As the year draws to a close it is natural to think about how 2025 will unfold. It is also important to take a longer-term view to think about how each of us want to shape the future, says Chris Luebkeman, the leader of the Strategic Foresight Hub in the Office of the President at ETH Zurich (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich).
That’s why he says he co-founded (Y)our 2040, a community driven think-tank, network-of-networks and platform focused on the future, with business partner Jonelle Simunich, a fellow at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. They host a unique annual gathering which takes place in La Punt Chamues-ch, a small Swiss Alpine village 1,687 meters above sea level in the middle of the Engadine Valley. There they gather 100 handpicked people from a variety of backgrounds, ages, professions and geographies from near and far. The goal is to envision what participants want the world to look like in the year 2040 and outline what actions need to happen to help their visions become reality.
In his day job at the ETH Strategic Foresight Hub, Luebkeman engages with a broad range of stakeholders within the university on future-focused drivers of change. Prior to the ETH Hub position he was a fellow and corporate intrapreneur at the global consultancy Arup, where he founded the Foresight, Innovation and Incubation teams and was responsible for the future-focused activities of the firm with the aim of ensuring that Arup stayed at the cutting-edge of industry and remained in business for the next 20+ years. Luebkeman says it was natural for him to cofound (Y)our 2040 as a personal initiative and path to both thinking and creating the future with participants.
“(Y)our community members are action-oriented individuals who share a passion for, and commitment to, making the world a better place,” he explains. “We convene an intentionally diverse group of people from varied genders, professions, backgrounds and outlooks to share knowledge through hosted dialogues, to share insights through curated personal interaction, to generate ideas through facilitated workshops and to execute projects which are relevant to our mission.”
What Sort of Ancestor Do You Want To Be?
The origins of the idea came from Luebkeman’s family. “I was with my children at Thanksgiving, almost eight years ago, and we were talking about the state of the world – everything from climate change and its impact on biodiversity to increasing political strive – and my kids said ‘Look Papa you can’t give up. This is the only world we have!’ Of course, as a father I realized at that moment that they had just defined my role for the rest of my life; to do whatever I could to make the world the best version of itself and to give my children a world they would be able to deal with,” says Luebkeman. “That got me thinking about the meaning of being a great ancestor and what we all need to do to be able to look at our children, or the next generation, in the eye and be able to say, ‘I did everything I could for you.’
Luebkeman met entrepreneur Reto Gurtner, who owns a ski resort at the top of a mountain in the Swiss Alps and shared his dream of having a positive impact. “Gurtner was looking for ideas of what else to do with his resort. I wanted to create a global movement. We decided to do something together,” he says. Luebkeman immediately reached out to Simunich and convinced her to join him in making the (Y)our 2040 vision a reality.
Luebkeman and Simunich began by creating narratives which were “aspirational, pragmatic, regenerative and positive, and based on what science is already telling us in inevitable for our collective future,” says Luebkeman. “One of the hardest things in imaging and defining a bridge between today and tomorrow is that the focus is often either on utopia – frolicking unicorns and brilliant rainbows – or dystopian fire and brimstone,” he says. So he and Simunich set to work using their many years of foresight experience to create a methodology.
“It took us four years to create something I believe is unique and extremely special,” he says. “An approach which weaves humans, nature and infrastructure into a story line and puts them on equal footing. This allows us to holistically engage in the profound changes we are and will continue to face in the years ahead while allowing us (humans) to have a good life.”
Drawing on his experience as an attendee at events like the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, TED, Aspen Ideas Festival and Burning Man Luebkeman set out to take the best aspects of these events to design the three-day Y(our) 2040 gathering. He and his team created a program that is “highly respectful of everyone’s time, encourages learning, builds trust among the participants and is designed to deliver positive and pragmatic stories for the future as well as to the transition pathways required to make the future stories become real,” he says. “Each participant leaves feeling inspired, empowered, informed and with a new network of fellow action-oriented people ready to drive change.”
Stories are at the heart of the experience. “It is how we learn and how we remember, but stories also need to empower and inspire action,” says Luebkeman. “The (Y)our 2040 program has two parts. The first is a series of future stories, which lead into a collective vision, the second is a set of transition pathways and action products, services and policies, which either need to be amplified or to be invested in, for these visions to become a reality.”
Creating Inclusive Futures
Luebkeman and Simunich determined that 100 people were the right number for effective exchanges. During the gathering attendees share vegan meals prepared by the Hotel Krone La Punt’s Michelin and participate in a variety of activities, relevant to the desired futures theme. Every participant has the opportunity to share something such as meditation or skills training. Past participants have ranged in age from 5 to 85 and come from a variety of professional backgrounds. Examples include local farmers, Buddhist monks, venture capitalists, musicians, artists, authors, historians, carpenters, scientists, government officials, lawyers, CEOs and the heads of large multinational organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund.
To attend each person must fill in an application and share why they want to join, what they have to offer to the community, and what the future means to them. “What is important is curating a community of global participants who want to collaborate, who can find resonance and ultimately build trust together,” says Luebkeman. “We believe in [bestselling author] Steve Covey’s statement that ‘change happens at the rate of trust’ and we place this at the core of everything we do.”
To create a future we want to live in “each of us need to see our street, our stories, our trees, our neighborhoods,” he says.”In the Engadin valley farmers are limited in what they can plant today. With climate change the growing season will extend and the area will become more fertile. Today apple and pear trees are being planted, and not just surviving by thriving, something that was unheard of 100 years ago. It is a sign that things are changing, says Luebkeman “This is part of the program, we work to illuminate the possibilities and compare them to the existing reality and products, so we can explore what the future state means for people, products and processes and take steps today to adapt for tomorrow. “
Changing takes time, he says. “I feel 100% certain that five years from now it will be much easier for these topics to be discussed because they will have been socialized. The future needs to be socialized and individuals need to be able to see themselves in it. This is the only way to make progress towards the goals we want.”
It is important for corporations, organizations, governments and individuals to engage in this kind of exercise to understand “how their products, processes and people might fit into the story of tomorrow,” says Luebkeman.
Looking towards its own future Y(our) 2040 aims to engage people, communities and groups around the world with its foresight-to-action process.
To achieve this Luebkeman and Simunich plan to translate their process for co-creating desirable futures into a toolkit that can be used anywhere by any community or group of people to help them better understand and plan for their future. Y(our) 2040 is currently expanding into other geographies, including Scotland, Mexico and Oman. The goal is to engage 25 million people in over 50 countries between now and the year 2040.
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