24:30):
around signals and trends.
So very-.
Well, the external advisor, theexternal expert to bring in to
kind of help validate, yeah,that's good yeah it's good
Because I've done so muchscanning work with so many
different clients around theworld that I bring this really
weird perspective and theseareas that they're not even
thinking about and we oftentimesdive into the scenarios as well

(24:53):
.
So, yeah, I mean, over time,you know, and the engineering
client, I taught theirexecutives how to write design
fiction or you know, speculativefiction.
I know the design fiction.
People get all funny about this.

Steve (25:08):
um I uh, yeah, we could have a debate on that one for
that design free spec fictionisn't design fiction.
So I work, but let's move on ohno, I I look at it as an
umbrella of things, but there's,there's prototyping, there's
design, for, yeah, there's,there's a, there's a whole.
You could, you could be likerolled out.

Nik (25:26):
Yeah, hey, and I love the design fiction front, so big
love to them.
Um, but like, um, all of thethings, and literally everything
from like signals analysis intofull strategic foresight, into
storytelling, writing, specfiction stories, all the way
through to just like signals andscaling projects.
And you just realize, and thisorganization now has got that

(25:47):
deeply integrated in theirdesign part of their
organization.
So design and and a greatfriend of mine is in there she's
doing a master's in foresightat houston.
She gets it, she really gets it, and she pushes me and I push
her.
It's a really greatrelationship as well.
And then she brings otherpeople on for the me and I push
her.
It's a really greatrelationship as well.
And then she brings otherpeople on for the ride.

(26:08):
But I'll be honest, steve, yeahsome of your organizations do
four side projects and then justlike throw it on the shelf or
do a little execution, donothing with it.
Some organizations really stepforward and, and really, you
know, adopt this idea and we,you know I think we're just
prior to this recording we'retalking about Rene Rolbeck and

(26:31):
what Rolbeck and Kuhn did interms of, you know, validating
that.
You know organizations have gotvigilance, they're more futures
ready and more profitable,they've got higher rates of
growth, larger marketcapitalization and it's like
there are organizations thatreally step forward.
What's interesting is the largetech company that I worked with
back in the day, um.
They ended up using part ofwhat I did and what we worked

(26:55):
with together to inform, like amulti-billion dollar investment
in africa, um.
And then the engineeringcompany I work with it's
informed, very deep policyshaping reports and new areas,
new business lines that theywere going into, and it really

(27:18):
does activate and that's what'sreally valuable about future
thinking.
The organizations that reallydo step forward and do it, um,
and and commit to it and committo like embedding it in their
organization.
They're all doing really welland they're all doing better
than their competitors, arebeing prepared for what comes
next I think that you, you, youhit upon a couple key things.

Steve (27:40):
You know renee's work right, or just, uh, his
interviews, just as an episode,previous episode.
His work helped me as I workedon building McKinsey's futures
team with a number of otherawesome people.
We had to get the short there's.
There's other thinkers.
It's kind of like you see thepeople who are futures
interested or, you know, I wouldcall them the true believers.

(28:02):
Then there's the futuresinterested and then there's the
people who are have to be there,kind of like they have to be
connected to it.
They don't, they have to beconvinced and they're more
short-term thinkers.
They have a different set ofgoals, objectives, things that
they're rewarded for and thingsthat they have to do.
So how do you get them on board?
Right?
And your point a lot of timesit's that one off and it goes on

(28:23):
a shelf.
But getting the point a lot oftimes it's that one off and it
goes on a shelf, but getting the, I find the pathways to it
through innovation,organizations, through different
kinds of product work.
You can.
It's not just aboutindividually having futures as a
function, which is important,but it has to be pervasive in
the way people think it has tobe a way how they use the tools

(28:45):
to do the different kinds ofwork in the organization.
And you, you mentioned um, youknow with with renee's work.
I talked with him how you cankind of I think they're doing
more research and he can rightlisten to that episode you can
cover with him.
But they cover just kind ofeuropean.
It was very small populationbut it's important as a

(29:05):
longitudinal study and he'strying to expand that and
there's a lot more data aroundit.
But it does give people moreconfidence and it has to be not
just the person.
I just think about other typesof things people evangelize in
an organization, but having thatnetwork and you've always
emphasized making futuresaccessible.

