Nikolas Badminton, Chief Futurist / Futurist Speaker

Nikolas Badminton is a world-renowned futurist speaker and Chief Futurist that mentors top executives and the highest levels of government to explore desirable futures, anticipate unforeseen risks, and strengthen strategic planning to drive growth.

He has spent 30+ years working with leadership at over 500 leading organizations at the frontline of futures, strategy and disruption - including NASA, Disney, Google, Microsoft, Intel, IBM, WM, JP Morgan CHASE, VISA, TD Bank, American Express, AtkinsRéalis, Thales Group, BISCI, ISACA, Rolls Royce, Procter & Gamble, US Department of State, UK Home Office, United Nations, and many more. 

Facing Our Futures: How foresight, futures design and strategy creates prosperity and growth - is Nikolas’ number one best selling book and has been selected as JP Morgan’s ‘Next Gen Pick’ for their prestigious Summer Reading List to guide new leaders to ignite curiosity and embrace futures thinking. It has also been named as the Next Big Ideas Club Top-50 Business Books.

Nikolas’ essential research has been featured by the BBC, VICE, The Atlantic, Fast Company, Business Insider, Forbes, Sunday Telegraph and many others.  He appears on SIRIUSXM and CTV regularly, was a key advisor to the ‘Age of AI’ series with Robert Downey Jr, and appears in the Franklin Institute's series ‘2050’.

Happy to connect to discuss futures thinking and how we can make your event incredible :: https://futurist.com/futurist-speakers-booking/

Chief Futurist at Futurist.com

I’m here just outside of Amsterdam in the Netherlands with my amazing client and 1500 executives from Rabobank. We’re talking global shifts, AI and digitization and how we have to stand up for our customers in the face of companies striving for AGI and all the water+land+energy. We need more community and an affordable standard of living. 

Excited for this one. Stand up Hope Engineers 🤟😎

Nikolas Badminton, Futurist Speaker

Chief Futurist, futurist speaker, and #1 best selling author of Facing Our Futures #anticipate #activate #futures

Chief Futurist, Futurist Speaker, and Hope Engineer™

I'm here in Amsterdam for a client gig. Escaped the grips of the storm hitting Toronto a day early so that I can make the client gig - we never miss gigs no matter what.

Free days today ahead of the AV and tech check so I headed over to check out the street art at STRAAT Museum in the NDSM neighbourhood. It was incredible and reminded me of how vital street art is today and how we have to give the walls and spaces to the creatives to elevate our experiences. It's why I love Toronto so munch and found Vancouver so frustrating.

What do you think? And, share your favourite street artist in the comments - I'd love to see them.

2025 was the most interesting year of growth and challenge in my life. Work was kicking, clients were really investing time in getting into the work of imagining hopeful futures, and personally it was a wild ride.

As I look to 2026 and what is coming I strengthen my resolve. We're not here for an easy time speckled with motivational quotes and convenient trend discussions on what comes next. We're here to challenge the 2000s mindset of growth driving us into the ground and to seek transcendence towards co-creation and to be Hope Engineers.

To understand and live the greatest problems we must face and to see hopeful futures ahead of us as we set audacious goals and travel forward down agency-driven pathways.

I'm not going to work with everyone that approaches me this year. I am going to work with those that want to invest and do the work.

If that is you, reach out (link in the comments).

There is something beautiful in the idea that doing less work delivers so much more to those you work with.

In the speaking world there is the idea of being the road warrior, doing 100+ gigs a years, getting the accolades and standing ovations. I applaud those that choose this path and know it's not for me.

Last year I did 47 keynotes. I loved every one of them. This year I am aiming for less than 40. Why? Because I co-create each keynote with the clients. I interview, undertake strategic reviews, do specific research. Each keynote is for the client and for the event at a deeper level. The time I have left allows me to write and research and to be at home with my family. 

The result? A better product and I have more energy and focus for the work I love to do.

Last year I had the pleasure of working with a large media/entertainment company and being in Hollywood to present. I spoke to the President in the process that reminded me why I do the work the way I do it.

“In the 8 yrs of running our executive forum we’ve never had a keynote speaker work so hard and speak to so many of the team to understand our business. We really appreciate that.” 

In turn, I appreciate them at a deeper level.

It's time to level up. If this is what you want then let's chat (link in the comments).

Sharing this viral clip - 129K views and counting.

The world is buzzing with the developments in Artificial Intelligence and we are trying to work out our place with that. We can tap into futures work and hope for a better world guided by wisdom - our deeply human resource - to forge our way forward and ensure that we lead technology towards useful applications vs. being led by the technology towards mediocrity.

Want to get serious about what mastering data and embedding AI in your organization? Reach out today - link in the comments.
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Nikolas Badminton is a world-renowned global futurist keynote speaker and Hope Engineer™ that mentors top executives and the highest levels of government to create bold visions by exploring hopeful futures, anticipating disruption, and supercharging strategic planning.

At CES OpenAI President, Greg Brockman said this, “We’re moving to a world where GDP growth will itself be driven by the amount of compute that is available in a particular country, in a particular region.”

