Introduction

Simon Fuglsang Østergaard is a futurist and senior advisor who has led and participated in many advisory projects exploring long-term strategic implications through scenario planning, trend analysis, and strategic foresight broadly. He has worked with high-level national and international clients and stakeholders across business and society, helping organizations challenge outdated beliefs and misguided assumptions about the future and to turn foresight into business and policy value.

Simon is a keen advocate that large-scale and comprehensive setups are not necessarily needed to benefit and learn from strategic foresight, and that every organisation or team is capable of developing simple processes that give them the ability to better anticipate the future.

While mainly working with strategic foresight more broadly, Simon specializes in the impact of technology on a business level as well as a societal level, e.g. how technological advancement spurs new business models. Recently, he has also been exploring how the nature and purpose of higher education will undergo significant changes to accommodate the profound technological and demographic shifts in societies and job markets of the 21st century digital economy.

Further, Simon heads CIFS’ course activities on strategic foresight and futures thinking. He is an experienced learning experience designer & facilitator and teaches both CIFS’ open and organizational futures and foresight learning programs for internal capacity building.

Professional Summary

MSc in International Economic Consulting from Aarhus School of Business and Social Sciences at Aarhus University

Work experience prior to joining the Institute:

• 2013-2016: Consultant - Business and Society, Danish Technological Institute

Fun Fact About Simon

Simon was invited as the opening key note to the European Bank for Reconstruction and development (EBRD) bi-annual Competitive Consulting Conference to provide his perspectives on the future of consulting. The event took place in Cairo, Egypt, with a participation of over 200 people from almost 30 countries.