Cross-Border Coffee Break: Futures at the Narxoz Business School

Dr. John Sweeney, Assistant Professor of Futures Studies and Foresight, presents new NBS programs during GBSN forum.

Overview

Futures studies and strategic foresight are widely used approaches for research, strategic planning, policy development, and innovation across a range of disciplines. This session provides an introduction to these approaches featuring brief case studies from both public and private sectors. Additionally, this session covers how the Narxoz Business School plans to integrate futures into its core curriculum, including the development of a track for its DBA program. Finally, this session provides an overview of the activities of the newly launched Qazaq Futures Institute, which is an “indisciplinary” research and practice-based center designed to further forward-looking tools and methods across Central Asia and beyond.

Presenter:

John A. Sweeney
Assistant Professor of Futures and Foresight at Narxoz University

Dr. John A. Sweeney is an award-winning futurist, designer, and author. At present, he is an Assistant Professor of Futures and Foresight at Narxoz University in Almaty, Kazakhstan where he serves as Director at the newly launched Qazaq Futures Institute. John also serves as a Fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Executive Education program focusing on futures thinking and scenario planning. As a consulting futurist, John has organized, managed, and facilitated initiatives, trainings, seminars, and stakeholder engagement projects for numerous UN agencies, INGOs, government innovation units, start-ups and Fortune 500 companies. Over the past 10 years, he has worked in over 40 countries on five continents with extensive experience in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and the MENA region. John completed a PhD at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa focused on alternative futures. He tweets on trends, emerging issues, and all things postnormal at @aloha_futures.