Barbara van Veen

Background

About Barbara van Veen

Learn to Love Uncertainty with Foresight at Work FUTURIST with 20+ years of success generating actionable future scenarios that inform brand positioning, strategic planning, and innovation at mid-sized and large organizations in the Netherlands. Over the course of my career, I've operated in hospitality, finance, construction, business services, high-tech, transportation, and even the public sector. My roles included executive coaching, interim management, consulting, and foresight project design and facilitation. These diverse environments and roles taught me to catch unfounded hidden assumptions about the future early and remedy them by engaging entire organizations to develop a more complex, debiased, and actionable vision. My approach consistently brings employees to a higher level of strategic action. It sprouts a lifelong fascination for change, breaking down limiting beliefs and biases and challenging each other in futures thinking. Their success in realizing higher accuracy in foresight predictions and strategic planning motivates them and me.+ Architected the first online management development programs in the Netherlands in 2008. The programs focus on cocreating future scenarios and supported many Dutch organizations to find new competitive edge, including Jaarbeurs Utrecht, Univé, and Kadaster.+ Developed Dutch Dimensions, a space exhibition showcasing Dutch organizations with a leading role in space technology, attracting visitors in 2013.+ Defended my Ph.D. in managerial foresight successfully in 2020.+ Passed the Harvard Higher Education course for teachers with flying colors in 2022. As more radically new technologies emerge and change our playing fields, keeping tabs on change has never been more critical. Since early childhood, I've been submerged in sci-fi with three big brothers excelling in the arts and sciences. They triggered my curiosity, analytic power, and love of debate, the three main skills I deploy to let organizations access their distributed wisdom, have positive learning experiences, and accelerate change within to match the changes outside.+ Future Customer Profiling + Horizon Scanning + In-Company Programs on Foresight and Strategy + Teaching Futures Studies Curriculum If you like learning through discussions how to secure your organization's future in a fast-changing environment, please invite me to link with you for a good talk!+31102525256 or barbara [at] futuristbarbara.com.