What does it mean to become an intentional futurist?
A futurist, by dictionary definition, is one who predicts the future based on trends. In the IT industry, you might add that futurists do this, along with identifying which technologies will dominate the future.
Arguably, an intentional futurist is one who is almost impatient when it comes to defining or describing the future. Such an individual or group of individuals may fuse trends and a chosen direction with impatience and a propensity to grab at what they believe is going to count in the near and distant future.
A glaring example took place when we, alongside a handful of other companies, were among those who put out content for NFT gaming in significant volume at a time when it was scarce. But since we were ready to build the latest games on the P2E model, we had a grip on the subject.
That’s as close as we came to being futuristic.
Before long, our service page for NFT gaming was up, and we were already churning out blog posts as we signed some of the most stunning NFT game development partnerships. This was truly an exciting time.
So, perhaps you’re wondering why we’d be searching the market for information about NFTs if we already knew about it.
Let me explain.
In recent times, the social sphere has been littered with cliched statements, such as, ‘you’re only in competition with yourself.’ That’s fine as far as doing your very best to make the most of the opportunities at hand. However, looking around you is wise.
In today’s fast-paced world, you don’t have to be a news junky, but you must remain updated.
The experienced professionals, some of who still stand out to date, believe in being as informed as possible about developments near you. And so, by that measure, we choose to see if anyone is doing anything uniquely different that we can learn from, all the while reinforcing our own processes and knowledge base.
You Watch Them; They Watch You
While we knew about NFTs and their underlying technologies, we wanted to see how other tech firms described them and their essence. However, we found little to nothing on the subject.
We had been working on blockchain solutions for several years, and our first romance was with fintech. It was exciting, and we never looked back since. We kept building various solutions across multiple industries, given the fact that this was the technology horse the world was riding, owing to its merits.
And we could easily see the way things were developing and how this technology would be leveraged by many other niches. It just so happens that the creative side of things has leaned toward technology to advance the idea of copyright ownership. But let’s not digress too much.
To come back to our main topic, people who operate in a competitive industry often follow trends and observe what some of the best operatives are doing. It just so happened that not many were putting much out there. However, there were a few, and we found ourselves in sync with what they were presenting while readying our visible fronts.
As it turns out, a lot of people took the cue from Cubix, and we’re happy to have been one of the go-to sources for information on the subject and play our part.
How We Fulfilled Our Immediate Goal
There are two aspects to what we did. As intentional futurists, you primarily need to have the intent to shift the course of things ever-so-lightly so that the deviation from conventional approaches ends up differing significantly. So, while we were always technically equipped and experienced with blockchain-related solutions, we were intent on using the technology for other niches.
While the NFT ideators stood elsewhere, we were well and truly ready to embrace the practice. And so, the bottom line is; we knew the technology well.
The second aspect of fulling our goal was to ensure that we knew about the info around us. To do this, as with any other subject, especially those related to the IT sphere; it’s best to have input from all sides.
So, whether it’s Cubix or any multitude of brands that make up the mass of information on any new technologies out there, there is a certain way of sifting through the myriad of information.
There is a more authentic way of knowing where technologies are heading and what’s evolving around you. Make it a point to review books and descriptions and definitions in those books. Yes, textbooks, magazines, journals, all kinds of fora, and anything with any remote value of authenticity.
There are other sources that you need to keep a look out for, such as webinars, forum discussions, and even media talks, like podcasts. Now, this can be a lot to go through, but it's possible to cover a good amount of the data out there through technology itself.
Our Pivot in an Uncertain Imminent Future
Handling the Covid Crisis
While the news of Covid and its ensuing grip was growing across several weeks, we could see it coming. Being a technology company, we realized that developing a platform for remote operations could help us sustain business, and we could help so many more businesses.
With that in mind, we lost no time developing the idea of establishing a platform through which clients could recruit teams to work on their projects. So, we pursued the idea of developing a platform through which clients could get a team aligned based on their particular development needs.
With our experienced pool of resources available to us, we aligned teams directly with our clients. This helped us ensure that everyone remained engaged with ongoing and new projects while staying safe indoors. And on top of that, we managed to deliver services to our clients at a lower rate. They saved on overheads, and employees saved on daily commutes across several months.
So, coming back to the idea of collecting information from various sources, daily news also matters, especially when there is a crisis unfolding rapidly.
Ultimately, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on daily feeds. That certainly helps. But if you have a particular or broad subject that fits any technologies that you'd like to be a part of, you need to set up ways that can help you pick up on the trail. Traditional news on cable networks, as well as alternative media, such as social media, including blogs and microblogs, are indispensable tools.
And, of course, you can automate most of these feeds with the right filters to make sure you get the right content in your inbox.
When you establish a mini system of this kind, there are tons of ideas that will likely pop into your mind ever-so-suddenly. Jot them down, think about them, revisit them, and brainstorm them with colleagues. How you choose to take them forward is a matter of how far your processes have been developed. You’ll know when you have a mature, workable process.
