Making Futures Work: Book & What's Next

What if futures thinking wasn’t abstract, intimidating, or reserved for specialists — but something anyone could use to make better decisions today?

Join us for a special event with Phil Balagtas, author of Making Futures Work — a practical, highly accessible toolkit for designers, strategists, leaders, and change-makers. The book brings together Strategic Foresight, Design Futures, and Strategic Planning into a clear framework designed for real-world use.

In this session, Phil will share the thinking behind the book, why futures work often fails to land in organisations, and how his framework helps bridge the gap between long-term possibility and day-to-day action. You’ll also hear a brief update on the Design Futures Initiative, and get a sneak peek into the next evolution of the community and where it’s heading next.

Whether you’re new to futures thinking or already working in strategy, design, policy, or leadership, this event offers inspiration, clarity, and practical insight into how futures can truly work.

About the speaker: Phil Balagtas, Designer. Futurist. Strategist

Phil is a design leader based in Barcelona, Spain. He has over 20 years of experience designing digital products, services and strategies for a variety of devices and platforms for business operations (B2B) and customer-centric (B2C) solutions. Within the last decade he has served as Design Director for General Electric’s Digital Aviation group and an Experience Design Director at McKinsey & Company working across industries such as airlines, retail, hospitality, utilities, oil and gas, transportation, nonprofits and government institutions. As a thought leader, facilitator, and design and futures expert, he has worked closely with Fortune 500 companies to transform their operations, enhance their digital services, and build more innovative and responsible products for the future.

He is also the founder of the Design Futures Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to the advancement and education of Futures Thinking and a global community of chapters. Today he is a professor of research and Futures Thinking at Elisava University in Barcelona for the Masters in Innovation and Design program. He also leads his own Futures Thinking consulting and training firm called HABITAT working with public and private sector organizations.

Contact the host of Making Futures Happen w/ Phil Balagtas