Hinesight….for Foresight

Not too far into Hettie O’Brien’s The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself, it occurred to me that I was reading a familiar story. The financial sector found a new scheme to take other people’s money and put it into their pockets. The schemes are technically legal, but morally repugnant. I remember […] The post Private Equity: Meet the New Boss; Same as the Old Boss first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

As we start getting into the activation work of After Capitalism, it will be necessary to make some choices. Over the last decade or so, I’ve used universal basic income a lot, primarily because it’s more well known than its cousin – universal basic services. I don’t know that a choice is necessary – perhaps […] The post Universal Basic _____ … Income or Services? first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

I often hear complaints about mental models and their resistance to change. Yes, we are trying to influence and change mental models. But we must also recognize that this is a long process. Mental models should not change easily. It’s a species survival mechanism. We are blasted with so much information that if we changed […] The post Mental Models Don’t Change Easily … and They Shouldn’t first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

“One must see, simply see things the way they are, and not give oneself over to games of the mind. It is not common to see what is there. Naturally we look with our minds – with our interpretations, inferences, preconceptions, comparisons, expectations, and through all our previous experience. To see is a function of […] The post Futurists and Seeing 2026 first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

The best-selling Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto on degrowth from Kohoei Saito was published in 2020 (in Japan… 2024 in English)– – as was Jason Hickel’s best-seller on Degrowth. What? Two best-sellers on degrowth? Yes, it’s almost, but not quite, safe to talk about degrowth now … and we will definitely be talking more about […] The post Review: Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

In this video, I explore the idea of preferred futures: the futures we want to see, shape, and work toward. Change is rarely a straight line. It can involve uncertainty, setbacks, false starts, and moments when progress seems to stall. A well-crafted preferred future guides you and helps you persevere through the inevitable ups-and-downs of […] The post Pathways to a Preferred Future (Inside the Futurist’s Mind) first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

I was leafing through our 1995 book about the year 2025 and came across the figure on the Evolution of Environmental Strategies. We were still heavy in diagnosis in 1995 when we were writing. We moved into mitigation and cleanup over the next few decades. And finally, in the last few years, we’ve started to […] The post 1995’s Restoration as 2025’s Rewilding first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

Here is the third quarterly check-in for 2026 on what the signals are saying regarding After Capitalism. There is so much happening. It is getting harder to pick a top 3 … so I combined a few signals together and added a fourth. Rewilding meets tourism. Post-work advancing despite ourselves. And college kids and retirees […] The post After Capitalism: What the Signals Are Saying Q3 2026 first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

Once more unto the breach! My 13th year at the helm of the University of Houston Foresight program is kicking off. Seems like a good time to report in on where we are at. Students: Looks like 70-ish students this fall (10 graduated and 20+ new students). We’ve been in this range the last several […] The post The State of Houston Foresight 2026 first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

It is hard to talk about alternatives to capitalism without hints of socialism or communism. You could argue that economic systems are organized based on individuals (capitalism), collectives (communism) or hybrid (socialism) In exploring After Capitalism, we are going to be using the word “commons” a lot more. That does not make us “commies.” There […] The post Commies and Commons first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

More experienced (aka older) readers might recall the Knowledge Management movement of the 1990s and 2000s. In short, better tagging and organizing of data would make finding and applying knowledge easier and be a competitive advantage. Turns out those pesky human workers didn’t cotton to the idea of sharing their knowledge into a database for […] The post AI Fulfilling the Promise of Knowledge Management? first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

In this video, I walk you through the Image Analysis template I built to compare future scenario works and clarify visions of the future. Drawing on Fred Polak’s classic The Image of the Future and Wendy Schultz’s work on Images of the Future, we’ll go step‑by‑step through nine elements of a well‑crafted guiding image. You’ll […] The post How to Analyze Scenarios (Inside the Futurist’s Mind) first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

[NOTE: Following on last weeks post about post-work future, thought I’d set the table on where we are and seem to be headed in the short term.] We started talking about warriors, giggers and bots as the workforce of the emerging future a few years back. I spoke fondly and perhaps a bit wistfully of […] The post Emerging Workforce: Warriors a Vanishing Breed? first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

Let’s be clear that the post-work future suggested by the Non-Workers Paradise does not mean we will not work, nor will it necessarily be a paradise. [A note on “terms” is at the bottom]. A bit of a downer? I think we need to balance the appeal of the goal with the reality of the […] The post Post-Work Really Means Post-Jobs first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

This is a challenging book. It made me think, get clear, consider, and reconsider. I wrote, edited, and re-wrote this post several times. Kudos to the author! While occasionally frustrated, I also laughed. In sum, it was a valuable exercise that helped clarify some of my thinking. If you want to get you head around […] The post Review: We Have Never Been Woke first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

