Scott Smith
Scott Smith is founder and managing partner of Changeist, a futures research and consulting partnership established in 2007 in the United States, now based in the Netherlands.
Having worked for more than 15 years in futures, Scott has consulted to a range of global institutions, including SWIFT, UNICEF, The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, The Royal Society, Nesta, and the Dubai Future Foundation. He has also led engagements with some of the largest and most respected global financial, retail, telecoms, technology and media brands, such as the BBC, The New York Times, ASOS, AXA, VF, and Comcast. He has designed and delivered futures projects, talks and workshops in over a dozen countries and facilitated projects and workshops in multiple languages.
Scott helped create and lead the Strategic Foresight program for Dubai Future Academy, and lectures in the Innovation & Future Thinking program at IED Barcelona, a course he designed. He was also recently named to the Executive Board of the Center for Futures Studies at the University of Dubai.
Scott has written for international publications such as The Atlantic, Quartz, WIRED UK, and How We Get to Next. He has spoken at major events worldwide as diverse as The Next Web, Lift in Geneva and Basel, Helsinki's Flow Festival, South Australia's Open State, Atlantic Council Energy & Economic Summit in Istanbul, Oxford Futures Forum, EPIC 06 in Portland, SxSW, Sibos, London’s FutureFest, FutureEverything, NEXT14, 15 and 19, and Frankfurt’s me Convention. He has also contributed work to pieces featured in several cultural exhibitions, including for the BIG BANG DATA exhibition at Barcelona’s CCCB in 2014, and the 2017 Vienna Biennale. He has also provided research, consulting, scriptwriting and worked as on-screen talent for non-fictional and fictional exploration of trends, scenario, and futures.
He has more than 25 years’ experience in research and strategy, and has lived in three countries over that time. He currently calls The Hague home. He is also author of How to Future: Leading and Sense-making in an Age of Hyperchange, published by Kogan Page Inspire in September 2020.