(29:27):
You know, I think the one thingthat's really been interesting,
you know, reading your bookfacing our futures.
It was a great book.
If you all haven't read it, youknow Shay had to get it at the
end.
It's a great, great book.
You talk about hope theory andthe concept of of like in your
work.
What is that?
Cause?
It's's because there's a.
It's a different, because a lotof people think the future as

(29:50):
collapse, transformation.
They think of very strictarchetypes.
They think of um, radicalchange.
Sometimes the future means likewe have to do radical things,
but there's a there's anunderlying messaging in the way
you you look at this, becauseyou kind of I would love for you
to share that with people thatdon't understand, don't know
about it yeah.

Nik (30:12):
So I mean, in facing our future is very much about, you
know, looking at positive anddystopian trajectories.
Right, and I mentioned the worduh, you know, I call myself a
hope engineer.
At the beginning of the book,right, page one.
And then I'm actually nowwriting another book which is
more like deeper, on the idea ofof hope theory, um, being able
to combine with possibilitythinking and future thinking,

(30:35):
positive psychology thatactually leads us to a new
mindset and a state of mind whenundertaking work, right,
projects, programs, initiatives,larger initiatives, and I'm
trying to write something that'sreally light and easy and
something that's sort of akickstarter for the mind rather
than being a fairly heavy sortof like.
Here's a really in-depth, uh,you know, method and framework

(30:59):
which is, you know, facing ourfutures definitely got a little
bit more of that um, and futureswork can sort of disappear into
its own sort of, you know, amillion kinds of cones and
wheels and whatever, right, andI'm trying to.
There are many cones and wheelsin our world.
There are many cones in ourworld and I think, because I'm

(31:19):
not academically taught withfutures, I'm sort of trying to
think about this as somethingvery practical, even like you
know what the questions that youask yourself.
But, like you know, I startedlooking at hope and hope theory
and Charles Charles Snyder, andyou know it really is about
setting goals, goals, looking atpathways forward and then

(31:39):
creating agency for change.
And no one's really spoken this.
There's very few people in theworld that even written papers
about the intersection of hopetheory and futures work.
So I'm sort of diving into that.
It's really interesting tryingto decode what that means and
how it can be used practically,because people think hope is
quite a hokey concept.
Right, it's really interesting,uh, sort of work working on

(32:05):
that as a, as a concept.
So really, you know, whilst Isort of formulate that, you know
it's the idea that we are,we're making plans, we are
examining the future, we aregetting ready, we're setting the
goals, we're giving agency, andthere's there's some of these
things that, like modernbusinesses, don't do.
So I think it's reallyimportant to think about that

(32:26):
and that's sort of a book thathopefully is going to be coming
out in 2026 um, I'll be first tobuy it there, brother.

Steve (32:34):
Uh, I mean that's, I will absolutely be.
I'm right there, man, because I, you know, I keep thinking
about um.
You know, two things come tomind and I've mentioned this in
the past.
There's a study done on offiction works around the future,
around dystopian, utopian.
There's kind of a two-by-twoProbably.

(32:55):
I'm a former McKinsey consultant, probably because we love our
two-by-twos, but they looked atlike you know, kind of plausible
, non-plausible, utopian,dystopian, and a majority of
fiction was plausible, butdystopian, very, there's like
little, if any.
If it is, is plausible andutopian, you're kind of like

(33:18):
you're positive in that way.
There's a bunch of things thatare kind of not plausible.
Star trek is in that one, ut,utob, there's a few.
But I think about the mindset.
I've read a lot of prepperfiction like a lot of
post-apocalyptic.
There's almost like this carcrash kind of thing.
You almost kind of want towatch it from afar, you want to
watch the disaster.

(33:39):
I mean there are tough reads,like the Road.
There are some really hardcorebooks, you know, if you to read
that, but it's like there shouldbe more hopeful things about
humanity, which is kind of getsme.
You talked about that and, yeah, I, I think there's a real
opportunity for fiction writersto look upon the world.
As you know, a new morning, youknow a type of I.

(34:02):
I think there's a need for that.
I think people want that.
Um, so I think you're reallyyou're really touching on
something and it kind of leadsme into.
You talked about human agency.
We talk about organizations.
The big honking word of thatGen AI term.
Is it what it's doing?
I see it changing the field.
I see it helping the field andI don't see it hurting the field

(34:24):
.
But I see it, I don't see ithurting the field, but I see it,
you know, giving people more.
Um, if you do the signals workright, if you do all the human
work right, can you use it inthat way?
And I think it's.
I'm sure it comes up a lot inyour talks, but it's like you
know, does that?
You know, does it help the hopetheory?
Does it help people think, yeah, I don't know it doesn't.

(34:45):
What does it do for humanagency?
You know, what are yourthoughts on that?

