My latest talk, for the Bay Area Future Salon. 45 mins + 35 of Q&A.

This talk is a brief summary of my new book, Introduction to Foresight, Executive Edition, 2021. The talk focuses on personal and team foresight, and the importance of living schedule-first. In the Q&A, with Mark Finnern, John Robb, Tyler Gothelf, and others, we get into a number of key exponential trends, including the global megatrends of densification and dematerialization (D&D).

At the end of my talk below (at 37:16), I give three slides on Exponential Investing, discuss the value of Custodial (for your children) and Regular (for yourself) Roth IRAs, explain how to use them to invest like a venture capitalist does, making one big exponential investment bet each year (and different each year), and share an investment I have made in 2021, in air taxi stocks. I’m particularly optimistic about air taxis as one key to the future of cities. Right now, most investors don’t even believe they are coming. Five years from now, everyone will know they are coming, and many will see all the benefits they will bring. In my view, now is a good time to place some bets, and do a long-term hold. See my 2018 Medium article, Our Amazing Aerial Future, for more details on this emerging new industry, just one of many positive exponentials that will increasingly reshape our 21st century lives.

Let me know what you think, dear friends!

Note: This post can also be found on Medium, an easier to use platform that pays its community for writing and readership. This site is a legacy site. Please visit my Medium page for my latest posts.

John Smart is a global futurist, and a scholar of foresight process, science and technology, life sciences, and complex systems. His new book, Introduction to Foresight, 2021, is now available on Amazon.