The play is - give us all the water, land and energy and compromise populations and make the cost of living higher for the goal of more advanced AI. We've lost our way and our hopeful path forward is human-focused.

I truly feel that smaller and more localized (decentralized with access to those that need special capabilities - farmers, retail, finance) will be the way. It's time to think smarter and work together. That leads to more hopeful and empowered outcomes.

Share your thoughts below.

I watched Yuval Noah Harari and Max Tegmark discuss Humanity and Artificial Intelligence with Bloomberg’s Francine Lacqua on the sidelines of the 2026 World Economic Forum.

An interesting interview and here are the top-10 salient points

1. “Superintelligence” is framed operationally, not philosophically e.g., an AI agent that can independently open/manage a bank account and generate significant profit at scale. 

2. A research-centric definition is emphasized: intelligence equals the ability to accomplish goals; superintelligence equals a capability vastly better than humans across cognitive tasks (and jobs), plus potential self-improvement over time as it learns. 

3. A core discontinuity is “tool → agent”: unlike prior inventions (printing press, aircraft, etc.), AI is positioned as decision-making autonomy however maybe we should consider this “a different species” entering the ecosystem.

4. They treat superintelligent embodied robotics as “species-like” (replication via robot factories, reproduction) rather than mere software. A living capability yet tethered to a need for human intervention and limitless water, energy, and data.

5. The “successor species” narrative is described as mainstream in parts of Silicon Valley and the high tech world, including references to Homo sapiens building its successor. 

6. Alan Turing’s “default control” argument – where he suggests that machines can be programmed to simulate human behavior, including, surprisingly, making mistakes – is invoked: smarter entities tend to control systems (zoo analogy), because intelligence confers power. 

7. The Turing Test is reframed as a warning signal, and the conversation claims it effectively “happened” without a memorable moment. LLMs snuck in through the back door by tricking us into a new frame of what ‘intelligence’ is.

8.Recent AI progress is described as faster than the expert baseline expected, compressing timelines from “decades” to “years” for many technical observers whereas it is a slow plod forwards with slips and slides with each model as it deteriorates.

9They argue you don’t need superintelligence to reshape society: comparatively “primitive” algorithms already changed politics, psychology, and social dynamics (via social media). This is oft-forgotten. We don’t need more intelligence, we need more wisdom and a counterpoint with hope as an energy for change.

10. A provocative metaphor appears: “AI immigration” with a forecast of vast numbers of AI “immigrants” originating primarily from the US and China. “AI immigration” refers to the integration of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automated decision-making systems into the processes of migration management, border control, and visa processing. Governments and private entities are increasingly using these technologies to speed up application processing, enhance security, and manage large volumes of data.

See the full discussion, analysis and interview in the link in the comments

Futures exploration can be greatly helped - especially at the beginning of inquiry - by tapping into LLMs and what they help in terms of signals, trends and horizons. 

I use Gemini + ChatGPT + Claude when I do this with varying results and it's a quick sense on where we are and where we are going.

Here's a useful resource from Thomas D'hooge with some well considered prompts. Check it out.

ChatGPT prompts for horizon scanning

Speaker, trainer, researcher & facilitator in futures thinking

Horizon scanning today is often either expensive (platforms 💰 ) or manual (copy-paste work ✂️).

So: an experiment 🧪. A “ ChatGPT Prompt Library” with 50 copy-paste prompts for professional horizon scanning 🔭. Four entry points, just like in real scanning practice: explore 🔎, interpret 🧠, monitor 👀, and scope 🧭.

Not complete. Definitely not perfect. But maybe useful ✅.
This is a V1. Feel free to test it 🧩 and tell me what should be improved 💬.

People might tell you to get a grip on reality. The creativity frees us from those boundaries to imagine what can truly exist in a hopeful world where we all win.

Ii was great to join my friends at WPP Media last week in Toronto and so many amazing people from the most impactful brands in Canada to look at the futures ahead of us beyond CES 2026. These were signals of change around play, health and augmentation and so much more.

WPP Media Canada brought Vegas to Toronto for an afternoon of inspiration and entertainment! 🎰 

Marketers and partners gathered at the Index Exchange to hear from futurist Nikolas Badminton, Chief Futurist @ futurist.com, Google Canada Head of Marketing Laura Pearce, and WPP Media Canada Chief Media Officer Gautham Ram Pingali on the big ideas and exciting technology out of CES 2026, and how they’re reshaping the world of marketing and advertising.

#WPPMediaCanada

Fear driving advancement in open source AI initiatives in Europe?

Take a look and let me know what you think.

CEO @ The Atlantic | Co-Founder, Keynote Speaker | Author of the national best-seller, “The Running Ground.”

The most interesting thing in tech: everyone in Davos is talking about geopolitics and the growing antagonism between the US and Europe. But geopolitics are sometimes downstream of tech. And one thing that Europe could do is build its own open-source AI models. Here Eric Schmidt explains why that matters and how it could be done. #wef2026

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