Nik (34:49):
so I'm constantly uh reading, uh about.
You know some of the effects.
You know we're two, three yearsinto a lot of the generative ai
stuff, sort of like peopleusing it at scale and, uh, you
know what was it.
It can make you more productive.
You can get more stuff done you.
You get it done more quickly,but you've got less critical

(35:11):
thinking, less diversity ofthought.

Steve (35:15):
Right, we're listening, this is being taped.
You know, the mid-February of2025.
Deep Seek is a couple weeksinto scaring the heck out of
everyone.
But if you, if you look,there's an art thing I posted on
LinkedIn.
There's like 1300 things thatdeep seek won't talk about, like
Taiwan, right, it's like thereare things like.

(35:35):
It's like remember, ai iswritten by the humans, it's
taught by the humans.
So what does that do?

Nik (35:43):
I mean, I've followed like ai for like 30 or something
years and then seeing this hugelike oh my god.
And every, every an explosionyeah, a great, a great future
friend of mine, raminess, is uphere in canada.
He went to do a talk a coupleof weeks ago and, uh, and he was
saying, you know, his, hisclient confided in him.
It was like you know, it's likean agent sent them 75 names of

(36:06):
people that could talk about aiand it was like you know, 95% of
the people there don't have anybackground in doing anything
beyond like using like chat, gpt, claude or whatever right, and
it's like they're deepconsideration.
I anyway I won't unpack.
Uh, it's another sort ofepisode for us to get into the
for far as for far too, in termsof deep, there's something I

(36:32):
call the 20% idea principle.
20% of our work can be easilyundertaken by these generative
AI platforms and I think that itcould be that I'm stuck for
some ideas.
Throw some concepts in, give mesome directions.
You know the 20% Kickstarterscenarios and and a lot of them

(36:54):
are really not that great andthey're not that creative and
they they can't connect thingsin really novel ways.
So, you know, we can frame itand I think, with futures work,

(37:17):
you know there's lots of peopleout there saying I've built a
platform that that you knowsupercharges your, your future
scenarios.
It's like, yeah, but people endup with really average, like
non-dynamic, restrictive ideasof scenarios.
What comes next?
Because it's based on thislimited thinking that that
exists within llm, right,whereas this conversation

(37:39):
earlier on, the conversationabout, you know, from
self-driving cars to eatinghuman pig, chimera, bacon.

Steve (37:48):
Yeah, Connection between weak signals.
I mean, that is that right.
An AI can't make that leap.

Nik (37:55):
Exactly.

Steve (37:56):
Do that as humans right.

Nik (37:58):
The weak signals.
Yeah, it hasn't been writtenright.
The second order effectshaven't been written Algorithm.

Steve (38:07):
There's no algorithm for that.

Nik (38:09):
The LLM is a mirror and that's okay, but it's not a
creative platform for change.
Now there's a ton of peoplethat will be out there saying
I'm wrong or whatever it's like.
Show me something that's trulyunique in terms of the way that
something thinks, versussomething that can just produce,
something that can get a tickin the box and we can carry on
with our daily work.
Right, and I'm about pushingthe boundaries, you know, and it

(38:34):
gets me in trouble.
It really gets me in trouble,Like not you know, not pulling
the party line and not believingthe dominant narratives.
In fact, I'm teaching peopleand a lot of the coaching and
stuff that I do and what I doworking with clients is how to
break the dominant narrativesinto pieces and then finding

(38:56):
what's in the gaps, right.
What are we not considering?
What are those implications inthe organization?

Steve (39:05):
Well, you also talk about the implications of with, with
ai, when you talk about weaksignals and the connections with
them.
Yeah, I think about where.
Here's where it can be useful.
Um, there's an interview we dida number of episodes ago with
um christian moroth, who runsitonics, and we talked a lot

(39:26):
about, you know, the innovationprocess using you know he's,
he's got one of those kinds ofplatforms that does that you
know, and paulo's got orionthey're trying to do.
But it's like, if he has a,he's a phd in this, in the ai,
and he's looking at it from whatis human.
What is ai like?
What can we use?
Like, where are the parts thatrequire all the brain versus

(39:49):
somehow, like the, the front endof, like, defining the project,
getting the things together?
Then, because a lot of signals,research, if you can ask it to
scrape and pull the things, itcan do a lot of that and it can
find things.
But you still have tosynthesize and I think that's
that's where we get into like toyour like, if it's scenarios
are scenarios, but if it doesn'thave enough to it, then it's

