About

Attention FWD is where you can find the latest thinking from the FWD Team, Attention Span’s research, content and events group. The FWD Team can show you the future, and Attention Span can help your organization navigate the path.

Get to the Future… Faster

Forces critical to your future are emerging rapidly, leading to new opportunities — and creating blind spots. Facing an accelerating pace of change, it’s difficult to predict relevant business scenarios and to confidently deploy resources toward long-term plans.

Attention Span’s FWD Team is at the forefront of identifying, analyzing and leading the discussion of the technologies and forces that are rapidly affecting businesses.

Our team of technologists, futurists, designers and strategists help you understand the technologies, trends and challenges that your company will face in the near and far future, and turn those trends and challenges into opportunities.

Sports + Food + Healthcare

Any organization wanting to peer into its own future, two to seven years from now, needs to have eyes on the emerging science, startup activity, and deal flow—across all three markets.

$8T
Global Food Market
$1T
Sports and Fitness Market
$7T
Medical Market

Featured Projects

Healthcare: The Future of Health

Following up on the Future of Medicine, the leaders of the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB and the Jacobs Institute called us back into action to create this 11-topic report on the future of the medical system in the US and abroad. The results of our investigation presented a handful dire scenarios driven by current-day political dynamics and while that is expressed in the report, it also offers optimistic projections for things like cancer treatment, the use of AI to improve patient care, increasing “healthspans,” and neuro-connected bionic prosthetics.

Sports: The Future of Youth Sports

What does the future of youth sports look like in an era when young athletes increasingly dictate the terms of competition and control ever more media power—and when the value of sports scholarships and traditional college education are under attack?

We take a deep look at the best and worst-case scenarios for the future of youth sports as parents, coaches, futurists, and former youth athletes.

The Future of Youth Sports

Sports: The Future of Sports

Following our work on the first Future of Sports report, we scoured the frontiers of technology and sports science to produce this second edition featuring thought-provoking scenarios in ten new focus areas, including neurocoaching, globalized sports fandom, and machine medicine.

Healthcare: The Future of Medicine

In partnership with the Jacobs Institute, the Buffalo Niagara Medical Corridor, and the University at Buffalo, our team created a forward-thinking vision for the future of medicine and healthcare over the coming decades. We visited research labs, tech startups and medical centers across the country conducting all of the research and interviews used in the 70 page report.

Food: Food Forward

Hormel Foods engaged our team to create Food Forward, an ongoing exploration of technological and social forces reshaping the food and beverage industry. Our work includes predicting structural market shifts, reimagining solutions, creating business development strategies and identifying new opportunities.

Interested in the Future of Your Business?

Have an idea for a project? Interested in partnering up for an event? Want to learn more about our services?

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