Online Platforms
Below is a starter list of noteworthy web-based platforms helpful to the Eight Skills of foresight. Most were previously mentioned in the Guide. Expect many more of these, and many more millionaires launching future platforms, as our world gets a lot smarter, faster, wealthier, digital, and more connected in the next few decades.
99Designs. Pioneers in web graphics and design crowdsourcing.
AngelList. Social network and funding platform for angels funding early-stage startups.
Assembly. Early-stage crowd-owned crowdfounding company.
BrightIdea. Enterprise innovation management software.
Brightline. A platform and community helping teams bridge the gap between strategy and delivery.
Cerego. A personalized adaptive learning technology platform, based on spaced repetition.
Chrome. The best browser, period.
CogniStreamer. Ideation management platform.
Coursera. MOOC-based educational technology company. Uses machine learning for peer education.
Crowdspring. Online marketplace for crowdsourced creative services.
CrunchBase. Massive crowd-edited database of innovative tech companies, run by TechCrunch/AOL.
Datastation. Enterprise innovation and ideation management.
DevonThink. Information management software. AI serves you context-relevant DB snips as you write.
Engage. Customer feedback management platform.
Evernote. Knowledge management software. Efficiently capture, nurture, and share experiences & ideas.
FIBRES. Software tool for trend tracking, strategic foresight, and strategy execution. Helsinki, Finland
Forward Indicators. ShapingTomorrow’s lit review and web search tool, highlighting indicators of change.
Futurism. Curated platform for news, infographics, and videos about the future.
Futurium. EU’s crowd futures platform for visions and policy ideas for Europe’s digital future to 2050.
Good Judgment Project. Research plaltform using the wisdom of the crowd to forecast world events.
Google Alerts. A free tool to monitor foresight topics on the public web. Filter alerts into folders.
Google Calendar. A very smart group calendar, with location-based and other contextual alerts.
Google Drive (Docs). A full featured, less evil online collaboration and cloud storage platform.
Google Now. The best conversational prediction and context engine for mobile phones.
Gust. Connects startups with a large collection of investors and accelerator programs globally.
Hangouts. A better (less evil and intrusive) free videoconferencing system than Skype.
Helpouts. Google’s platform for anyone to offer help and tutoring via live video hangout.
Huunu. Prediction market methodology and platform, by Consensus Point.
Hype. Idea and innovation management software.
Imaginatik. Innovation management and training.
Indiegogo. International crowdfunding site. Backing emerging crowdfounding (JOBS Act) policies.
InnoCentive. Open innovation company using commisioned R&D competitions.
JobHuk. Social recruitment marketplace, incentivizing independent recruiters and consultants.
Kaggle. Predictive modeling and analytics competitions. 95K participating data scientists.
Kickstarter. World’s largest crowdfunding platform for creative projects.
Lattice Engines. Industry-leading predictive analytics for marketing, lead scoring, and sales.
LevelEleven’s Compete. Sales gamification platform. Works with Salesforce.
Lumosity. Focused daily practice on memory, attention, speed, flexibility, and problem solving.
MarketSight. Inexpensive, powerful survey, data analysis, and market research platform.
Narrative Science. Automated narrative generation for enterprise. NLU turns data into reports.
NextIT. Intelligent virtual agents for call center and self-help automation.
Notable. Better (free, nonbloated, browser-based) PDF annotation and sharing tool than Adobe Acrobat.
oDesk+eLance. Leading onlline workplace. 8 million freelancers, 1 million companies.
Open English. English language learning via videoconferencing.
Open Ideo. Crowdbased interated design platform. Focused on “solving big challenges for social good.”
Palantir Technologies. Intelligence and analytics platform, for government, defense, and finance clients.
Performance Curve Database. A modest effort to collect and measure technological performance curves.
Piquora. Marketing suite for the emerging Visual Web (Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, etc.).
PredictIt. Real-money political prediction market.
Predictix. Predictive analytics and decision support for apparel, grocery, and hardlines.
Primer. A cloud AI platform that reads and analyzes documents, discovers insights, and generates reports.
Quid. Platform for narrative analysis, technology and industry landscaping, and trend analysis.
Quirky. Consumer products innovation and crowdfounding platform.
Quora. Leading question-answering platform. You can follow topics, like Foresight, Future of AI, etc.
r/Futurology. Irreverent Reddit community crowdsourcing pop futures info and data on the public web.
RAHS (Risk Assessment & Horizon Scanning). Singapore’s leading scanning, intel, and foresight platform.
RealClear Future. Curated platform for future stories. Robots, Transport, Info, Entertainment, Energy, Biotech, Space.
Reddit. Leading global collaborative forum-style discussion platform. Scads of subreddits, by topic.
Recorded Future. Web intelligence, tech and industry network analysis, and predictive analytics platform.
Revolution Analytics. A leading lower-end predictive analytics platform, using open source R software.
Rootclaim. A community doing first-principles causal analysis and Bayesian inference prediction of societal events.
Salesforce. Leading customer relationship management platform. Free to nonprofits.
Shaping Tomorrow. Collaborative scanning and foresight platform.
SpigitEngage. Ideation and innovation management software platform.
Statistical Packages. Languages and platforms for data mining, statistical computing, and graphics.
Talkwalker. An alerts and social media analytics platform for monitoring brands.
TeamPulse. Employee engagement, project management and customer feedback platform.
TechCast. Collaborative technology and social forecasting platform.
TutorVista. Live 24/7 tutoring from India, in any subject, at a disruptive price ($12-20/hr).
Twitter. The leading short-form news and status posting platform.
Udacity. MOOC based for-profit educational organization, focused on technical courses for professionals.
Wikistrat. A “massively multiplayer online consultancy (MMOC)”, running multiday scenario simulations.
Wise.io. Machine learning as a service, for pattern recognition in big data sets.
Wolfram Alpha. A free computational knowledge search engine.
Yelp. Leading business crowdrating and service reviewing system.
YouTube. Still the top video posting and viewing platform. Terrible interface, inane comments section.
Zocalo. Open source toolkit for building inexpensive, simple prediction markets.
See GlobalForesight.org’s Foresight Resources pages for many more online platforms, databases, search tools, models, games, trends, statistics, scenarios, weak signals, quotations, problems, and solutions of interest to futures and foresight students and practitioners. Want more? Become a Volunteer Editor at GlobalForesight.org and help us build a great foresight directory for everyone around the world. We wish you a fantastic future!