(40:13):
just going to give you what youput into it and that's again
it's.
It's not enough.
I, I keep thinking back to JimDater's um, one of his tenants,
of if it's not crazy enough,you're not actually doing your
job Like, if it's not reallylike far-fetched.
I also think of Arthur C Clarke.
It's like, you know, science,something that is far more

(40:33):
advanced to a civilization,looks like magic, like if we
took a television back 200 yearsago they would think it was
some like witchcraft.
Right, it's just so we're notthinking that's that's what we
do, wait, that's what they lookfor us, but some people may
reject it.
But at the same time, theprovocation, it's the point of

(40:54):
it.
And you know, I want to, I wantto kind of switch to some fun
things as well, because you have, you've done, you've done a lot
of different projects.
Um, you know, I one of themthat I I love and I know you
could talk about as much as youyou'd like to.
But, um, but, the future ofchocolate, like those are the
kind of things like people werelike, wow, the future of

(41:17):
chocolate?
Well, no, I think about youknow what I think comes to my
mind immediately 3d printers, 3dprinting, chocolate, right,
yeah, um, where do you source?
Because I did, we madechocolate.
My wife and I did a.
We were in peru and we did likea 3D printing chocolate.
Right, yeah, where do yousource?
Because I did, we madechocolate.
My wife and I did a.
We were in Peru and we did likea workshop where we actually
made our own chocolate from thebean and all that.
So you get to learn where it'ssourced.
So there's ethical sourcing,sustainability.

(41:38):
There's, you know, cooltechnology like things you could
never make.
I remember never make.
I remember watching the netflixshow that guy who is french and
he does this amazing likesculptures with chocolate.
But it's like, what was thelike?
How did it come about?
Like anything it uncovered foryou like what was it?
What was it like?
Oh my gosh, this is like wildright, what do you?

Nik (41:57):
oh, yeah, so it's interesting.
I can't share specifics ofexactly what I found out, but
but it wasn't.
It wasn't about, like um, itwasn't about the creation of
product, and this is what Iremind people.
It's not about a tangible thing.
It's a lot more around theprinciples and the operations,

(42:20):
about the sustainability and theaccountability behind the
entire industry.
So you'd go into, like you know, was it?
Ghana is probably not going tobe able to to grow cacao by 2050
to 2080, right?
So where?
Yeah, because of climate, it'snot so.

(42:42):
So where do you?
Where do you get chocolate?
Where do you grow?
What do you do?
Do you consider other methodsof cellular production of cocoa?
You know, do you get chocolate?
Where do you grow it?
What do you do?
Do you consider other methodsof cellular production of cocoa?
Do you consider the price andthe dynamics on the market?
What chocolate is as a culturalartifact?
I mean, if you go back and lookat the Second World War,

(43:02):
chocolate in England was likegold, right?
You?

Steve (43:07):
know the world's guys had their chocolate bars when they
would go to europe and give itto the kids.

Nik (43:10):
I mean, that was yeah but it was like people didn't have
it right.
So I mean there's a lot ofelements.
It's like how does the commute?
How does the global communitywork?
What does it mean when, whenwe've got such a shortage that
all of the big players have toplay together and they have to
work together to createsomething that's sustainable,
and you know they can share thetechnologies and the idea.

(43:32):
So that was it.
It was.
It was a much bigger exercise inunderstanding that the, the
changes in the dynamics of the,the industry, uh, as a whole,
versus like how to 3d print achocolate.
In fact, we we never in thatproject looked at 3D printing of
chocolates because it wasn't ofany interest, because, as a

(43:54):
signal, it was something thathad already been worked through
and wasn't particularlyinteresting in the scheme of
things.
It gets interesting if you 3Dprint a chocolate and you build
that from cellular protein andcellular production of the base
goods and whatever, and then youupscale operational facilities,

(44:14):
yada, yada, yada, rightPrecision, fermentation and a
number of other things.
So I mean I always approachprojects by asking the questions
like what is the ecosystem,what are the cultural effects?
What are the organizational,operational effects of change
coming?
You know what are the signalsthat feed into that, and when

(44:38):
you take like three to fivesignals and you put them through
the sausage machine and startasking, you know operationally,
ethically, ethically, you knowfrom a policy perspective, from
a partnership in an industry, ina market perspective, what
happens.
That's, that's really goodfutures work and I think that
that's, you know, the modelingthat we have to do, rather than

(44:59):
like, imagine a world where allof our forks are made out of
chocolate, so that when wefinish eating using the fork, we
can eat the fork, which is coolas well, which is cool as well
and is a part of futures work,and speculative products and
whatever, but it's not exactlythe big value for organizations

(45:22):
are how does this change ourstrategic perspective on the
world?
And how do we make betterdecisions today to prepare for
what's coming?
Because change is coming right.
I always say the change.
You know change is inevitable.
You either change or changehappens to you, and I remind
that um of my clients every timeI sit down with them.

