foresight is a wonderful thing

What does the future hold for your organisation?

We’re surrounded by complexity and uncertainty, so it can be difficult to identify relevant trends and adopt new working practices. At thoughtengine, I help people and organisations to ask better questions so that, together, we can build better answers to the problems and challenges that they face.

about patrick harris

Patrick is the Founder of thoughtengine, Founding Director of Growth Agenda and Director in Future Agenda - the world's largest open foresight programme. Put simply: Patrick helps organisations to ask better questions and build better outcomes.

He was formerly Director of Creaticity for Orange and a Director in The Futures Company. Patrick is an Honorary Life Member of Medinge, a think tank celebrating humanity in brands and has served as a Non-executive Director for France Telecom UK R&D.

His book, The Truth About Creativity, is a guidebook for the practical application of creativity in organisations and was published in 2009.

Patrick enjoys helping people and organisations to resolve complex issues and to employ inspired strategies. He was born in the USA, is married with two children and now lives in London. He holds a BSc and an MBA (Hons).

Throughout 2015, Patrick co-facilitated much of the Future Agenda programme, travelling extensively as a result. While the main body of work was completed in 2015, Patrick and his colleagues are still continuing to develop the programme by addressing certain topics with greater depth.

helping organisations

What might we do together?

Draw from broad foresight experience to:

Work with the most relevant drivers of change for your industry or organisation, or possibly unlock futures thinking in your organisation to make it more prepared and to help you build a more responsive and adaptive culture.

Draw on creativity & innovation expertise to:

Instil creative activities in your organisation and nurture creative behaviour in a practical, straightforward manner.

Draw on strategy expertise to:

Deliver bold strategic direction, craft guiding principles to help individuals to act on the strategic direction and generate powerful organisational momentum.

What does the work look like?

Collegiate, co-creative, immersive, energetic and hands-on. A bespoke response to your particular question.

Workshops are a useful approach. Workshops that are well planned, outcome-focused and enjoyable for all.

Talks and speeches are helpful too. Talks that really engage, that are more two-way than one-way.

Research, often done together with you and possibly with colleagues from an extensive network including partners like Growth Agenda to determine the best fit for you, from a range of sources.

insight

Some examples of recent activity, articles and interesting stuff

The Funders' Collaboration on Leadership

thoughtengine led the initial foresight work and is pleased to be involved with The Funders’ Collaboration on Leadership: a unique initiative set up by sixteen charitable funders passionate about leadership in the voluntary sector.

Future Agenda - The World in 2025

The website of synthesis from Future Agenda, the world's largest open foresight project, is live. Please do take a look at what 1,000's think about the world in 2025. A truly inspiring project to be a part of.

Future Agenda

Guest Tutor at Saïd Business School

During 2016, Patrick served as a tutor for the MBA programme at Saïd Business School, Oxford.

A more detailed description of the course

Journal of Brand Management

In 2015, JBM reviewed all articles from its 23 year history. Patrick's paper, 'We the People’, is ranked number 9 on the list of most downloaded articles . The paper discusses the importance of employees and 'branding within an organisation'.

find out more

Connected Success: The future of the socially valued organisation

Exploring the future of medical research

Following the 2015 CSLP Summer residential with thoughtengine, CSLP Fellow, Stuart Griffiths published this work on using Foresight to investigate the future of medical research

Download Stuart's paper here

Growth Agenda & Future Agenda

Patrick is a founding member of Growth Agenda and a core member of Future Agenda - the world's largest open foresight project.

GROWTH AGENDA

Patrick is a Founding Director of Growth Agenda - a global network of leading-edge expertise that helps organisations identify and exploit strategic and innovation opportunities.

FUTURE AGENDA

Patrick is Director of Future Agenda, the world's largest global open foresight programme. It addresses major challenges of the next decade by interacting with 1,000s of people and shares all output for all to use.