Scott Smith
Biography
Scott Smith is the founder of Changeist, where he leads strategy, research and design activities. His work is built on over 20 years’ experience tracking social, cultural, technological and economic trends, and combines grounded research with narrative design to explore the unanticipated. He splits his time between the US and Europe.
Before founding Changeist, Scott served as director of research applications and futurist at Social Technologies, a futures and innovation consultancy, developing new practice methods in foresight and leading visioning around consumer behavior and emerging technologies. Prior to this, he spent a decade leading start-up research and consulting teams for international technology research firms in New York City, Washington, DC, and London. He has worked with companies, institutions and governments worldwide to understand and map possible futures.
As well as managing consulting engagements for Changeist, Scott leads partnerships with a range of institutions and groups for public projects exploring interesting facets of foresight, design and policy. Recent contributions include Winning Formula, a project for the Near Future Laboratory, supported by FutureEverything, National Football Museum, Centre for Contemporary Culture Barcelona, and Fundación Telefónica, looking at the future of data, sport and culture, and participation in an exploration of speculative futures of digital fabrication and healthcare provision for Lighthouse Studio, funded by Nesta.
Scott has guest lectured at the RCA in London, and has been a returning speaker at LIFT and FutureEverything, spoken at SXSW, EPIC and Improving Reality, and run workshops from Japan to India to Finland. He was co-developer, lead instructor and advisor for the Futures Institute at the Duke University TIP program and is currently programme coordinator and lead lecturer at IED Barcelona in futures, innovation and design. In August of 2015, will be a visiting lecturer at the School of International Futures (SoIF) in the UK. He is also a commentary writer for Quartz and a contributor to How We Get to Next. He’s also a founding member of the Cross-Quadrant Working Group.
