Science Fiction Thinking

The narrative format of science fiction literature plays a vital role in the social construction of reality, enabling human knowledge and creative potential to be readily communicated even in complex contexts. Grounded in physical laws and scientific principles, the genre factors in cause-and-effect relationships, allowing it to drive innovation processes that extend well beyond purely hypothetical future forecasts. Having historically inspired numerous real-world concepts and inventions, science fiction not only sparks ideas for novel products and services, but also provides critical insights into prospective user groups as well as the potential risks and conflicts tied to emerging developments.

Science Fiction as an Idea Repository

Science fiction can be viewed as a comprehensive archive of future ideas, offering potential for inventions and solutions to present-day challenges. On this basis, “Science Fiction Thinking” can be regarded as a future skill to translate information into potential strategic actions. Companies and organizations are increasingly adopting this mindset to bolster their future readiness and generate ideas for innovation and transformation processes. However, synthesizing approaches and methodologies are still lacking to make insights from science fiction literature accessible to a broader audience and to integrate them systematically into strategic processes.

FOREXSCIFI: Foresight Based on Science Fiction

The FOREXSCIFI project addresses precisely this challenge. Using a custom-developed taxonomy, LLMs, and digital humanities methods, 43,000 German-language works of science fiction literature are being annotated to extract trends and future ideas, which are then compiled into a dictionary. This will result in an interactive dashboard available to all interested parties for both insight and inspiration.

Project Partners & Funding

Detailed information about our team can be found at Team.

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