FUTURES LAB
GLOBAL RISK MITIGATION & FUTURE READINESS
Strengthening resilience and readiness for a complex tech-driven world
Lab Mission
Hult's Futures Impact Lab is designed to be an intellectual community that enables contributors to engage in research that matters and that has a positive impact.
The lab examines how the current trajectories of technologies will be changing our societies, businesses, governments, and individual lives through the agency of behavioral sciences and data.
- Technology within the premise of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
- Behavioral Data and Neuroscience
- Foresights, Strategy, and Disruptive Business Models
- New Organizational Models and Theories
Lab Impact
We’re focused on driving forward innovative research and inquiry that has a scientific and practical impact. Hult's Futures Impact Lab acts like a research incubator by building an ecosystem where research projects can be developed and accelerated. The lab attempts to bring modern research applications inside the pulsing heart of Hult’s DNA by informing and shaping a future-ready school and its ecosystem.
Ultimately, we aim to use research to chart a roadmap for more sustainable, equitable, and prosperous futures. Based on ground-breaking research and global fellows’ inputs, the lab strives to design better global systems, seeking to strike a balance toward a viable, sustainable, resilient, and equitable world.
Lab Director
Meet Mark Esposito, PhD
Dr. Mark Esposito is a Professor of Business and Economics at Hult International Business School. His areas of specialization include economics, strategy, foresights, and management of technology. He is recognized internationally as a global thought leader in matters relating to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and the changes and opportunities that technology will bring to a variety of industries.
Mark is Co-Founder & Chief Learning Officer at Nexus FrontierTech, an AI scale-up venture. In 2021, he co-founded the Circular Economy Alliance where he serves as Chairman of the Strategic Foresight Board. He was inducted in 2016 to the Thinkers50 Radar as one of the 30 most prominent rising business thinkers in the world. He is a Senior Advisor to the Ideation Center of Strategy& at PwC in Dubai, and a Distinguished Fellow in the UNESCO Chair in Future Literacy of Finance. He is a global expert of the World Economic Forum, an advisor to national governments, and currently serves as Subject Matter Expert for the Prime Minister's Office in the UAE. He equally serves as advisor to Cambrian Futures, a Geotech advisory firm.
In his academic career, Mark has held academic appointments for some of the world’s leading institutions including Harvard University, the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School, and IE Business School. Mark currently serves as Affiliate Faculty for the Microeconomics of Competitiveness Program at Harvard Business School, under the mentorship of Professor Michael Porter. He was the Co-Leader of the Institute Councils at HBS from 2015 to 2019 and continues to serve in the faculty at Harvard University’s Division of Continuing Education.
He holds a doctoral degree in Business & Economics from Ecole des Ponts Paris Tech, one of France’s most prestigious Grande Ecole.
Lab Areas of Focus
Technology
We are strongly established in the field of technology research, which investigates phenomena from chatbots to quantum engineering. Our fellows and faculty are active in research that includes:
- Human Economy
- Digital Humanism
- AI and Its Governance
- Ethics of AI and Metaverse
Current projects include RAPIDS, led by Terence Tse, PhD, Professor of Finance at Hult, based out of London, which is a framework that prepares future readiness through six technology-driven trajectories. They include Rebound, Assets, People-in-the-Loop, Inequalities, Decentralization, and Symbio-process. The framework looks at various technology-induced developments surrounding us, which in turn lead to foresights into the future of our lives as governments, businesses, as well as individuals. RAPIDS will help us better understand the ramifications of the latest technologies, unpack some of the reverberations in the vast sea of technological change, and identify some of the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.
Behavioral Science
By bringing together faculty research in behavioral data, behavioral finance and economics, and psychology, we can provide insights that can help design products, services, and experiences that more effectively meet the needs and preferences of customers and employees. Our work in this area can inform marketing and sales strategies, improve organizational culture and effectiveness, and inform human resource practices such as recruitment, training, and employee motivation.
By examining the behavior and mental processes of employees within a work setting, we can gain insight into how to improve job satisfaction, productivity, and organizational culture. Through research into topics such as leadership, motivation, communication, group dynamics, and decision-making, we hope to use our findings to develop and implement programs and policies that enhance the workplace environment and support the well-being of employees.
Foresights & Strategy
Combining our research capabilities across Disruptive Business Models, Foresights, and Strategy 2.0, we input to Future Business Challenges at Hult and its curricula, as well as acting as an ideation hub and accelerator with the aim of creating startup eco-systems, platforms, and new strategic propositions, from an action-research perspective.
Current projects include Post-Pandemic Strategic Architecture, led by Alessandro Lanteri and supported by other faculty members across campuses. This project offers new answers to the classic questions of strategy: Where we will compete (mega trends)? How will we win (strategic drivers)? How will we execute (business model innovation)? This research will result in a novel Post-Pandemic Strategic Architecture, which will help businesses make better strategic decisions and more effectively pursue twin (sustainable and digital) transformation.
New Organizational Models
Organizational Theory 2.0 provides a more nuanced understanding of organizations and their functioning, considering factors such as organizational culture, power dynamics, and the impact of globalization and technology on organizations. It also recognizes the role of individuals and their experiences in shaping organizations and the importance of considering organizational behaviour at both the micro and macro levels. A great philosophical inspiration of this theme stems from the legacy of Peter Drucker and his contribution to the field of management.
This new version of organizational theory seeks to address the limitations of traditional organizational theories, which often focused on organizations as rational, centralized systems and did not take into account the role of culture, power, and politics in organizations.