The document is an invitation to join the Future Center Alliance (FCA), an international alliance of future-oriented organizations and practitioners. The FCA aims to promote the work of Future Centers which prototype solutions to complex challenges. Membership in the FCA provides access to a global network and expertise to collaboratively address challenges. The FCA will be led by a Chairman and Founding Partners during its first year to develop activities that deliver benefits to members and generate knowledge about innovation. Interested organizations are invited to join and help shape the FCA's approaches.

1. Invitation to join the
Future Center Alliance
Photos: collaborative events of the international
future center community during 2005-2010
StudioDvir’s
Photos: Collaborative events of the International Future
Center Community from 2005 to 2010
Invitation to join the
Future Center Alliance

2. Future Center Alliance: An Invitation
We live in a society that is changing faster than ever before and facing increasingly complex
challenges. Businesses and governments around the world are struggling to keep pace with
what is required of them. But for some time now, a small but rapidly expanding group of people
have been championing a different way of thinking about the future, embracing change, growing
and innovating for the benefit of individuals, businesses, governments and society as a whole.
They did this through the creation of ‘Future Centers’, the first example of which was the
Skandia Future Centre, created by Prof. Leif Edvinsson, for the prototyping and renewal of
Intellectual Capital.
This diverse group have joined together under the auspices of the Future Center Alliance (FCA)
to promote and extend the impact that Future Centers and their related activities can have. The
FCA is the leading international alliance for initiating, organising and actively supporting the
management and renewal of Future Centers and similar dedicated innovation environments.
Prof. Edvinsson will take on the role of Chairman of the FCA for this, its inaugural year.
The founding members of the FCA hail from different countries
and cultures, but have a shared passion for supporting
collaborative innovation and ‘futures thinking’ to address
business, organisational and societal challenges. In recent
years, some members of the Future Center community have
been working together on an informal basis to create the first
four international Future Center Summits: 2005 in the
Netherlands, 2006 in Italy, 2009 in Sweden, 2010 in Japan. Interest and commitment to formally
establish the FCA is now at the tipping point and this document is about moving into that next
phase.
This invitation has been created because it is our collective wish for like-minded individuals and
organisations from around the world to join us in supporting pioneering work to develop
innovative futures.
The Vision
The vision of the FCA is to develop a global community of Future Centers and similar working
environments, as well as Future Center Practitioners. These organisations and people share a
passion for creating sustainable solutions to today’s and tomorrow’s challenges by nurturing
collaboration and the freedom to think differently, learning from culturally diverse wisdom,
sharing concepts widely and producing outcomes that can be successfully implemented.
We aim to achieve the highest level of professional practice and consistency in:
Supporting people and organizations to deal effectively with complex problems
Creating effective and stimulating environments for breaking down barriers to
collaborative innovation
Forging collaboration across borders of all kinds
Championing creative work processes, methodologies and tools
Encouraging shared thinking and igniting new ways of thinking about existing and future
problems
Facilitating and creating new collective intelligence, integrating the old and the new to
achieve relevant results which can be realized in practice
We work through Future Centers and similar innovation environments to achieve these goals.
The FCA is founded on a
genuine enthusiasm,
energy, belief and
commitment to solve the
seemingly impossible.

3. Our Values
We are passionate about making the FCA informative, inspiring, and progressive. We operate
from a set of collective values:
Openness, Creativity, Curiosity, Playfulness, Learning, Collaboration, Catalysing,
Enabling and Innovating
These values inspire our members to share insights and co-create
value with each other. But above all, our members are committed to
creating positive change for their stakeholders, whether they be
organisations, citizens, customers or society as a whole. This user-
centered approach is a constant theme in all our Future Center and
FCA related activities.
Membership
FCA members leverage their core expertise, complementary skills, and extensive networks to
collaboratively achieve mutual objectives. Members are organisations that operate in the public
or private sectors, and range from the very small to the very large.
Organisational members are:
Working Future Centers and similar innovation and foresight-enhancing workspaces
Public and private organisations committed to the practice of innovation, and seriously
interested in applying Future Center concepts to co-create value for their customers,
stakeholders, sectors and society as a whole
Experienced professionals working in the fields of business and societal innovation,
intellectual capital, collaborative workspace design, problem solving and academic /
action research, who have demonstrated an affinity with Future Center concepts
Membership Benefits and Costs
The FCA operates as a not-for-profit organisation, providing services to members and
supported by membership fees. Funds are used to provide activities for members and to cover
the operating costs of the Alliance. Any surplus funds from membership fees will be invested in
research projects, the initiation of collaborative activities, and for supporting Future Center
Summit events1
.
Benefits for Members
Access to a global network of Future Centers and future orientated organisations for
networking and collaboration with other organisations and practitioners facing similar
challenges
Privileged access to expertise and research on innovation practices, methodologies,
tools, techniques and consultancy on Future Center practice, enabling new and different
approaches to emerging challenges
Opportunities to initiate and/or participate in events, collaborative projects and research
on innovation and future thinking
Access to benchmarking resources, including the opportunities to visit global Future
Center facilities to experience collaborative working / ‘live’ research
Participation in virtual FCA activities
Opportunities to exchange ideas and raise questions in the FCA community
1
Decisions on such investment in 2011 will be taken by the Founding Partners, outlined later in this document.
Our values inspire our
members to share
insights and co-create
value with each other.

