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Futurist Derek Woodgate, President, The Futures Lab

COLUMN = FUTURISTS

Futurist and author Derek Woodgate is the CEO of The Futures Lab, a futures-based consultancy based in Atlanta, with six satellite offices around the world. The firm specializes in creating future potential for major corporations and institutions, especially in the fields of entertainment, media, culture, communications, and new communities.

He spent nine years as a British diplomat, and 13 years as a corporate executive, and is an authority on the application of emerging and immersive technologies and the changing human in the design and production of experiential entertainment with his creation of what are termed “Sense Events.”

He is also involved in integrating creative industries into urban/community development and future living spaces. His work on “remix” lifestyles in terms of archetypes, behavior, and identity was reflected in his renowned reworking of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and has been applied by a number of clients of The Futures Lab.

In his foresight work, Woodgate is known for developing what is considered a paradigm-shifting approach to future studies, demonstrated in his book “Future Frequencies” (Fringecore 2004) and his work on leveraging dystopian futures and rhizomatic thinking techniques, as well as in his merging of progressive culture with future studies.

His clients have included Philips Electronics, Intel, Shell, Fiat, Nokia, Pemex, AKZO-Nobel, GSK, Casio, Nestle, SWB, MTV Europe, Intel, Ford, Kellogg’s, Coca Cola, BBC, WorldSpace, Nissan, and many more.

Woodgate has also served as chief creative officer for Plutopia Productions, Inc.—a future-focused entertainment and event-production company where he produced dozens of public events, including: The Science of Music, The Future of Home, The Future of Sustainable Living, Future Living Systems, The Future of Play, The Future of Imagination, and FutureMusic Summit 2012. He also produced events for SXSW, including the Chilean Showcase.

Derek’s books include:

  • Future Flow (2013), with a preface by DJ Spooky
  • Future Frequencies (2004) hailed as “creating a unique paradigm in the professional futurist field”
  • Calling The Toads—A Burroughs Compendium (1999), co-authored with Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Allen Ginsberg, and Douglas Brinkley.

View Woodgate’s speaking topics and speaking events here.

To book Derek for a speaking event, click here.

When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.”

– Audre Lorde

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.”

– Henry David Thoreau

A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.”

– Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Passion makes perfect.”

– Eugene Biro

You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing.”

– Maya Angelou

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’”

– Brian Tracy

Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost.”

– Robert H. Schuller

Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes.”

– Benjamin Disraeli

Never never never never give up.”

– Winston Churchill

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly,
 what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.”

– Charles Dickens

A diamond is a lump of coal that stuck with it.”

– Norwegian proverb

By your stumbling the world is perfected.”

– Sri Aurobindo

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

– Anais Nin

Death is to lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth.”

– Thomas Wolfe

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”

– Henry Miller

A lot of people have ideas, but few decide to do something about them now. Not next week. But today.”

– Nolan Bushnell, founder, Atari

There is little success where there is little laughter.”

– Andrew Carnegie

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

– Winston Churchill

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”

– William Shakespeare

A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.”

– Carlos Castaneda

Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.”

– Annie Dillard

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.”

– Thomas Dunn

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it”

– Andrew Carnegie

The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.”

– Nolan Bushnell, founder, Chuck E. Cheese's

Don’t follow, lead. Don’t copy, create. Don’t start, finish. Don’t sit still, move. Don’t fit in, stand out. Don’t sit quietly, speak up. (Not all the time, sure, but more often.)”

– Seth Godin

I don’t do very well without fear. There needs to be a part of me saying, ‘That’s going to fail,’ so I can prove myself wrong.”

– Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe

Why am I whispering when I have something to say?”

– Eve Ensler

He who knows he has enough is rich.”

– Tao Te Ching

There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

– Leonard Cohen

Never cut what you can untie.”

– Joseph Joubert

‎That which grows fast withers as rapidly; that which grows slowly endures.”

– J.G. Holland, novelist

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.”

– E.B. White

Many people prefer to play it safe when it comes to business matters. Are you willing to take risks in the pursuit of entrepreneurial success?”

– Steven Schussler

Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it.”

– Debbi Fields, Mrs. Fields Cookies

Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.”

– Leo Jozef Suenens

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.”

– Albert Schweitzer

If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more.
 If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.”

– Oprah Winfrey

The great use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.”

– William James

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.”

– Marcel Proust

I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent.”

– Thomas Edison

I always maintained that the greatest obstacle in life isn’t danger, it’s boredom. The battle against it is responsible for most of the events in the world — good or ill.”

– Dr. Evelyn Vogel, Dexter

Do you have the desire to create something new; the strength of conviction to believe your creation will be successful, and the reservoir of energy necessary to thrust it into the marketplace?”

– Steven Schussler

I will pay more for the ability to deal with people than any other ability under the sun.”

– John D. Rockefeller

A man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.”

– Chinese Proverb

As each woman realizes her power, she transforms the world.”

– Patrice Wynne, WomanSpirit Sourcebook

If it isn’t good, let it die. If it doesn’t die, make it good.”

– Ajahn Chah

If you think you are too small to make a difference, try going to sleep with a mosquito in your room.”

– A wisdomism

Friendship is the only cement that will hold the world together.”

– Woodrow Wilson