Creating the Future

Welcome to Creating the Future!

Creating the Future is sparking a movement to be the world we want to see, right now.

To accomplish that, Creating the Future is a living laboratory, with a 10 year mission: to cause a tipping point, where people’s day-to-day actions reflect the real cause of all human progress throughout the ages: possibility, wisdom, and interconnectedness.

We hope you will come explore and learn and practice with us!

Our Theory of Change

From our origins as hunter gatherers tens of thousands of years ago, the history of humankind has been a slow, steady march towards our living well individually and collectively - interspersed with times of huge leaps forward.

By studying history, modern psychology and neuroscience, Creating the Future has deconstructed that march towards humanity’s potential, specifically looking at those times of dramatic leaps towards living well together. We have identified six factors - codified in the Pollyanna Principles - that consistently create favorable conditions for living well - a “DNA” of social progress.

By studying modern sociology, Creating the Future has deconstructed the roots of our current cultural norms - the workplace. From the time a child enters school, the workplace is the unifying factor in establishing our collective understanding of what is possible, and our collective beliefs about each other.

Our theory of change: The reality of causality is that each of us is creating the future, every day, with every action we take. That gives each of us the power to create favorable conditions for a more humane future than our past.

By infusing the DNA of social progress into the day-to-day habits and practices used in every workplace, everywhere - decision-making, planning, etc. - we will not have to wait to create the future we want for our world. We will begin immediately to live well, individually and collectively, right here now.

What Happens in the Living Laboratory

Creating the Future’s network of changemakers spans the globe - people in all walks of life, working together and supporting each other in both real life and online communities. Those activities include...

R&D: Identifying and promoting existing practices that are infused with the DNA of Social Progress - and where systems do not yet exist, developing them. Come explore and learn with us in our demonstration labs!

Demonstrate: Openly demonstrating what those new approaches feel like in practice. Help us create this movement together!

Educate: Teaching what works. Join us to immerse yourself in learning!

Convene: Gathering people to inspire, support & learn from each other. Come meet other changemakers who care about creating a more humane and joyful world!

Highlights: Initial Programs

Our most mature program:

• Immersion Education: To date, +100 trained community leaders around the world. (Details here)

Our highest visibility programs:

• R&D and Demonstration of our "Open Participation Framework" (for which we received an Awesome without Borders award). All Creating the Future's meetings - board meetings, planning meetings, branding & resource development meetings, etc. - are open for anyone to participate via Google hangouts and Twitter hashtag participation. (Schedule of upcoming meetings is here)
• Making Change interview series at the Chronicle of Philanthropy
• Online Social Investment Roundtables: The funding effort for our own scale-up is an R&D exploration into moving beyond the "have/have-not" power dynamic to create more authentic funder partnerships (Follow this effort here)

The Invitation

We invite you to be a "lab partner" in this living laboratory - pitching in to explore and experiment, to learn and teach together. Our approach to volunteer participation is just that - all of us participating together, sharing who we are and what we love to do. This video shows just what we mean by that - it is our planning session for creating this page! (And if you're curious about "Lisa's video" mentioned in that session, you'll find that in this post Stop Using Volunteers!)

If you’re curious about what all this might mean for you, let’s get to know each other and find out!