4. Information on developing partnerships for dealing with complex multi-disciplinary
challenges
Insight into how to solve complex problems across multiple disciplines to achieve rapid
resolution
Specific advice about developing Future Center facilitation
capability
Advice on sector-specific application of Future Center
approaches, including new product development, future-
based policy development, commercialisation of research
and societal innovation
Access to strategic innovation resources for improving
organisational performance
Insight and hands-on experience for designing and
developing a leading edge Future Center environment
Preferred status registration for Future Center Summits
Enjoyment of the brand of the FCA and its members for recognition and promotion
purposes
Many additional benefits that will emerge as they are initiated and co-created by the
Alliance members
Fees
The FCA will charge membership fees to cover operating costs, as well as allow it to participate
in and contribute to the global knowledge arena. Details of these fees and operating principles
for the first year will be made available shortly in a separate document.
FCA Activities
The FCA will primarily focus on providing the membership benefits listed above, but will
additionally (and, in part, as a way of delivering those benefits) instigate and participate in a
range of value-adding research and knowledge generating activities. The range of ideas to be
developed and considered will include:
Global Research Service: Benchmarking opportunities, creation of a global FC database,
publications including newsletters
Evaluation Service: Assessment programmes, benchmarking data
Space Design Service: Design process and consultation, advisory services
Facilitation Service: Recommendations for FCA approved facilitators who can provide FC
session design and facilitation, consultancy, training
Director Education Service: FCA developed education programmes, FC leadership
network
Management Support: Global FC management platform supporting local FC
management teams, development of networked learning
Methodology Support: Expert consulting and education, FCA guidebook of
methodologies
Technology Support: FC technical expertise, services, virtual FC technologies
FC Summit Events: FCA sponsored special interest activities
The FCA offers
members an
extraordinary arena in
which to develop
collaborative
relationships across
boundaries and create
new possibilities within
an open and globally
diverse group of
innovation pioneers.

5. These examples will be further refined and developed throughout the initial year of the FCA,
and decisions on areas to pursue will be based on value-add potential through collaboration
with FCA members.
Next Steps
This document sets out the purpose, vision and values of the FCA. We hope that you are
excited by this Invitation. Our members are forward thinking and inspired to move into a more
collaborative and progressive future for people in businesses, governments and society.
In order to progress the FCA throughout the next year, we have organised ourselves to enable
us to work together to achieve the vision we set out above. We will use the principles and
structures outlined below to do this, and these should be read with a clear “for the next year”
caveat, with our intention being to gradually evolve and allow the most useful, beneficial and
pragmatic forms to emerge over this first year.
We will establish a number of ‘roles’ for the first year, including:
A Founding Chairman, who will act as a figurehead and
promote the FCA on the global stage. Prof. Leif
Edvinsson will take on this role for 2011
Founding Partners, the co-originators of the FCA,
comprised of a number of proactive organisations such
as Fuji-Xerox KDI in Japan, Mindlab in Denmark and The
Shipyard in The Netherlands, as well as a number of
other active Future Center practitioners
Members, who will be fee-paying organisations
A Coordination Team, who will orchestrate the FCA activities on behalf of the Founders
in the short term under the leadership of Prof. Leif Edvinsson
Key decisions on the activities of the FCA (such as budgeting, structural issues and projects)
will be made by the Founding Partners. All other day-to-day activities will be handled by the
Coordination Team.
The FCA will define a set of criteria for membership and renewal, based around the principles of
contribution and active involvement in Future Center related work.
A code of ethics will be developed during the first year, to govern the ongoing operation of the
FCA. In addition, we will propose the creation of some formal posts (such as President and
Secretary) for the FCA, and organise to hold elections for these posts before April 2012.
We would like to invite you to join our growing Alliance, and co-create the approaches and
processes that Future Centers will use to benefit organisations, countries and society.
For further information, please visit the FCA website at:
www.fc-alliance.net
or send an email to:
contact@fc-alliance.net
We very much look forward to working with you as part of the FCA!
Kind regards,
Karen Lord, David Lomas, Ron Dvir, Hank Kune.
Future Centers are
places to invent the
future, to prototype new
ideas, and translate
future images into a
working reality. Most
importantly, they are a
source and amplifier of
creative energy.