A product or innovation decision needs concrete options
Use artifacts, prototypes, and design fictions to give leadership something specific to evaluate, compare, and discuss.
Commissioned work
Near Future Laboratory helps teams make the future concrete enough to act on.
Near Future Laboratory works with organizations and executive teams on futures strategy, artifact-led prototyping, workshops tied to active initiatives, and select advisory engagements.
This work is most useful when innovation, policy, product, brand, and creative R&D teams need a better way to explore unfamiliar territory, evaluate adjacent possibilities, and move from abstraction toward evidence, shared language, and decision-grade insights.
Imagination is your competitive advantage. I help you imagine harder.
When to bring Near Future Laboratory in
A strategic question needs to become concrete.
This work is most useful when a leadership team needs more than inspiration: it needs something tangible enough to compare options, challenge assumptions, and make a decision with more confidence.
A strategic direction is still too abstract
Make an emerging technology, market shift, or adjacent opportunity tangible enough for a team to align around and act on.
An active initiative needs sharper alignment and momentum
Support a real program with workshops, prototypes, and advisory work that move the work forward rather than simply energize the room.
Proof
20+ years
Helping organizations make unfamiliar futures tangible enough to debate, test, and act on.
Clients include
Google, Apple, IKEA, Netflix, Samsung, Princeton, Amazon, DeepMind, Warner Bros., and more.
Outputs
Artifact-led strategy engagements, functional prototypes, design fictions, workshops, executive sessions, and advisory support.
Why hire NFL
Bring Near Future Laboratory in when you need futures work that can stand up to real constraints, scrutiny, and decisions, not just stage an inspiring talk.
Ways of working together
The work usually takes one of four forms.
These are starting points, not rigid packages. A workshop can be part of the work, but the aim is always to give your team something tangible to inspect, discuss, and use.
Artifact-led strategy engagements
Use catalogs, newspapers, props, documents, and other diegetic artifacts to make strategic options inspectable and discussable.
Prototype and concept commissions
Build functional and speculative prototypes that help a team learn faster, align more precisely, and test what should exist next.
Workshops for active programs
Design fiction workshops, sprints, and seminars tied to a real initiative rather than a one-off inspiration exercise.
Select talks and advisory work
Keynotes, executive sessions, and targeted advisory support when they advance a broader strategic or organizational effort.
Why this approach works
Humans are bad at acting on abstract futures, but good at responding to things they can touch, sense, and tangibly inspect.
Near Future Laboratory uses artifacts, prototypes, stories, and immersive formats to give teams something concrete to react to. When tomorrow becomes graspable today, the conversation changes. Different options appear. Better decisions become possible.
I ground the work in the constraints, details, and realities of a contingent world rather than keeping it at the level of abstraction. That makes it more useful for teams who need to make real decisions, not just have an inspiring conversation. It also makes it easier to integrate the work into existing processes, roadmaps, and initiatives rather than letting it sit apart as a one-off creative exercise.
That is the point behind design fiction here: not atmosphere for its own sake, but a disciplined way to make strategic futures legible enough to work with.
Selected work
See how this work has been used in practice.
Artifact-led strategy
TBD Catalog
A catalog from the future used to compress debate, surface assumptions, and open adjacent possibilities beyond a slide deck.
Artifacts that make the future tangible
“Tomorrow's News Today”
A tangible media artifact that helped leadership audiences move from generic AI talk toward concrete implications and choices.
Prototyping and concept development
Speculative Prototyping
Prototype work that makes early ideas observable, testable, and legible before they harden into roadmaps or budgets.
Workshop for an active initiative
Ericsson AI Futures Workshop
A design-fiction sprint built to help participants move from abstract AI hype toward specific futures, artifacts, and judgments.
Keynotes and public talks
AIGA Design Fiction Keynote
A public-facing talk that shows the voice of the practice, but also signals the deeper strategic and pedagogical work behind it.
Range and execution
Netflix Atlas Film Consulting
Proof that Near Future Laboratory can operate across strategic fiction, worldbuilding, production reality, and high-stakes collaboration.
Research through speculative prototyping
AI Prophetic Research Studio
An ongoing initiative that investigates emerging domains through speculative prototyping, building functional (software) artifacts and speculative prototypes that make new software and interaction possibilities concrete enough to touch.
Hardware prototyping and engineering
Prototyping the OMATA One
A hardware prototype used to work through engineering requirements, system behavior, and product decisions by building and testing the thing early.
AI policy and governance
AI Policy and Governance Working Group
A working session I facilitated in the AI policy and governance arena that used speculative prototyping, anticipatory research, and concrete artifacts to bring fresh imagination into structured decision-making systems.
If you'd like to talk
If this feels useful, let's talk about the work.
Let's connect and talk about the question or initiative that's on your mind, discuss rough timing, and what needs to become concrete.
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