Analytical Education in 2020

John Smart, President of the Acceleration Studies Foundation, gave the Keynote Address at the Spring 5 Eyes Workshop (March 17, 2015). Watch the address below.

Presentation files

• Presentation: Analytical Education in 2020 (PDF file)
• Strategic Lookahead in Ten Areas of Technology Change (PDF file)
• Eight Skills of Adaptive Foresight (PDF file)

Keynote Address

Biography

Mr. John Smart has a B.S. in business administration from UC Berkeley, an M.S. in futures studies from the University of Houston, and M.S. –equivalency in physiology and medicine from U.C. San Diego School of Medicine (two years of medical school and USMLE-I). He has also done post baccalaureate work in computer science, physics, chemistry, and molecular biology at UCLA and UCSD. He studied complex systems and technological change at UCSD under James Grier Miller (Living Systems, 1978).

John has taught in NEDP’s Navy Senior Leadership Seminar occasionally since Feb 2011, and as a lecturer since Apr 2012. He focuses his discussion seminars on high-ROI skills and resources for Navy leaders in ten areas of technological change: Information Technologies, Knowledge Management, Communications, Procurement & Policy, Budget & Economy, Engineering, R&D, Education, Health, and Security. He also serves occasionally in the Information Dominance Senior Leader Symposium (IT’s impact on ID), the Leading Innovation course, and the Navy flag officer Transition Support course (anticipation and innovation practices).

In addition to his work with CEE, John has lectured and workshopped on technology foresight since 2004 for the Air War College, Army Science Board, Army Training and Doctrine Command, Army War College, CA Law Enforcement Command College, DARPA, FBI Futures Working Group, Navy-Joint Capabilities and Integration (N83), National Air and Space Intelligence Center, National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), and the US Naval Institute.

John is President of the Acceleration Studies Foundation (Los Gatos, CA), a nonprofit that helps organizational leaders better understand and manage accelerating technological change. He has published several next-gen IT foresight studies, on such topics as The Conversational Interface (2003), Human Performance Enhancement (2005), the Metaverse (Web3.0), Roadmap (2008), and Open Internet TV (2010). His new book, The Foresight Guide: Being a Leader in Anticipating, Creating and Managing the Future (Jan 2015) explores methods for improving organizational anticipation, innovation, and strategy in rapidly-changing environments.

He is chairman of the Foresight Education and Research Network (since 2009), an organization that improves practice for students and graduates of the 22 MS and PhD programs in strategic foresight globally. He teaches an elective on technology foresight at the University of Houston’s MS program in strategic foresight, the oldest (founded 1975) of the 22 existing global foresight graduate programs.

John is a technical advisor at Next IT, a leading provider of intelligent virtual assistants (Spokane, WA), and to Wovyn, an internet of things provider (Salt Lake City, UT). He is also an advisor in futures studies and forecasting at Singularity University (Mountain View, CA).

Before founding ASF John spent nine years as an educational and software entrepreneur, as CEO and co-founder of Hyperlearning, an educational services company, sold to The Princeton Review in 1996. He served on the editorial board for the journal Technological Forecasting & Social Change (2006-2009). He was faculty and program champion of the Emerging Technologies MS at the University of Advancing Technology in Tempe, AZ (2008-2012), where he developed the course standards and curriculum for the graduate program.

John has an honorary PhD in Technology Education from the University of Advancing Technology (2008) and an Outstanding Faculty Award from the California Enforcement Command College (2011).