Rethinking the Future: What Being a Futurist Taught Me About the Past 🕯️.

Over the past five years, I've had roles that required a lot of foresight. I worked in innovation and I worked as a futurist. My job was to detect and spot the changes that would happen.

I was always obsessed over the things that would change. In fact, most of the talks I gave were about the future of work, the future of learning, the future of cities or how things are going to change because of technology disruption. I participated regularly in writing reports about the global top 10 trends that will shape the future of work worldwide.

And I've always looked forward, up until I started reading Same as Ever 📖.

As I've learned, from reading same as ever: foresight often requires hindsight.

In the world of business, certain fundamental concepts remain constant. Over the weekend, I've been reflecting on these timeless principles. From my perspective as the founder of Turwa By Fadwa , these three elements are particularly enduring 👇:

1) Business = Solving Problem

As a storytelling coach, the first question I ask my clients is: "How does your business solve people's problems?"

Let's say that you have a flat tire, you will actually require help to solving your problem. Whether you will call up a mechanic to change your tire, triple A, or you will go to YouTube to learn how to change a tire yourself by acquiring the skill in exchange of your time.

People will always have problems and businesses are fundamentally based on solving these problems

I don't go to a Parisian café just to drink coffee. I go to people-watch (fashion inspiration, True story), post on Instagram (social connection), or spend quality time with friends (bonding).

So, whether you sell auditing services or SaaS, ask yourself

What problem are you solving?

2) Business = Trust

Second, business is about trust.

In today's modern world, we put our trust in digital tools like the reviews for restaurants ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. We also put our trust in our prime subscription with Amazon, knowing that even if we order a house, it's going to be delivered based on our liking or we'll just automatically refund it.

There's also all type of gaining trust, one of the all time oldies is :

Word of mouth" & yes it is now i done online, instead of using magazine reviews in the 90s or reputation of merchandise in the market 100 years ago.

Trust is a fundamental need in business

There's a trust that accumulates over time and it's not something that's tangible, but once we have it, the cost of doing business actually goes down because you do less due diligence. For instance, as a service provider, you're able to increase your scope or your customer base because you've earned the trust of your ecosystem.

3) Business is about People

Third thing, and that's very dear and near to my heart because as a storyteller, I study influence: Business will always require dealing with humans and humans require influence.

Yes, we need a lot of logical explanation of certain things, but we also need people who are great orators, whether it's Martin Luther King giving a speech or us watching a storyteller on TikTok

The ability to speak, to think and to write will always be a leadership trait.

It's been true in the past and it will still be true in the future.

What other things that you see from your point of view that will not change over the next hundred years in your industry, in your region or in your field?