The more significant the change, the longer it takes. Seems obvious, doesn’t it? But it’s not. All change tends to get lumped together in “today’s rapid pace of change …” In our case, the path to After Capitalism is likely to be a long slow one – despite what the increasing volume of pieces coming […] The post CLA, Change, and After Capitalism first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

In this short video, I walk through how futurists and strategists use the Three Horizons to: You’ll see how all three horizons exist at the same time, and why change is often slower than it looks—right up until it isn’t. If you work in strategy, innovation, policy, or foresight, this video will help you: For […] The post Inside the Futurist’s Mind: Using the Three Horizons Framework first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

Can you imagine kids flying out the door after school, going to a field or playground and put together a pick-game? Probably not. But I know some of you readers did this as kids. But today, it seems almost fantastical It is by now a truism that we have turned sports into a faction of […] The post Reimagining Sports first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

Here is the second quarterly check-in for 2026 on what the signals are saying regarding After Capitalism. Perpetual competition, Swifties, and DUNAs (not Tuna) … Dig in! (See Q1 2026 here.) Drum roll please! The Human Cost of Perpetual Competition: Capitalism as a Human Rights Issue Capitalism reaps true benefits for only a small percentage […] The post After Capitalism: What the Signals Are Saying Q2 2026 first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

We introduced STILE in a post few months ago — now the published version – Delivering Insights with STILE is in ESOMAR, a global research site and community for insights professionals. We consciously chose an insights forum as we believe that delivering insights is a fundamental deliverable of foresight that we need to emphasize now […] The post Delivering Insights with STILE first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

As we think about how to organize an After Capitalism society, a commons approach seems a vitally important place to start. It’s fair to assume that there will be opposition to the idea of a commons approach. In fact, the author reminds us early on of Margaret Thatcher’s famous quip: “There is no such thing […] The post Investigating Commons Approaches: First, the Plunder first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

Every now and then I get a respite from administrative work to write an in-depth piece about my true love — the work we do as futurists. I am grateful to colleagues Gabrielle Rizzo and Tony Masys for providing me this opportunity giving me a chapter in their new Handbook of Foresight, Strategy, and Futures […] The post Methodologies in Futures Studies and Foresight: A State of the Art and Future Directions first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

Do more alternatives emerge as a sign that something healthy or dying? Think y’all know where I stand, but you be the judge! My first alternatives list in 2021 had 38 varieties. The 2024 included in the Imagining After Capitalism book had 85. Today we are at … 113. Granted, these are not all thoroughly […] The post More, More, More Varieties of Capitalism first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

Every strong foresight project starts with clarity — and that begins with the domain map. How do professional futurists actually build the future they describe? Drivers are the building blocks of the future, and this video shows how futurists turn piles of weak signals and trends into the core ingredients of powerful scenario work. In […] The post Inside the Futurist’s Mind: Drivers: How to Craft Scenarios from Foresight Research first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer, is a popular and delightful book that promotes the idea of a reciprocal gift economy. I included the Gift Economy concept as part of the Circular Commons image in Imagining After Capitalism. [I used Charles Eisenstein’s Sacred Gift economy in the book.] […] The post A Reciprocal Gift Economy: The Serviceberry first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

About a hundred students, alumni, and friends of the University of Houston Foresight program gathered for this year’s event on all things Transformation on April 10-11. Participants were welcomed to our new home in Sugarland, an amazing brand-new, state-of-the-art facility and picked up their swag, featuring t-shirts, stickers, and socks. The weekend kicked off on […] The post Houston Foresight “Transformation” @ Spring Gathering 2026 first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

We have been trained to be bottom-line focused, can-do, action-oriented, to get on with it, and so on. Even in our Houston Foresight program, we taught a whole summer course on Activation last year focused on how get foresight work acted upon. And we have a draft book manuscript on the topic. BUT, like most […] The post Why Guiding Images Are So Important to the Future first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

Mina McBride & Andy Hines, April 11, 2026 NOTE: I am reproducing the original LinkedIn post by Mina.. Why STILE? In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, organizations must not only anticipate change but also evaluate how close a proposed innovation is to becoming reality. This is where the STILE framework comes in—a strategic tool designed to assess […] The post Transforming with STILE: A Practical Method for Making Decisions with the Future in Mind first appeared on Hinesight....for ...

Houston Foresight and UNDP Futures collaborated on a year-long train-the-trainer project in 2024. As part of the project, we produced eight foresight videos on the topics listed below. JT Mudge and Rachel Feine produced them with Andy Hines, Denise Worrell, and Mina McBride explaining the various introductory foresight topics in three to six minute overviews. […] The post Houston Foresight & UNDP Futures Videos first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

This post may be more about hope than reality. I am questioning my whether I am “trying too hard” to find signals of a counter-trend to techification. I am becoming more afraid that the march of technology is prolonging the current neoliberal capitalism system and steering us toward collapse. Our Tech-Led Abundance guiding image of […] The post An Analog Reaction to Techification? first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.