Invitation to join the

Future Center Alliance

Photos: collaborative events of the international

future center community during 2005-2010

Stu

dio

Dv

ir’s

Photos: Collaborative events of the International Future Center Community from 2005 to 2010

Invitation to join the

Future Center Alliance

Future Center Alliance: An Invitation

We live in a society that is changing faster than ever before and facing increasingly complex challenges. Businesses and governments around the world are struggling to keep pace with what is required of them. But for some time now, a small but rapidly expanding group of people have been championing a different way of thinking about the future, embracing change, growing and innovating for the benefit of individuals, businesses, governments and society as a whole. They did this through the creation of ‘Future Centers’, the first example of which was the Skandia Future Centre, created by Prof. Leif Edvinsson, for the prototyping and renewal of Intellectual Capital.

This diverse group have joined together under the auspices of the Future Center Alliance (FCA) to promote and extend the impact that Future Centers and their related activities can have. The FCA is the leading international alliance for initiating, organising and actively supporting the management and renewal of Future Centers and similar dedicated innovation environments. Prof. Edvinsson will take on the role of Chairman of the FCA for this, its inaugural year.

The founding members of the FCA hail from different countries and cultures, but have a shared passion for supporting collaborative innovation and ‘futures thinking’ to address business, organisational and societal challenges. In recent years, some members of the Future Center community have been working together on an informal basis to create the first four international Future Center Summits: 2005 in the Netherlands, 2006 in Italy, 2009 in Sweden, 2010 in Japan. Interest and commitment to formally establish the FCA is now at the tipping point and this document is about moving into that next phase.

This invitation has been created because it is our collective wish for like-minded individuals and organisations from around the world to join us in supporting pioneering work to develop innovative futures.

The Vision

The vision of the FCA is to develop a global community of Future Centers and similar working environments, as well as Future Center Practitioners. These organisations and people share a passion for creating sustainable solutions to today’s and tomorrow’s challenges by nurturing collaboration and the freedom to think differently, learning from culturally diverse wisdom, sharing concepts widely and producing outcomes that can be successfully implemented.

We aim to achieve the highest level of professional practice and consistency in:

� Supporting people and organizations to deal effectively with complex problems

� Creating effective and stimulating environments for breaking down barriers to collaborative innovation

� Forging collaboration across borders of all kinds

� Championing creative work processes, methodologies and tools

� Encouraging shared thinking and igniting new ways of thinking about existing and future problems

� Facilitating and creating new collective intelligence, integrating the old and the new to achieve relevant results which can be realized in practice

We work through Future Centers and similar innovation environments to achieve these goals.

The FCA is founded on a genuine enthusiasm,

energy, belief and commitment to solve the seemingly impossible.

Our Values

We are passionate about making the FCA informative, inspiring, and progressive. We operate from a set of collective values:

� Openness, Creativity, Curiosity, Playfulness, Learning, Collaboration, Catalysing, Enabling and Innovating

These values inspire our members to share insights and co-create value with each other. But above all, our members are committed to creating positive change for their stakeholders, whether they be organisations, citizens, customers or society as a whole. This user-centered approach is a constant theme in all our Future Center and FCA related activities.

Membership

FCA members leverage their core expertise, complementary skills, and extensive networks to collaboratively achieve mutual objectives. Members are organisations that operate in the public or private sectors, and range from the very small to the very large.

Organisational members are:

� Working Future Centers and similar innovation and foresight-enhancing workspaces

� Public and private organisations committed to the practice of innovation, and seriously interested in applying Future Center concepts to co-create value for their customers, stakeholders, sectors and society as a whole

� Experienced professionals working in the fields of business and societal innovation, intellectual capital, collaborative workspace design, problem solving and academic / action research, who have demonstrated an affinity with Future Center concepts

Membership Benefits and Costs

The FCA operates as a not-for-profit organisation, providing services to members and supported by membership fees. Funds are used to provide activities for members and to cover the operating costs of the Alliance. Any surplus funds from membership fees will be invested in research projects, the initiation of collaborative activities, and for supporting Future Center Summit events1.

Benefits for Members

� Access to a global network of Future Centers and future orientated organisations for networking and collaboration with other organisations and practitioners facing similar challenges

� Privileged access to expertise and research on innovation practices, methodologies, tools, techniques and consultancy on Future Center practice, enabling new and different approaches to emerging challenges

� Opportunities to initiate and/or participate in events, collaborative projects and research on innovation and future thinking

� Access to benchmarking resources, including the opportunities to visit global Future Center facilities to experience collaborative working / ‘live’ research

� Participation in virtual FCA activities

� Opportunities to exchange ideas and raise questions in the FCA community

1 Decisions on such investment in 2011 will be taken by the Founding Partners, outlined later in this document.

Our values inspire our members to share

insights and co-create value with each other.

