Insights · September 15th, 2025
Thank you for attending Nikolas Badminton‘s futurist keynote Building in the Age of AI: The Future of Design, Decision-Making, Productivity and Workforce at Procore Groundbreak in Houston, Texas on October 16th, 2025.
It was amazing to speak to you, meet so many of you all to present my thoughts on the future of construction and how we can transform the industry we love so much together.
If you’re interested in having Nikolas speak at your company or association event please reach out and share details – click here. We’ll get back to you quickly and we can then discuss how to co-create an incredible experience together.
Become a futurist with the Ground Futures Challenge
Now is the time to step up and lean into futures thinking with The Groundbreak 3-day Futures Challenge. I’d like you to spend a few minutes per day over the next 3 days doing 3 things before you start your day – and then keep going!
Step 1 – Pick a signal: Review the signals and trends discussed in Nikolas Badminton’s keynote, and any others that you observe that indicate that there is the potential of change (there’s a guide of how to scan for signals a little further down in this post as well). Then select one signal and think about how that could affect your industry in 5 to 10 years. Write down 2 or three things that will affect your work in construction.
Step 2 – Think about impact and hopeful futures: Then select a second signal and ask “what happens when that combines with the first signal?” – that will help you start to be curious about the effects it will have on the wider world and your business. Be curious about the future of construction – What is created? What do we expect to change? What goes away?
Then go deeper and think about how you can adjust your strategy to be prepared for change in the short term (0 to 3 years), medium term (4 to 9 years), and long term (10+ years).
Step 3 – Share your ideas with colleagues and peers in the construction industry and remix: Once you have these ideas – no matter how basic or advanced you’ve taken them – make sure you share them with your colleagues and peers. Evolve them. Remix them. Think practically, and think beyond our current limitations.
You’ll find that the conversations will be brighter and more dynamic. You’ll likely have more questions than answers and the ability to look beyond hype towards hopeful futures informs your strategic planning.
After a while you’ll find your imagination will become more vibrant, your anticipation will be more prescient, and your empathy will go deeper and wider when considering the future human solutions you will deliver.
Feel free to reach out to Nikolas at any point if you have questions, or want to inquire how to become a futurist keynote speaker through Futures+ Coaching.
Futurist Tools
We can start simply by undertaking 3 simple actions – and we’re going to share some simple ways to get going:
- Scan for signals and trends
- WHAT IF… scenarios
- Anticipate horizons
1. Scan for signals and trends
Signal scanning can be simple and a fun way to level up your thinking on a daily basis. We scan academic journals, attend conferences, host podcast interviews, social media posts and discussions, read a lot of media articles and so much more. It’s our lifeblood.
Some simple steps can really level up what you are tracking and there are a number of ways to do so.
a. Set up Google Alerts for key areas of interest for your business – you just need a Google Gmail account to do this and you can enter whatever. Just go to https://www.google.com/alerts and type in the area of exploration as you would do a Google Search:
Set your options – we recommend for you to get emails ‘At most once a day’ and ‘Only the best results’. Over time you can refine using boolean logic in your phrases.
You can find out more at Google Help – link.
b. Spend 15 to 30 minutes each morning for coffee and scanning – just search on Google for areas of interest and read articles under the ‘News’ tab. This is ;ess refined than Google Alerts but allows for free-form discovery. We love jumping down into the rabbit hole.
c. Reddit – The ‘Front Page of the Internet’ has an incredible futures community and they share and discuss amazing developments in the world. It’s a free social media platform and you can find incredible references there and bookmark them for reading and sharing later. The core community for Future(s) Studies is https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/. You can enter search phrases at the top of the page to focus in on specific areas and then click through to the articles and deeper discussions.
d. Podcasts – it’s so great to work and listen to incredible thinkers discuss our futures. Here are some of our favorites (we are sharing Apple Podcast links and they can be found on most platforms):
- Exponential Minds Podcast with Chief Futurist Nikolas Badminton – link
- Team Human with Douglas Rushkoff – link
- FUTURES Podcast with Luke Robert Mason – link
- The Future of You with Tracey Follows – link
- Looking Outside with Joanna Lepore – link
- The World Ahead from The Economist – link
2. WHAT IF… Scenarios
We can also take things to the next level by building scenarios of what may happen in our futures using the signals and trends and then really taking a deeper dive into the positive and negative implications of speculative future products.
We can start simply by asking what if is an invitation to be curious and consider all possibilities:
What if automation supercharges (or burdens) our business, our competitors, consumers, and supply chain – cost, time, access, efficiencies?
What if we invest in new technology startups taking bigger risks to advance our industry and we let them run pilot projects with us?
What if we explore 10 or 20+ year future horizons to create bolder visions of our impact in the world, see unknown risks and create more robust organizational strategies?
What if our futures work informs our innovation programs / R&D, organizational messaging, and excites our customers, investors and shareholders?
Just living with simple statements and exploring your futures more really starts to open up your thinking.
These what if…statements are just some example and we can use a simple scenarios framework to create short scenarios:
What if in the [future horizon]
solutions [a, b, and c are implemented],
which creates these [opportunities and risks],
and impacts [dimensions of change].
The ‘dimensions of change’ are where we start to explore deeper dynamics and effects of change – financial, organizational, regulatory, cultural, experimental, political, technological, and social.
3. Anticipate horizons
You can also take things to the next level by collating multiple areas of exploration, signals and trends, WHAT IF.. scenarios and considering the larger contact reflected again the current state of your business. This is deep futures work, a creative task, and needs some funding and definite focus.
Sitting here reading this you may not feel that anticipating horizons may be a simple or quick task as we may need to produce more artifacts to help us understand those futures. The truth is, it can be as involved, or as simple, as you want. We always start by posing 5 simple questions that help us speculate:
Who are we (the organization and society) at that future horizon – what do we think and believe, where do we live, how do we live, what do our families look like?
What does that future feel like? How does it look and smell? How easy does it feel?
What cultural artifacts from today exist in that future – art, media, social media, construction methods, infrastructure, architecture, historical artifacts and reminders of our past?
What signals from today – that you’ve been tracking, or seen in a futurist keynote – have accelerated and how have they disrupted your work and industry? Have they been good or bad for business?
What new organizations, services and products will be needed in that future?
Overall, we hope that you have found this article to be useful as a primer to kickstart your futures thinking. You’re already a futurist by the fact that you turned up to the discussion and participated in Procore Groundbreak. You are already an active participant in our futures – either through positive exploration and action towards it, or through inaction – both are contributory.
About Nikolas Badminton
Nikolas Badminton is a world-renowned futurist and hope engineer that has worked with over 500 clients – like NASA, Disney, JP Morgan, Procore, Ellis Don, PCL Construction and more