(45:43):
Um, yeah, and interestingly, Ijust did a project on global
naval operations and the arcticand and you know that's, that's
big and it and it's not, andit's everything from the, the
ecological environment aspect,the, the, the outdated military

(46:05):
or naval aspect, of the newtechnologies and new players
that are coming in, the dynamicsof workforce and aging and
training, and you know, locationand military partnerships, and
it's, it's like this is what wedo, um, and, and I think that
you know what does the futuristdo?

(46:25):
And people think that we justlike come up with crazy ideas of
like you know late, lazy gunsand, uh, you know cars, and it's
not, it's we're practical.
You know we're practical whenwe do the work right yeah, and
I've.

Steve (46:42):
When I explain to people like where a futurist kind of
lives is, you think oftraditional, like not even tech
organizations, but justorganizations in general.
You have product, you haveinnovation and you have kind of
the strategy, the futures, and Ilook at product as dealing with
12 to 18 months.
They're dealing with the root,but they they needed to, they,
all of them need this indifferent ways.
Innovation is looking at threeyears out because they have to

(47:04):
manage most people.
You think of innovation to yourpoint.
I dealt with a lot ofinnovation or I built a lot of
innovation organizations andit's everyone thinks you're just
making fun things in the backroom and it's like no, you're
actually managing a portfolio,like you're managing a startup,
like you're a VC, you've got tomake bets, you've got to make
investments and they make itthrough or they don't.
Just like you know, when you'recoming up with just from the

(47:26):
idea, not everything goesthrough.
And it's the same thing withfutures.
There's an information level.
You can do traditional strategy, traditional quote, unquote,
but that's a lot of forecastingwork, lot of forecasting work.
It's a lot of, I would say,narrow band, narrow term,
near-term types of work, andstrategy is where futurists can
inform the strategy function andgo more than 3, 10, 20,

(47:48):
whatever the rate of changesright.
And then it's like I can inform.
I can do those types ofexercises in my innovation work
and I can also do it for theprioritization of my products.
And I think your point is doingnew venture creation, new
business models.
Yeah, futures work is toprovoke the mind to think
differently, but it also isthere to inform those who are

(48:11):
doing the work to help them staycompetitive, stay ahead, but
with reasonable navigate theuncertainty of the future ahead,
but with with reasonablenavigate the uncertainty of of
the future.
And I think that's I mean I Ifind that very when you see it
kind of trickle in and people'slight, like the light bulbs go
off and they see the value inthat.
That that's for me rewarding.

(48:32):
What is, what is the mostrewarding parts for you?
Like, what do you, what is,what kind of gives you those
smile on your face as you'reworking with clients?

Nik (48:44):
You're like, yes, like they got it, or what is it for you
that gives you that?
I mean, when you give, when yougive presentations, keynotes
and a lot of work you do onlineand whatever you see these
people and they there'ssomething, just like something
has clicked.
And when something clicks andit takes us down a down, down a
route that they've neverexplored before and they end up
with something that that's alevel of you know, signals and

(49:06):
trends and insights.
You know, when we look at likethe positive, um, challenging
effects or whatever and they'vegot this, and it's like, oh, we
need, we need to take this moreseriously, we need to consider
this more.
More importantly, in the schemethings I mean, you talked about
portfolios and innovation.
Being three years, like I wentwith this big tech company,

(49:27):
which was like applying futurethinking to your portfolio.
If you look at 100 initiatives,are you going to have a place
in the futures that we'veexplored?
And you can tick it.
It's like, yes, yes, yes, no,that's going to.
Can tick it.
It's like, yes, yes, yes, no,that's going to be outdated.
It's like, okay, if that'sgoing to be outdated, what needs
to come next?
What can we put in place todayand it's like, oh, and then
you're suddenly backcasting andthen that's a really important

(49:52):
part of what you do, right?
So I think?
I think that that's reallyimportant.
So the backcasting element,where you go from, you know, in
20 years time, back 10 years,back five years, back three
years, and then you canbasically start to see the leaps
that are needed and the gaps.
Now, where don't we have thetechnology or where do we have
the technology that is in earlystages of being development?

