Facilitated working environments
Future Centers are facilitated working environments that help organizations to prepare for the future in a proactive, collaborative and systematic way. They are used to create and apply knowledge, develop practical innovations, bring citizens in closer contact with government and connect end-users to industry.
Powerful instruments for the knowledge economy
Future Centers are powerful instruments in supporting Europe’s goal of becoming a leading knowledge economy. They are used by government organizations for developing and testing citizen-centered solutions and future-proof policy options with broad acceptance by stakeholders. They are used by business to increase the customer-driven and user-centered quality of new products and services. The centers also support employees within the organizations to develop and test new ways of working and new technical tools. They are also breeding-grounds for innovation, societal renewal and for enhancing the intellectual capital of organizations, sectors, regions and nations.
Real people and real issues
At present there are more than 30 Future Centers in Europe. They assume different forms in different places, and in different organizations they are known by different labels – innovation labs, creativity centers, mindlabs and diverse organization-specific names. Some operate in public administration and others in multinational industries; there are corporate centers and centers open to the general public, centers serving geographical areas and specific domains.
What unites them is a common focus on dealing with real people and real issues in organizations. They are centers for facilitated problem solving, where people looking for real-time answers, new ideas and new directions, can bring their issues, problems, and questions. They feed and facilitate the decision-making process in organizations with outputs as diverse as:
- decisions about strategic choices and ‘the way forward’;
- physical prototypes of promising policy options, new products and services;
- an enhanced sense of mutual respect, understanding and trust amongst collaborating partners or session participants.
Prototyping possibilities
Helping organizations to develop and prototype effective solutions that are will stand the test of time is a core function of Future Centers. The focus on concrete results is a defining feature of working in these centers. The consequences of choosing particular options are explored before decisions are taken. Promising ideas and possibilities are prototyped to determine their relevance to users and stakeholders. Through prototyping it is possible to create new products, services, work processes and policy options in a fast, effective user-centered manner.
Sustainability helps defines the “future” in future centers.
Future Centers provide the means to leverage the collective intelligence – and distributed intelligence – of relevant organizations, sectors and communities, in order to apply this intelligence to tackling specific organizational issues and societal challenges. The core competences of Future Centers – developing people-friendly and “brain-friendly” working environments with optimal user-centricity, developing and investigating future perspectives, creating prototypes for policy options, and engaging in multi-stakeholder dialogue which leads to action – impact the effectiveness of organisations to meet the present and future needs of their customers and governments to deal pro-actively with present and future societal challenges. Sustainability helps define the “future” in Future Centers.