A futurist helps organisations imagine, test and prepare for possible futures before they arrive. The simplest way I can describe my job is that a futurist is a science fiction author for business. We write plausible, evidence-based stories about tomorrow so that leaders can rehearse decisions today, spot opportunities before competitors do, and tell a more compelling story about who they are becoming.
I'm Anders Sörman-Nilsson, a Swedish-Australian futurist and the founder of Thinque. People often expect a futurist to be a forecaster with a crystal ball. In practice, the most valuable thing I do with leadership teams is closer to what a great science fiction writer does: build a series of vivid, believable worlds, invite people to step into them, and let them discover what they would need to change to thrive in those futures.
Science fiction works because stories bypass our defences. A spreadsheet projection is easy to argue with. A well-told story about a world that feels real is much harder to dismiss, and it changes how people see the present.
Business has used this for decades. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Pierre Wack and Ted Newland in Royal Dutch Shell's planning team stopped trying to produce a single forecast and started writing alternative scenarios instead. One of those stories described a world in which oil-producing nations used supply as a political weapon, and Shell's planners warned that the oil price could jump from about $2 a barrel to as much as $10. When the 1973 oil crisis hit, Shell's managers had already Stoically rehearsed it. Wack's point was never that the scenarios predicted the future. It was that they changed the mental models of the people making decisions.
Intel took the idea even further. Its first futurist, Brian David Johnson, used what he called science fiction prototyping: writing short fictional stories set in the future, based on real research and trend data, to help engineers and executives explore what new technologies might mean for people before building them.
I wrote recently about how a single TV movie, The Day After, left a US president greatly depressed about nuclear war. It's one of the clearest examples I know of a story landing in a way data alone rarely does. Scenario Planning is one method to generate these future science fiction story-lines - here is one from our archives from 2019 on the Future Impacts of Artificial Intelligence.
Some of the most powerful stories in business are not invented at all. They are true stories nobody has bothered to tell. My favourite example is gold.
Ask people where gold comes from and most will say the ground. In fact, gold is extra-terrestrial. It is forged in cosmic cataclysms such as collisions between neutron stars, which astronomers first watched unfold in 2017. Almost all of Earth's original gold sank into the core as the planet formed, and research published in Nature suggests the gold we mine today arrived later, delivered by meteorites. Every gold ring is stardust. It reads like science fiction, and it happens to be science fact.
I have a personal soft spot for this one. My youngest son is called Aurélien, a name that traces back to the Latin aurum, meaning gold. So in my family, gold's story being written in the stars feels a little personal.
Knowing gold's origin doesn't make a ring heavier or shinier, but it makes it mean more. The same is true of brands. The 2009 Significant Objects experiment proved it commercially: Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn bought 100 thrift-store trinkets for a combined $128.74, had writers invent a story for each, and sold them on eBay for $3,612.51, even though every listing said the story was fiction. If invented stories can multiply value that much, imagine what the true story inside your organisation could do.
There is an urgent reason to find that story now. Consider what happened to diamonds. De Beers built one of the most successful brand stories in history on rarity. Then labs learned to grow identical stones for a fraction of the price. Lab-grown diamonds now make up roughly half of US engagement rings, and Anglo American has written billions off De Beers' value. A story built on scarcity collapsed the moment the scarcity could be manufactured.
Generative AI is doing the same thing to knowledge work. For most of history, intelligence was a human monopoly, and it was priced accordingly. AI makes much of it abundant, and abundant things get repriced. What I'm seeing in boardrooms is that many organisations are still telling a diamond story about themselves, built on being clever and knowing things. The ones that hold their value will tell a gold story: one rooted in origin, people and meaning that an AI cannot synthesise because it actually happened. That idea is at the heart of what I call AI With a Human Soul.
My work with organisations usually takes one of five forms, and each one is a different way of writing, testing or telling a story about the future:
Three very different organisations currently have me as their futurist-in-residence, and the work looks different in each.
Brisbane Broncos. Since 2025 I've been working with the Broncos' executive leadership team, board and staff on what the game, the fans and the business will look like in 2032. That same season the club came from 10 points down at half-time to beat the Melbourne Storm 26–22 in the NRL grand final, its first premiership since 2006. People keep asking whether I had anything to do with it. Only the footy gods know, but I've rarely been happier to be in a room.
Ord Minnett. At Ords, one of Australia's most iconic wealth managers, I work with advisers and clients on the long-term forces reshaping how Australians invest, build and pass on wealth.
Barker College. Barker has been around since 1890, and its promise to families is two words: Inspiring Tomorrow. As futurist-in-residence at the Barker Institute, I've worked with the school community on what flourishing really looks like for a child who will start their career in the 2040s. As a dad of two boys, that one isn't abstract for me.
A football club, a wealth manager and a school have little in common on the surface. In practice, every conversation ends up at the same two questions. What needs to be true in ten years for our strategy to work? And what are we building right now that quietly assumes it won't be?
I keep this group deliberately small. I take on only a few new residencies a year, and I won't work with a client's direct competitors, so in practice there is one seat per sector.
A forecaster tries to predict the single most likely outcome. A strategy consultant typically optimises for the world as it is now. A futurist deliberately explores several possible worlds, including uncomfortable ones, and helps leaders become coherent about their choices across all of them. Nobody gets to be right about the future. Everybody gets to decide how prepared they are for it.
A futurist helps organisations explore plausible futures, identify emerging signals and trends, and make better decisions today. The work often involves scenario planning, strategic foresight, keynote presentations and helping leaders articulate a compelling story about where they are heading.
Not in the crystal-ball sense. Good futurists describe a range of plausible futures, grounded in evidence, so leaders can test their strategies and assumptions against each one rather than betting everything on a single forecast.
Scenario planning is a strategic method for developing several believable stories about how the future might unfold, then testing decisions against each. It was pioneered in business by Pierre Wack and Ted Newland at Royal Dutch Shell, whose scenarios helped the company prepare for the 1973 oil crisis.
Science fiction prototyping, developed by Intel's first futurist Brian David Johnson, uses short fictional stories set in the future, based on real research, to explore the human impact of new technologies before they are built.
A futurist-in-residence is an ongoing partnership, typically 12 months or more, in which a futurist works with an organisation's board, executive team and staff. It usually includes regular foresight reports, strategy and scenario sessions, and on-call access as new issues emerge. Anders Sörman-Nilsson is currently futurist-in-residence for the Brisbane Broncos, Ord Minnett and Barker College.
As AI makes many forms of expertise abundant and cheaper, organisations need sources of value that can't be copied. True stories about a company's origin, people and purpose can't be synthesised, which makes them one of the most durable forms of differentiation available.
You can contact Anders Sörman-Nilsson directly to check availability for keynotes, scenario planning workshops, strategy sessions, futurist-in-residence partnerships or commissioned thought leadership content such as white papers, podcasts and video.
Anders Sörman-Nilsson is a futurist, keynote speaker and founder of Thinque. He is the author of Digilogue, Seamless and Aftershock, and has worked with organisations including Apple, Google, Meta, Adobe, Lego, Dyson and Woolworths. If your leadership team, conference or board could use a science fiction author for business, whether for a keynote, a scenario planning session, a longer residency or commissioned thought leadership content, get in touch about availability.
References to gold and diamonds in this article are about the value of story, not investment advice.