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Social futuring is the character of a social entity signifying its capacity, ability and fitness to envision, create and enact change and so to prepare itself for the beneficial proceeding into and managing of the future. Social futuring is a marker of the unique mentality a social entity (e.g. an individual, a family, a community, an organization, a nation, a region, a culture, etc.) needs to rationalize its present and future potentials, set common goals, adapt to and cope with change and perform its visions while sustaining its orientation towards the future. Social futuring is used to indicate a social entity’s mentality, readiness and activity to embrace the future.

What is social futuring?
Social futuring is a term formulated by the Social Futuring Center  of the Corvinus University Budapest, used in the project CONNEXT 2050 and exploited by the Social Futuring Index to recognize a complex set of skills a social entity can and should obtain in order to manage and lead future changes without compromising normative social and ethical standards and healthy living conditions. As a character, social futuring exclusively belongs and applied to what is social, that is, to human agents and the net of relations with their material, social and symbolic environments. Rooted in a multidisciplinary academic framework social futuring creates an innovative synergy of approaches and results of futures studies, demography, psychology, bionics, informatics, environmental studies among other academic and professional fields. Thus, it is semantically penetrated by notions like future- orientation, future proofing, attachment, resilience, coping and sustainability (etc.).

Conditions of social futuring
The necessary conjunctive conditions of the social futuring of any given social entity are that it is able to


 * exist permanently and


 * operate functionally and


 * create a strategic vision for the future and


 * apply its strategic vision to its present and future acts.

The sufficient disjunctive conditions of the social futuring of any given social entity are that it is able to


 * facilitate/create change(s) or


 * prepare itself to manipulate change(s) or


 * prepare itself to exploit opportunities brought by future change(s) or


 * prepare itself to manage risks brought by future change(s).

(Szántó 2017 )

Forms of social futuring
Based on the above listed definition and conditions a social entity’s social futuring can either be


 * Proactive: that is, the social entity and its key agents envision, manipulate and create future change(s) in accordance with consciously cognized and positively deemed opportunities.


 * Active: when the social entity resiliently prepares itself to exploit the opportunities of future change(s) for its betterment


 * Reactive: if the social entity is prepared to effectively cope with risks entailed by future change(s)

Each and all forms of social futuring can improve the social entity’s relative position compared to relevant entities. (Csák 2017 )

Measuring social futuring – Social Futuring Index
By measuring social futuring the complex of future-oriented workings and way of life of an entity is evaluated, indicated and weighted. The Social Futuring Index (SFI) (link to its own wikipeda entry) and ranking is a weighted average of indicators that approximate the elements (mentality, skills, forms) of social futuring. The SFI measures a ’net result’ as it is detectable based on publicly available data us. (Csák 2017)