European Futurists Conference Lucerne European Futurists Conference Lucerne

Winning in a Downturn - Using Future Insights to Succeed in Turbulent Times
We have entered an age of turbulence where the certainties of the past decade will be 'unsystematically' overturned. Old assumptions about how to govern, educate, lead and succeed in business are being challenged and abandoned. In the search for new solutions, businesses and government alike are seeing the importance of future thinking and preparing for a range of possible scenarios. in this session Global futurist Rohit Talwar will draw on an international research study to introduce practical strategies for using future insights to help organisations survive and thrive in turbulence. He will highlight real world examples of how business models, value chains, service, innovation strategies, people development and new product development are being transformed through the practical application of foresight.

Islamic Banking and Islamic Investment
In the midst of the current financial crisis, Islamic banking & finance stands at a crossroad. After at least a couple of decades of its close association with the Western capitalist institutions, Islamic financial thinkers are questioning close cooperation between Western investment banks and Islamic financial institutions. While, in theory Islamic banking and finance has a lot in common with Western movement of ethical finance and socially responsible investing, Islamic finance in practice has chosen to be in bed with the mainstream Western banks and financial institutions. There is a growing realisation that this trend is not sustainable in future.

Touchstones: Conceptual Products for Sustainable Futures
ImaginationLancaster is a new creative research lab at Lancaster University that explores futures for people, products, places and systems. Stuart will introduce this initiative and present recent work in which he combines theoretical critique with speculative objects to probe the meanings and implications of design for sustainability. Notions of localization, distributed enterprise, and flux lead to product concepts based on re-seeing, re-valuing, temporary arrangements, and evolving permanence.

Future of Lifestyles
The Philips Design probe programme is a far future research initiative attempting to develop lifestyle scenarios 10 - 20 years ahead. Design "provocations" are created with the purpose of stimulating debate and critique from which they work backwards to materialize nearer term scenarios. Clive will talk about emotional sensing, electronic tattoos and high rise sustainability as examples of past probes and refer to the recently published work on the future of food.

Desert Tech. Clean Power from the Sahara for Europe
The DESERTEC-project offers the opportunity to exploit the inexhaustible clean solar energy from deserts mainly by proven solar-thermal technologies. Only 1,7 % of all desert areas around the world is needed to cover the overall energy demand of humankind. Thus, we have an viable option for climate-, energy- and water-security (sea-water desalination) – indispensable factors for shaping a sustainable future for humankind.

The Futures of Technologies and the Technologies of the Futures
Change is not constant, in fact, change is accelerating very fast. Some technologies are radically changing humanity, in general, and also changing human beings, in particular. Many experts now talk about the four sciences and technologies of the future: NBIC (Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno). Furthermore, the NBIC fields are rapidly converging and they will help to transcend many human limitations and to improve human lives all around the world, and beyond.