By The Futuring Alliance (Sebastian Baumann, Dr. Frank Kumli, Nicole Loeser)
The Need for a New Paradigm in Foresight
Foresight, as both a discipline and a capability, stands at a critical crossroads. The polycrisis and its escalating complexity of global challenges demand a paradigm shift in how we anticipate, reimagine, design, and institutionalize social systems in the global context. Futures-driven approaches—whether strategic foresight, narrative foresight, speculative design, or others—risk becoming the climate science of the 21st century: critically important, yet underutilized in high-level decision-making for systemic transformation. When practiced in isolation, these approaches are increasingly insufficient—both analytically and in their guiding potential—failing to grasp or reshape the complex realities of today and tomorrow. To remain relevant amid the rapid emergence of new challenges, foresight must evolve—or perhaps even dissolve—into something more integrated and actionable. It must transition from a primarily analytical and inspirational into an applied discipline that drives both immediate and systemic impact.
Other disciplines, such as systems design, offer structured approaches to change and guiding action. However, they frequently struggle to integrate anticipation and long-term thinking into their frameworks. While both foresight and systems design are essential for mapping and addressing today’s and tomorrow’s complex challenges, they often remain disconnected from each other and from joint practical implementation. Too frequently, these disciplines produce insights in isolation that fail to translate into tangible action—ending up as intellectual siloed exercises rather than catalysts for transformation, innovation, and systemic change.
Introducing Worldforming: A Bridge Between Anticipation and Action
In response to these limitations, The Futuring Alliance (TFA), a transdisciplinary coalition uniting designers, futurists, pragmatic visionaries, and changemakers, has developed Worldforming. This integrated framework bridges the gap between anticipation and action, blending the imaginative and motivational depth of foresight with the broad scope and practical rigor of systems design. Worldforming—a neologism inspired by Nelson Goodman’s Worldmaking and science fiction’s Worldbuilding—moves beyond insights and speculation to drive real-time, real-world transformative innovation.
The Process of Worldforming
Worldforming unfolds as a multi-stage journey, aiming at enabling large-scale, systemic solutions with impact by deeply integrating systems thinking and foresight. In particular, it utilizes foresight’s imaginative and motivational elements, such as visions. It begins with “Forming,” a phase that blends strategic and narrative foresight with dynamic systems mapping to uncover intertemporal opportunities and identify present and future leverage points for change on an analytical level. From there, it convenes diverse stakeholders to craft shared narratives and align around a compelling vision and transformative mission—“Words”—laying the foundation for joint ideation and action. Contrary to speculative design, for example, the ideas discovered, discussed, and materialized are not left in the realm of speculation and inspiration. During “Works”, they are translated into Minimum Viable Creations (MVCs)—advanced prototypes that integrate technology, policy, and cultural transformation into scalable, systemic solutions. Finally, in the “Worlds” phase, the most promising MVCs are institutionalized through a portfolio approach and expanded, ensuring both immediate systemic impact and sustained transformation.
Worldforming by The Futuring Alliance
A Mission-Driven, Ecosystem-Based Approach
Unlike traditional design and innovation models, which prioritize isolated and often granular solutions, Worldforming is mission-driven and ecosystem-based. It builds interconnected portfolios of solutions rather than short-term, surface-level fixes. Such systemic solutions foster adaptability, resilience, cross-sector collaboration, and, most importantly, impact. Sustainable ecosystems of actors and MVCs can evolve and adapt throughout the process. This structured yet flexible approach accelerates transformative innovation while ensuring that visionary ideas move beyond abstraction to become tangible realities that reflect necessary complexity.
Shaping Entire Ecosystems with Openness, Optimism, and Impact
At its core, Worldforming aims to move beyond linear, transactional relationships. It is designed to engage individuals and institutions across disciplines and backgrounds, empowering ecosystems of actors to develop multidimensional, interconnected solutions that can be rapidly institutionalized. By fostering diverse perspectives, Worldforming guarantees that systemic solutions address root causes rather than merely treating symptoms.
