The Future Is Now - Chris Marshall on Big Trends, Playfulness, and Disruptive Change

Chris Marshall is a futurist, behavioral scientist, and founder of the Playfulness Institute. Futurism is not about predicting the future, but it involves looking beneath surface-level events to identify trends that drive seismic changes. 

Chris's journey as a futurist highlights the importance of curiosity. In his experience, being multi-passionate and embracing diverse interests is advantageous in a world of rapid change and disruption. A curious mindset fosters resilience and creativity, allowing entrepreneurs to adapt more effectively to uncertain environments.

Our conversation revolves around adapting to change and embracing a multi-dimensional perspective in navigating disruptive environments. 

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform.

Check Chris Marshall’s Decoding Change: Understanding what the heck is going on, and why we should be optimistic about our future, and use the affiliate links to support Pity Party Over at no additional cost to you.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn.

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TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: My first question for you, which probably would serve a lot of people listening to this episode, is who is a futurist? 

Chris Marhsall: So what's a futurist? A futurist basically, it's not sci-fi. It's not predicting the future even, because that's what a lot of people do think it's about. It's kind of we have a crystal ball somehow and go, oh, well, this is going to happen at this date and this time.

The way I approach it is I look at the big drivers, the big trends and megatrends, which are just kind of bringing about seismic change, but often under the surface. So I guess for me, the definition I like to use is that a futurist looks below the surface level events and look to what is happening beneath the surface, which might not be being picked up by mass media and things like that.

And really, when we start to understand that, we start to see that everything is always in flux. Everything's always changing. You know, this isn't new thinking. In fact, Eastern philosophies have talked about this kind of natural law of impermanence for millennia.

Being a futurist, the way I try to look at it is, well, what's the current trend? What's currently powering society? If we're looking at kind of societal philosophy or we're looking at business technology, what's the current trend?

What's the one which is potentially coming in because that's the one that's then maybe going to take over? And then we can build out scenarios around that crossover. And you can also go further out and go, well, act