CONSULTING : Futures for Civic Engagement

Possibility Hours : Lakeland

BRIEF
How might our civic organizations provide equal access and agency, everyday to everyone, on their journey to self actualization? Possibility Hours provides a unique experience for political, economic, and social leaders, who are neighbors but strangers, to envision possibilities for seemingly intractable urban problems.

The conversations were captured as spoken-word poems, compiled into a book of the poems, and real aloud to open a workshop that envisioned preferable futures for the city.

WORKSHOPS : Futures for Civic Engagement

How might we become more engaged citizens?

BRIEF
During Primer 2017, a Speculative Futures Conference, we led a workshop with a diverse group of conference participants. They were everything from neighbors, to students, to leaders of civic organizations. Participants worked in teams and were asked to envision everyday moments of civic engagement for a world where traditional voting has collapsed.

Each team received a secret packet and followed the prompts on worksheets contained inside to prototype new props, processes, and places that fostered being a more engaged citizen. The event ended with teams presenting their new civic moments via role play with prototypes and scale models. 

INCUBATORS : Everyday Futures

How might we envision new rituals for our everyday commute?

BRIEF
For a multi-disciplinary course in the Upper Division Interdisciplinary Studio program at California College of the Arts (CCA), co-taught with Gregory Hurcomb, we asked students to challenge the bias of their discipline and explore possible futures of their everyday commute.

Over the course of the semester students scanned for signals that influence what they see everyday. They developed trends and then forecasted how those trends may continue into 2 different future conditions.

They chose one of those worlds as the context in which to propose a new product, service or ritual. This work was exhibited at CCA's Hubbell Street Gallery. The explorations culminated with each student telling a retrospective story about how they more confidently addressed complex topics like pollution, privacy, homelessness, or climate change.

WORKSHOPS : Ecological Futures

How might we launch new ventures to combat ecological collapse?

BRIEF
For the annual Spark Festival in Hamilton, New Zealand, we led a workshop with faculty, students and business leaders. As a group we conducted a quick scan of present day influences impacting agriculture, tourism and towns in inner New Zealand.

Participants then worked in teams to leverage their capabilities in agriculture and reproductive sciences, to envision sustainable products and services that address their forecasts for the collapse of New Zealand ecological exports. Finally, they had to devise a pitch for a new organization that would provide the new products and services.

As a group, teams pitched their new products and services in various forms of public announcements including taste tests, adverts, service announcements and product demos.

CONSULTING : Pet Care Futures

How might we scale and grow our pet products & services?

BRIEF
To inform a brand strategy project with a national pet hospital client of IDEO, we used multiple explorations of futures to enable the client to make better and more ambitious decisions about their future. The first exploration was a quick evening workshop.

We paired a pet expert with a pet owner into teams. Each team chose from a deck of diverse expert forecasts on the topics of genetics, transportation, medicine and lifestyle to inspire a new product or service that transforms the relationship between pets, home, and the city. Each team created a prototype and a pitch presentation in two hours.

These prototypes were synthesized into three possible strategic directions for the client leadership team to consider. Another workshop was designed where these possible futures were presented as different customer experiences. We provided guidelines, worksheets and facilitation to help the senior leadership team weigh the trade-offs and make strategic decisions about their future products, services, and operations.

FOUNDER
 

Scott Paterson

Bringing over 20 years of strategic creative leadership, award-winning design, and mentorship across multiple disciplines, I help public and private organizations across the globe, to design participatory methods that tackle complex futures.

From a decade plus of international consulting with frog and IDEO, to teaching at CCA and Parsons, or my participatory artwork in the Whitney Museum and Walker Art Center's Permanent Collection, I’m passionate about creating the conditions to realize work with great impact.

RECENT PARTNERS
Embraer X : Beacon (Sao Jose Dos Campos)
Breakout
Nubank (Sao Paolo)
IESE Business School (Barcelona)
Fair Trade USA
Contra Costa Health Services
Lakeland Economic Development Council
Embraer

RECENT COLLABORATORS
Samille Sousa: Nubank
Ted Howes: Systemic Shift
Elliott Montgomery: Extrapolation Factory
Chris Woebken: Extrapolation Factory
Stuart Candy: Carnegie Mellon Faculty