ISA | 2010 Annual Business Retreat

BOB JOHANSEN

IFTF DISTINGUISHED FELLOW
INSTITUTE FOR THE FUTURE
PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA

Bob has worked for more than 35 years as a ten-year forecaster. Bob now works mainly with senior leaders across a wide range of industries. He has rich experience in presenting IFTF’s foresight and then drawing out insights-inputs to strategy-and-action steps. He works with leaders and studies future leadership styles and skills.
Bob served as IFTF’s president and CEO from 1996 to 2004. Though still on IFTF’s Board, Bob now spends most of his time with IFTF sponsors and writing.

Since joining the IFTF staff in the 1970’s, he has explored many varied social and organizational impacts of new technologies—beginning when the Internet was still called the ARPANET. Before his role as president, Bob created and led IFTF’s program on emerging information technologies—now called the Technology Horizons Program. He also has a deep interest in the future of religion and its impact on business, society, and individuals.

Bob is a frequent keynote speaker, but his focus is on workshops with creative teams. His new book is called Leaders Make the Future: Ten New Leadership Skills for an Uncertain Age, which will be published in April of 2009. This book builds on his best selling Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present, published by Berrett Koehler in 2007. Get There Early was selected as one of the top 30 business books of 2007. He is the author or co-author of six previous books, including Upsizing the Individual in the Downsized Organization with novelist Rob Swigart, a guide for organizations undergoing massive change, and GlobalWork, a guide to leading global, cross-cultural teams.

A social scientist with an interdisciplinary background, Bob holds a BS degree from the University of Illinois, where he also played varsity basketball, and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University. Bob also has a divinity school degree from what is now called Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, where he studied comparative religions.