“The future is already here—it's just unevenly distributed,” a science-fiction writer, William Gibson, has famously observed. There are many different ways of forecasting, some more successful than others. Companies are investing heavily in ‘future-gazing’ departments and are employing ‘futurists’ to better plan their growth strategies. Trend-spotting has become a global industry. But there is also a growing body of research on what works in the world of forecasting. This panel will explore spectacular successes and failures in predictions and identify the smartest formulae for looking at the future.