Book Recommendation: The Signals are Talking: Why Today's Fringe is Tomorrow's Mainstream by Amy Webb
Dr. Tiffany Vora recommends The Signals are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe is Tomorrow’s Mainstream by Amy Webb
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Future forecasting isn’t a magic art. It’s a learned skill. With the right guiding frameworks and a great deal of practice, we can all improve at identifying where the future could be going—and how we can prepare ourselves, our organizations, and our societies for those futures.
Renowned futurist Amy Webb shares methodologies for future forecasting in The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream. Although The Signals are Talking was published back in 2016, the frameworks remain incredibly useful.
Here, Webb focuses on weak signals: the “novel, unconnected, and random” experiments and stories that are happening out on the fringe.
💡 She takes us through her six-step funnel for synthesizing these weak signals into trends, evaluating the significance of those trends, and ultimately acting upon trends by setting long-term strategies.
Webb focuses on corporations here—drawing on her extensive experience for case studies—but it’s easy to see how governments and individuals could benefit from her methods and frameworks.
I’m particularly inspired by Webb’s pointers for long-term future thinking.
💡 She highlights the importance of avoiding getting sucked into the “how” in order to focus on the “what” and, perhaps most importantly, the “why.”
My brain automatically gravitates to the “how”, probably in large part due to my training as a scientist. But now I’m using Webb’s guiding questions to strengthen my “flare” thinking. This isn’t only incredibly useful. It’s fun!
I’m a big fan of Webb’s. She co-authored The Genesis Machine, a look at the future of synthetic biology that I also highly recommend. In addition to Signals, her shorter articles (available online) are invaluable resources for kickstarting your futurism practice. I found her look at the Cone of Uncertainty in HBR to be particularly valuable for exploring some of the tensions that arise in innovation thinking.
💡 Overall, Signals is a great deep dive that amply rewarded me when I mindfully employed the methodology to the “futures of” that fascinate me.
I highly recommend reading this book, and setting aside time for you and your team to try out Webb’s approaches.
About Tiffany
Dr. Tiffany Vora speaks, writes, and advises on how to harness technology to build the best possible future(s). She is an expert in biotech, health, & innovation.
For a full list of topics and ways to collaborate, visit Tiffany’s Work Together webpage.
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