� Information on developing partnerships for dealing with complex multi-disciplinary challenges

� Insight into how to solve complex problems across multiple disciplines to achieve rapid resolution

� Specific advice about developing Future Center facilitation capability

� Advice on sector-specific application of Future Center approaches, including new product development, future-based policy development, commercialisation of research and societal innovation

� Access to strategic innovation resources for improving organisational performance

� Insight and hands-on experience for designing and developing a leading edge Future Center environment

� Preferred status registration for Future Center Summits

� Enjoyment of the brand of the FCA and its members for recognition and promotion purposes

� Many additional benefits that will emerge as they are initiated and co-created by the Alliance members

Fees The FCA will charge membership fees to cover operating costs, as well as allow it to participate in and contribute to the global knowledge arena. Details of these fees and operating principles for the first year will be made available shortly in a separate document.

FCA Activities The FCA will primarily focus on providing the membership benefits listed above, but will additionally (and, in part, as a way of delivering those benefits) instigate and participate in a range of value-adding research and knowledge generating activities. The range of ideas to be developed and considered will include:

� Global Research Service: Benchmarking opportunities, creation of a global FC database, publications including newsletters

� Evaluation Service: Assessment programmes, benchmarking data

� Space Design Service: Design process and consultation, advisory services

� Facilitation Service: Recommendations for FCA approved facilitators who can provide FC session design and facilitation, consultancy, training

� Director Education Service: FCA developed education programmes, FC leadership network

� Management Support: Global FC management platform supporting local FC management teams, development of networked learning

� Methodology Support: Expert consulting and education, FCA guidebook of methodologies

� Technology Support: FC technical expertise, services, virtual FC technologies

� FC Summit Events: FCA sponsored special interest activities

The FCA offers members an

extraordinary arena in which to develop

collaborative relationships across

boundaries and create new possibilities within

an open and globally diverse group of

innovation pioneers.

These examples will be further refined and developed throughout the initial year of the FCA, and decisions on areas to pursue will be based on value-add potential through collaboration with FCA members.

Next Steps

This document sets out the purpose, vision and values of the FCA. We hope that you are excited by this Invitation. Our members are forward thinking and inspired to move into a more collaborative and progressive future for people in businesses, governments and society.

In order to progress the FCA throughout the next year, we have organised ourselves to enable us to work together to achieve the vision we set out above. We will use the principles and structures outlined below to do this, and these should be read with a clear “for the next year” caveat, with our intention being to gradually evolve and allow the most useful, beneficial and pragmatic forms to emerge over this first year.

We will establish a number of ‘roles’ for the first year, including:

� A Founding Chairman, who will act as a figurehead and promote the FCA on the global stage. Prof. Leif Edvinsson will take on this role for 2011

� Founding Partners, the co-originators of the FCA, comprised of a number of proactive organisations such as Fuji-Xerox KDI in Japan, Mindlab in Denmark and The Shipyard in The Netherlands, as well as a number of other active Future Center practitioners

� Members, who will be fee-paying organisations

� A Coordination Team, who will orchestrate the FCA activities on behalf of the Founders in the short term under the leadership of Prof. Leif Edvinsson

Key decisions on the activities of the FCA (such as budgeting, structural issues and projects) will be made by the Founding Partners. All other day-to-day activities will be handled by the Coordination Team.

The FCA will define a set of criteria for membership and renewal, based around the principles of contribution and active involvement in Future Center related work.

A code of ethics will be developed during the first year, to govern the ongoing operation of the FCA. In addition, we will propose the creation of some formal posts (such as President and Secretary) for the FCA, and organise to hold elections for these posts before April 2012.

We would like to invite you to join our growing Alliance, and co-create the approaches and processes that Future Centers will use to benefit organisations, countries and society.

For further information, please visit the FCA website at:

� www.fc-alliance.net

or send an email to:

� contact@fc-alliance.net

We very much look forward to working with you as part of the FCA!

Kind regards,

Karen Lord, David Lomas, Ron Dvir, Hank Kune.

Future Centers are places to invent the

future, to prototype new ideas, and translate future images into a working reality. Most

importantly, they are a source and amplifier of

creative energy.