(50:14):
I, I was literally going downthis route of neuromorphic
biological computing earliertoday.
I was doing some research, andthen you look at DNA as a
storage device and then it'slike crikey, the world is the
matrix.
But then it's interesting tothink about all of these things

(50:37):
and where we're going to stumble, where, where we're going to
stumble and where we're going tobe able to um go forward.
In fact, for um, for facing ourfutures.
There's an entire chat.
It's the lost chapter.
I think it's actually onfuturistcom um and it was a.
It was a story about a girlcalled jacasta who, who became
implicated in in a in abackstreet um communicated in in

(51:04):
a in a backstreet um deal fordata where her body was the?
Uh, was the storage device?
Oh nice, my publisher didn'tlike it in the middle of a sort
of a non-fiction book, anyway,whatever.
Um, and it's kind ofinteresting when we start to do
these things and then start toplay and and see how clients
start to draw the lines as well,and oftentimes, I'll be honest,
steve, there's a lot of clientsthat are so stuck in their

(51:26):
quarterly targets, yearlytargets, that they get enthused
briefly and then they just goback to their work and then I
mean, this is what's happened insilicon valley or whatever.
Basically all of the companieshave cancelled their, their big
futures projects.
It's all about profit.
It's all about how many peoplewe can lay off this month to hit

(51:47):
our profit targets.

Steve (51:48):
Um, you know it's uh, it's crazy wonder if you know
you have mentioned I want to gocome back to a few things,
especially futurescom.
But you mentioned future campand you know, you and I both are
, you know, know amber well, andshe's, she's wonderful and she
helps you.
Like we're gonna give her acall, shout out, so she uh
listen.
But I love amber, amber.

(52:09):
I met amber.
She came to nomdex as a student,grad student, as a cyborg, uh,
anthropology, it was just great.
It was just great.
It was just the humans, it wasjust she was just so left of
center, which is what I justlove so much.
And I do wonder if there's roomagain for doing those types of
events, I think.
I think people are sufficientlylike, um, wondering what the

(52:33):
future, like the uncertaintyCause I, I think of COVID and
the work I did during that withorganizations to kind of rethink
processes, rethink systemsbecause of of a pandemic or just
something that completelythrows it at the center.
I I do wonder if that issomething that you know how we
can bring the community together, but I don't know.

(52:54):
I mean, I do you think therethere's room for that again?

Nik (52:58):
I'm around an event called dark futures for for six years.
Eventually it was, uh, it wasin toronto, toronto, vancouver,
san francisco, um, jp morgangave me their their event space
in san francisco to run.
I was going to do it in newyork.
I had a really cool and it wasthe idea that you could have
like five talks, 15 minutes totalk about the hidden systems

(53:18):
and the dark futures and, um,and now the world, it it's like
the world's been turned up to avolume of 15 and everything,
sharp relief, and you can seeall the badness and the goodness
and everyone's out of theshadows and so the event's kind
of dead.
And it's like you talked aboutgnome decks and there's like bar
camp and I based yeah, youcan't base up and it's like

(53:40):
could you build theseunderground interesting edgy
counter counterculture festivals?
It's almost like there is nocounterculture anymore because
people are okay with weirdnessout out in the open.
But it's not really weirdness,it's just normality.
You're, like you know, reallyframed in a completely different
way, right, and you know,really framed in a completely
different way, right, and youknow, I used to go to xox over

(54:02):
fest down in um, down inportland, and yeah, it's like it
was well go south by.

Steve (54:09):
When it was font font geeks and web designers in 2004,
it was like it was like 2500 ofyour closest web nerd friends
and now it's like you know well,it's a completely different
world.
But I've been going, you know,and I I went two years ago and
even that event itself it's.
I think it's also generationalbecause I think, uh, you know
I'm a big strauss and howeperson like generational.

(54:31):
If you look at generationaltheory, look at, look at the,
the period I mean I, you knowthe 2005, 2006, like pod camp,
bar camp, all those, those weremillennials at a certain age,
you know, when there's, andthey're community driven,
they're peer driven.
The generation of that age nowis not that they're much more

(54:51):
conservative, they're much more.
I think they've been through somuch with COVID, with so much
systemic change, changeespecially here in the states or
across europe, maybe just inthe western, and I know there's
a lot of listeners in otherparts and there's been a lot of
change all over the world.
So I think, to your point,there's a maybe a different kind
.
That should be a different kind, but I, I, maybe it's time has

(55:13):
passed, maybe it cyclically willcome again, I don't know, but
um, yeah, it was the gen Xersthat built these events right,
and I think that's really good.
I'm of that generation.
I'm a Gen Xer.

