you said “futurist” ?

a futurist

In French, we will call it “prospectiviste”: he/she is a specialist in a specific field of foresight known as the “French Prospective” for there are several currents in Futures Studies, the two historical ones being the American ‘forecasting' and the French “prospective”.

More broadly, the futurist knows the conceptual and methodological corpus of Futures Studies, either because of his/her academic studies (degrees in FS) or as an autodidact.

Professional, his/her job is to help his/her interlocutors to think the future, in particular in terms of innovation and responsibility, and to make decisions integrating this reflexion, hence the need for operationality we already mentioned.

Within this framework, the futurist appears as an architect of foresight exercises (participatory processes), a methodologist choosing or working out the most suitable tools, a expert in certain sets of themes and especially in the spotting of trends, ruptures and weak signals which can draw the various possible or desirable futures.

Futures-oriented neutrality is essential to the futurist's job: for the future is never written, whatever the trends.

For more details about “what is a futurist?” see:

• Acceleration Watch's definition

• Roger CALDWELL's set of definitions

• from Natalie DIAN

a visionary

Unlike the futurist, the visionary is strongly politically committed. He/she believes in a given vision of the future of which he/she seeks to convince the decision-makers so that they make the suitable decisions.

Some are sometimes described as guru, because of their charisma and their skill to convince of the accuracy of their vision.