Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies

The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies (Instituttet for Fremtidsforskning) is Denmark's and one of Scandinavia's largest Futures Studies think tank. It was founded in 1970 by Professor Thorkil Kristensen

Thorkil Kristensen

Thorkil Kristensen , was a Danish politician, finance minister, professor in national economy and futurist.He was born a son of a farmer in Fløjstrup close to Vejle, Denmark....

, former OECD Secretary-General, Danish Minister of Finance

Finance Minister of Denmark

The Finance Minister of Denmark is the head of the Ministry of Finance of Denmark, and a member of the Cabinet. As head of the ministry, the minister has responsibility for the ministry's tasks of administrering the state finances via the fiscal policy, and making economic predictions and...

and member of the Club of Rome

Club of Rome

The Club of Rome is a global think tank that deals with a variety of international political issues. Founded in 1968 at Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, Italy, the CoR describes itself as "a group of world citizens, sharing a common concern for the future of humanity." It consists of current and...

. It is a non-profit think tank and its mission was from the outset to help Danish organizations (public and private) understand and plan for the trends

Trend estimation

Trend estimation is a statistical technique to aid interpretation of data. When a series of measurements of a process are treated as a time series, trend estimation can be used to make and justify statements about tendencies in the data...

that are shaping their long-term future. Today it is an international think tank.

The institute's research covers a wide variety of topics from identification and statistically based analysis

Statistics

Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....

of global trends to subjective and emotional responses to the future. The work of the Institute is interdisciplinary, and its staff covers a number of academic disciplines and professional backgrounds, including economics

Economics

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

, political science

Political science

Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...

, ethnography

Ethnography

Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...

, psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

, engineering

Engineering

Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...

, public relations

Public relations

Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....

and sociology

Sociology

Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

.

The institute's products include seminars, analyses, reports, newsletters, books, and the magazine Scenario.
Some of the institute's books include:
In Danish only.

The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies is Danish Partner of the EUROCONSTRUCT network, which provides analysis and forecasts of construction in 19 West and Central Eastern European countries.

The work at CIFS rests on the assumptions that were outlined by military strategist Herman Kahn

Herman Kahn

Herman Kahn was one of the preeminent futurists of the latter third of the twentieth century. In the early 1970s he predicted the rise of Japan as a major world power. He was a founder of the Hudson Institute think tank and originally came to prominence as a military strategist and systems...

in his book: The year 2000- A framework for speculation on the next thirty-three years” and later adopted to strategic business planning by Pierre Wack

Pierre Wack

Pierre Wack was an unconventional French oil executive who was the first to develop the use of scenario planning in the private sector, at Royal Dutch Shell’s London headquarters in the 1970s...

from Royal Dutch Shell

Royal Dutch Shell

Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...

Further reading