A second key attribute of Worldforming is its fundamental optimism. At a time when future narratives are dominated by crisis and collapse, it embraces the vast potential for systemic reinvention and the creation of prosperous futures. It does not downplay the severity of today’s challenges; rather, it views them as opportunities to rethink and reshape societal, economic, and technological infrastructures and interdependencies.
A third key attribute of Worldforming—and arguably its primary reason for existing—is its commitment to insights-fueled action, tangible implementation, and real-world impact. This strong focus on results, outputs, and systemic applications distinguishes Worldforming as a framework dedicated to shaping future ecosystems, setting it apart from more speculative and granular approaches.
Industry 2125: A Case Study in Worldforming
A tangible demonstration of Worldforming in action is the ongoing “Industry 2125” initiative, a joint research project led by Themis Foresight and TFA. This bold undertaking aims to reinvent industrial systems by integrating production processes into regenerative cycles while fostering economic growth. The project serves as an ambitious, practical application of the Worldforming four-step process, illustrating how foresight-driven transformative innovation can shape entire ecosystems.
Forming: The initiative begins with strategic and narrative foresight combined with dynamic systems mapping to identify key technological stagnations and structural inefficiencies in both contemporary and future industrial production. While digital technologies have advanced at an exponential pace, traditional physical and chemical engineering sectors have largely stagnated—and will continue to do so without systemic intervention. Therefore, the first phase of “Industry 2125” reframes this stagnation as an opportunity, mapping intertemporal interdependencies and leverage points across the broader industrial ecosystem.
Words: The second phase brings together a diverse alliance of stakeholders—academia, policymakers, industry leaders, employees, and civil society—to co-create a collective vision for industrial transformation. This collaborative ecosystem is essential to ensuring that solutions are not only technologically viable but also socially and economically sustainable. The initiative deliberately moves beyond growth-limiting paradigms such as degrowth and instead emphasizes sustainable innovation that drives both ecological and economic regeneration.
Works: With a shared vision and transformative mission in place, the third phase shifts from conceptualization to experimentation. Here, “Industry 2125” develops Minimum Viable Creations (MVCs)—advanced prototypes of industrial processes, business models, and structural solutions that align with natural cycles while ensuring economic competitiveness. These prototypes span a broad range of interventions, from novel material recycling techniques to regenerative manufacturing processes and cultural initiatives—all designed to restore ecological balance rather than merely reduce harm.
Worlds: The final phase focuses on scalability and institutional integration. The most promising MVCs are embedded into industrial policies and market-driven financing structures to secure long-term sustainability. Recognizing that systemic transformation requires significant investment, “Industry 2125” also explores innovative financing mechanisms, including private-sector incentives and investment strategies that facilitate industrial transitions without over-reliance on government subsidies or unsustainable debt.
By applying the successive yet flexible steps of Worldforming, “Industry 2125” aims to exemplify how a structured, foresight-driven process can transform industrial stagnation into a roadmap for future-positive economic and ecological regeneration.
Looking Ahead: An Invitation to Collaboration
The need for integrated, action-driven methodologies has never been greater. As the world faces accelerating disruptions, Worldforming offers a replicable, scalable, yet adaptive framework for shaping entire ecosystems and future worlds. We, The Futuring Alliance, together with Themis Foresight, call upon institutions, businesses, and governments to move beyond reactive adaptation and take an active role in designing the futures we want to thrive in.
For futurists and changemakers, Worldforming is more than a methodology—it’s an invitation. In the face of adversity, it serves as both an instrument for collective orientation and a call to collaboration and joint action. It challenges us to think systemically and boldly, act decisively, and collaborate radically across disciplines to scale transformative change at the speed demanded by the polycrisis. Together, we can turn crises into reinvention, fragmentation into collaboration, and possibility into reality.