Nik (55:26):
And so I don't want to get too.
You know, gen Xers are betterthan millennials Gen Xers were
just… More of just motivation,right?

Steve (55:34):
Gen Xers are nomads.
Right, we're the kind of fixer.
There's a different set ofmotivations, a different set of
upbringing.
Yeah, no, no, there's no usversus them.
It was more of the timing of itand the generational era, or
the era of the ages of people.
That's all.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get yeah,indeed.

Nik (55:51):
so I you know, yeah, you know I, I miss it, and and covid
covid shot, shot it all deadlike and and because it was such
an alternative crew of people,and people are allowed to be
immune, deficient or worriedabout infection, or, like you
know, I'm an extrovert andintrovert.

(56:13):
I just want to be left alone.
I'm going to go for a nap afterthis talk.

Steve (56:18):
Get all that energy out, brother, just get it all out and
go for a nap.
Yeah, yeah, all that energy out, brother, just get it all out,
go for a nap, yeah, yeah.

Nik (56:23):
So this is kind of how it is right, like we don't
necessarily want to get out andcovid sort of killed that spirit
somewhat.
Um, I mean, it's like south bysouthwest, you know, is bruce
sterling even involved anymore?
Right, and it's like you know.
But bruce sterling's and endaddresses were like it.
But you've got people likedouglas rushkoff that are going

(56:44):
to be there this year andwhatever you know, maybe they
give the mantle to him.
In fact they should, becausedouglas rushkoff is awesome.
And if, if the listeners havenever read anything by douglas
rushkoff, go and listen to teamhuman, his podcast, and, uh,
read his book called siberialife in the trenches of
hyperspace from like 1994.
Um, the real, like thebeginning.

(57:06):
It was like dmt and vr, terencemckenna journal and, yeah, the
early doors of the internet andhackers you know, pure
mathematicians are going tochange the world.

Steve (57:15):
It's a beautiful thing yeah, I do, yeah, no, no, and I
know we're um, I want to.
We're kind of up on um time forthe, for the show, and we're
going to have.
I know we'll have a part two,definitely Um, but you know, I
think it was we kind of get somecom you.

(57:40):
You know, you, glenn heimster,you kind of you've been a
steward in that.
You've kind of taken that thereon.
Is this mantle?
There's so much body of workthere, you know, and it's like
you look back at that like whatcontinues to inspire you and
like what is, what does thatmean for you?

Nik (57:52):
you know, looking at the edges and looking at the people
doing doing the work without anypraise, without any recognition
, with very little funding,that's really pushing forward
thinking in whole new ways.
You know, still looking for thepeople in the caraculture and
that excites me.
Um, it does excite me.
I mean, I I traveling aroundand you know, I sort of I'm in

(58:12):
rooms with like associations andorganizations and it really
excites me to meet people thatcome out up to me afterwards and
like have conversations aboutwhat they've done.
I mean, um, I did a keynote onthe future of agriculture and
this, uh, this 80 year old womancame up to me, this large uh
cell phone, smart smartphone shewas like 80 or something like

(58:35):
that and she goes look, I cancontrol.
Uh, you know, I've got internetthings and controllers on my
grain, on my grain feeder, andshe was showing me how she
controls it and it's like itmakes you realize that the
world's a lot closer than thanmaybe we're led to think, that
more people are actually sort ofon the same sort of trajectory

(58:55):
of understanding what comes next.
I mean how important that is.
You know, you still got a lotof people that are knuckle
draggers.
They're like sort of laugh andlike, oh you know, we just want
to, just want to, you know, justcause chaos and whatever.
But I think that's a minority.
So when I, when I travel aroundand I meet people, people are
stoked.
I, I did a when I did the UN,wipro, ypro keynote, ypo keynote

(59:21):
it was my last slide was apicture drawn by an Indian kid
on the future of transportationand he'd imagined like that
there would be T-Rexes that youwould ride and control with your
brain.

Steve (59:38):
That's pure play there.
That's awesome.

Nik (59:42):
It's pure play, future right and that.
That.
That makes me excited andeveryone in the room was smiling
and it's like that's what wewant.
I sent it to my kid who's fourand a half, and he was like whoa
, you know, it's like this, isit?
This is what we do.
It's like you know, and youknow we can talk about working
with kids to do futures work aswell, because that's really

(01:00:02):
important yeah, I mean the, theteaching children.

