Great conversation and great episode with Vitalia Sofranova at ¡Reinventándonos! Podcast by Polymath. Fascinated by the future possibilities that linger within current signals of change, Vita is an observer of the present and a futures thinker. Her work focuses on the question of how current challenges can be transformed into desirable futures. As an independent futurist and strategic foresight consultant specializing in futures thinking, trend research, and signals curation, she helps organizations decode weak signals, identify future opportunities, and turn them into strategic actions. Her work bridges the gap between societal change and organizational, often economic activity to identify hopeful, better-informed paths towards tomorrow. With seven years of experience, she has refined her expertise through the design and implementation of research and scenario projects, in a multitude of strategic as well as educational workshops, and through the development of interactive future methods and tools. She has led strategic-cultural future journeys for executives, implemented trend expeditions connecting established businesses with promising start-ups, searched for the smart home of the future as a jury member of the first Telekom Challenge, realized award-winning research projects for clients, hosted a monthly online innovation lecture series for several years, and co-founded the Frankfurt branch of the global Design Futures Initiative, designing events and building a community around speculative design and strategic foresight for almost three years. She is an occasional keynote speaker on all things future and puts special emphasis on enabling the people she works with to become futures literate. Based in Barcelona, past projects – and the many pan-European train rides that came with them – have led Vita to Paris, Brussels and Vienna with recurring projects in many cities of her home country, Germany. As desirable futures become more likely when people work together, she stays connected with her former employers from Zukunftsinstitut Workshop, and expands her work through valuable work and thought partnerships, e.g. with the brilliant Cologne-based foresight consultancy Z_punkt, or the multiperspective freelance futures collective youngk. Through open essay and video formats Vita invites others to join the conversation and to become active agents of a better future. In this episode we talked about: I. How did her own journey into futures begin. II. Futures Literacy and Strategic Foresight. III. About her newsletter on LinkedIn: Messy Futures IV. About Protectables Futures V. The difference between noise and a meaningful weak signal. VI. From designing for more to designing for enough. VII. European organizations approach to Futures Strategy. VIII. Her insights about Future Days. IX. About her consultancy Vita Nova. We really enjoy our talk and we are sure you're going to do it too. Enjoy it! Cheers. *You can connect with Vita on LinkedIn, here. * You can subscribe to monthly essays on her newly created Substack Messy Futures: here * Music by @werekemusic
