Ways We Engage

• Foresight Briefings

  Cut through the noise and focus on what matters. Foresight briefings are quick, insight-led sessions built to help you better understand a topic, question, or challenge you want to get ahead of. They are especially useful when you need a clearer view of what is shifting, a shared starting point for your team, or a quick way to explore the questions you’re facing.
  
  Each engagement includes focused research, a high-level pre-read, a summary report, and a facilitated one- to two-hour presentation with discussion and Q&A. Briefings can be held in person or virtually and are designed for up to 20 colleagues, clients, or team members. All you need is a topic, question, or area of concern, and we provide the data and insights you need to make sense of it.
  
  Topics could include:
  • Get an early read on the trends shaping workplace, care, housing, retail, or hospitality
  • Understand more about emerging technologies and their impact
  • Examine how products and materials may evolve over the next decade
• Research and Insight Reports

  Research and insight reports offer a deeper dive into a question, challenge, opportunity, or area of change. These reports create long-term value by translating what’s happening today into what it signals for the future, and what that could mean for your organization, market, or area of work.
  
  Reports can be delivered virtually or in person and include a final report along with a one- to two-hour presentation of key findings, implications, and Q&A. If needed, the process can also include expert interviews and additional research inputs depending on the topic. All you need is a core question or focus area, and we can help deliver world-class research, translated into actionable insights.
  
  Topics could include:
  • Examining how AI, automation, and data may affect the day-to-day realities of design practice
  • Exploring how demographic shifts and changing user expectations may reshape senior living, higher education, or other key sectors
  • Identifying where new demands around performance, sustainability, and experience may open opportunities for products, materials, and manufacturing
• Workshops

  Interactive sessions to help you not only understand change, but work through what it could mean for your team, your clients, or the future of your business. Workshops are facilitated approach moves beyond awareness to actively and collaboratively examine implications, opportunities, and possible responses.
  
  Built around a future-facing topic, tension, or opportunity, workshops create space to challenge assumptions, wrestle with complex questions, surface new needs, and consider how expectations, behaviors, workflows, strategies, and design responses may need to evolve. They are especially helpful when your team is facing a challenge without an obvious answer, when you need to align around a new direction, or when you want to investigate what a different model for solving a problem could look like.
  
  Workshops are held in person and can range from a few hours to multiple days, depending on the scope. They are designed for groups of 20-40 people, with additional facilitation available for larger groups. Each engagement includes research, a pre-read, facilitation, and a summary report capturing key insights and takeaways. All you need is a complex question you want to build momentum around and a group ready to explore what could come next.
  
  Topics could include:
  • Exploring the future of work with a client
  • Building perspectives on the future of care with experts and developers in the room
  • Rethinking how climate adaptation may influence materials and interiors with product and sales teams
• Scenario Explorations

  A targeted approach for when uncertainty is high and you need to consider multiple ways a topic, sector, or challenge could evolve so you can better test assumptions, identify risks, and prepare for a wider range of opportunities and possibilities.
  
  Scenario explorations are typically held in person and can range from a few hours to multiple days, depending on the depth of the work. Engagements are designed for groups of 20-40 people and include research, scenario development, a pre-read, facilitated exploration of the scenarios, and a summary report. All you need is an area of uncertainty, a strategic question, or a shift you want to better prepare for, and we can help you explore multiple possible futures and what they may mean.
  
  Topics could include:
  • Exploring different futures for how work may actually occur
  • How learning may be delivered, experienced, and credentialed
  • How sales and communication may evolve across physical and digital channels
  • How products may be discovered, evaluated, and specified
  • How client relationships and decision-making may change
  • How service models may shift over time
  • How collaboration may happen across teams, disciplines, and technologies
  • What entirely new forms of design practice, value creation, and user experience may emerge
• Leadership Talks and Keynotes

  Bring people into a larger conversation about what is changing and what may matter next. Leadership Talks and Keynotes are curated presentations that translate foresight into a clear, engaging point of view for conferences, executive groups, leadership teams, and industry convenings.
  
  Talks can be delivered in person or virtually and typically run one to two hours, depending on the setting. Each engagement includes research, speech development, and presentation delivery. All you need is a topic, moment, or audience you want to engage, and we can help shape a talk that brings clarity, perspective, and energy to what comes next.
  
  Topics could include:
  • The forces reshaping design value
  • An overview of the signals changing the built environment
  • A perspective on the capabilities your professionals and organization will need to stay relevant over the next decade
• Custom Certified Design Futurist Training

  Custom Certified Design Futurist (CDF) training allows you to build foresight capability across a team, not just through individual participation. In addition to the individual CDF experience, IIDA Futures also offers custom pathways for firms, manufacturers, and other built environment organizations that want a more coordinated way to engage the program.
  
  These options are especially useful if you want to build shared skills training, strengthen future-ready thinking across a group, or connect the learning more directly to the questions and challenges your team is facing. Whether you want to learn together as a dedicated cohort, reserve space in an existing seasonal cohort, or purchase seats over time, there are multiple ways to serve your goals, scale, and schedule.
  
  Custom Cohort Training
  For anyone interested in a more tailored group learning experience, IIDA Futures offers a custom annual cohort option at the beginning of each year for 10-20 participants from a single organization. This format allows your group to move through the course together and also curate the experience around a specific futures topic, strategic question, or learning opportunity relevant to the organization’s needs.
  
  Seasonal Cohort Buyout
  Anyone seeking to train a larger group, team, or staff in foresight may select a buyout option within one of IIDA’s existing seasonal cohorts of spring, summer, or fall. This option requires a minimum of 35 participants and allows one organization to reserve participation within a designated cohort window. It is well-suited for organizations looking to create a broader shared learning experience at scale while working within the established CDF schedule.
  
  Group Seat Blocks
  If you want more flexibility, you can purchase blocks of 10 or more seats and use them over time. This option is helpful when you want to support ongoing participation across teams without requiring everyone to join the same cohort at once. As long as all participants are IIDA members, organizations purchasing 10 or more seats receive a 10% discount. Seats can be purchased in advance and used over time based on individual schedules.