Steve (01:00:07):
I mean, if the futures fluency is not just the adults,
I mean there's, there's alwaystwo, there's two courses.
I think that should be taughtin high school futures thinking
and personal finance, how to,how to you know budget and pay.
You know, you know the realworld, how much the real world
costs and paying off.
You know dealing with all that.
But that's right.
But also thinking about abetter world.
Yeah, right, completely.

(01:00:27):
I mean I, I've, I've workedwith um, you know the uh teach
the future organization and thatyou know that is one of of the
I would think one of the mostimportant organizations in our
space.
What do you let's talk aboutthat and teaching kids, like, do
you ever have a chance to teachkids the future?

(01:00:49):
Do you ever have the chance, orwhat do you think about that?

Nik (01:00:52):
I did when I was living in vancouver.
I used to go and do lectures alot.
I've done a little bit intoronto as well.
I'm going to you knowuniversities, you know people in
their like late teens, early20s, and that's still a good age
to chat to people about.
Have I gone into schools to doit?
You know I did about this timelast year.
I was in a school situationwhere kids were like 15 to 18.

(01:01:14):
And that was really interesting.
The kids are like almostshocked, you know, but it was
almost like a permission forthem to really think differently
about how the world works,right.
So so I do get an opportunity,but not as often as I'd like to
do.

Steve (01:01:29):
Yeah, A lot of.
I mean schools have a tendencyto teach to the middle, so and
and kind of pushes out the realedge thinking.
So I think having that, thatkind of space to do that, is
wonderful.

Nik (01:01:43):
It's why school didn't work for me, steve, but as soon as I
got to university, it was arush.

Steve (01:01:48):
Yeah, no same.
For me it was always what Iwanted to do.
So I think I always like tokind of wrap with the legacy
question.
I think we're both dads.
We both have young, young kids.
It's like what, when you thinkabout the body of your work and

(01:02:09):
you're thinking about lookingback, like what, what impact do
you?
Hope you it has?
Like what do you when you lookback at a life well lived, you
know?

Nik (01:02:16):
what do you I want?
I want to have world.
I want to influence people thatchange the world like a very
big level.
You know, like being in Genevain rooms full of people, the
director general I did aprerecord for a keynote, the UN,
european commission, and it wasall about your transportation,

(01:02:39):
that every minister from everycountry around europe and beyond
is in a room talking about itlike having that level of impact
.
You know, that's what, that'swhat I want.
You know, making big structuralinvestments of multi-billion
dollars and places of change.
I, I sort of I'm part of aspeaker's network and, uh, and,
and there was like you knowwhat's your 10 year plan and

(01:03:01):
you'd see everyone else.
I'd like to earn this muchmoney and my 10 year plan is to
get an invite to speak at theBilderberg convention, which is
you're in a room with everywestern leader in a Chatham
House scenario, a room withevery western leader in in a
chamhau scenario, and and thereare things that are shared and

(01:03:23):
discussed and worked throughtogether that fundamentally
changes how the world worksstructurally, culturally, um,
societally, economically,technologically.
That's it.
I'm in the game for the, I'm inthe game for the big fish,
right, um, and?
And I love everything else aswell, but I'm here for that.
That's why I'm here.

(01:03:43):
I was in Geneva last week.
That's why I'll continue totravel and I'll go to meetings
and speak to interesting peoplethat others may not want to
speak to, right, because theseare the people that have got the
power to change the world right, absolutely.

Steve (01:04:02):
Yeah, this has been a great conversation, so people
want to find you, which is many.
There's a few good places.

Nik (01:04:08):
I've heard the word futurist in the internet and I'm
there on page one because Ibought futuristcom so you can
talk to Nick Badminton.
I'm all over the internet, allover YouTube, whatever, but yeah
, you can go to Nminton I'm allover the internet, all over
youtube, whatever.
But yeah, you can go n-i-k, notn-i-k-o-l-i-s, it's you can do.
Nicholas at futuristcom,contact me through that website.
Um, linkedin, I'm incrediblybusy on linkedin.

(01:04:29):
It's always been a goodplatform for discussion.
Let's hope it continues to bethat way.
And uh, yeah, I'm easy to findlike reach out, let let's work
together.

Steve (01:04:39):
That's great, nick.
Thanks for being on the show.
Well, we're definitely going tohave more too.
Thanks a lot.

Nik (01:04:43):
Yeah, it is dude, take care , bye-bye.

Steve (01:04:45):
Thanks for listening to the Think Forward podcast.

Nik (01:04:50):
You can find us on all the major podcast platforms and at
wwwthinkforwardshowcom, as wellas on YouTube under Think
Forward Show.
See you next.