Craving the Future

CRAVING THE FUTURE
Transforming Our Deepest Desires into New Realities

What if the most valuable innovation resource in your organization is already on the payroll?

The future doesn't need another expert. It needs more curious teams.

Organizations invest in innovation departments, strategic planning, design thinking, and outside consultants. Yet promising opportunities often emerge from people who don't consider themselves innovators—people who notice unexpected behaviors, question assumptions, and recognize possibilities others overlook.

CRAVING THE FUTURE is a practical and inspiring guide to unlocking that creative potential.

Drawing on decades of consumer research and innovation strategy with brands including Levi's, Gap, Adidas, Hyatt, Nike Hershey's, and Williams Sonoma, author Michael Perman introduces an approach to discovering what people truly crave—and transforming those insights into new products, services, and experiences.

At its heart is a powerful definition:

Innovation is the ability to perceive alternative realities and the courage to bring those to fruition.

A Different Kind of Innovation Book

CRAVING THE FUTURE combines provocative stories, human-centered research, design thinking methods, and creative exercises to help individuals and teams challenge conventional assumptions.

Rather than simply predicting the future, readers explore human desires, emerging cultural signals, and unexpected connections that reveal new possibilities.

Discover practical approaches to:

• Activate team innovation: Explore fresh perspectives, challenge assumptions, and discover opportunities.
• Practice human-centered design thinking: Uncover unmet needs and deeper human desires through observation and curiosity.
• Explore strategic foresight and future planning: Perceive alternative futures rather than extrapolating from today's trends.
• Facilitate innovation workshops: Use provocative questions, creative exercises, and shared discovery.
• Transform insights into action: Experiment with ideas and create tangible outcomes.
• Build a culture of curiosity: Help people throughout an organization contribute to innovation.

Turn Your Team into a Community of Curious Innovators

Innovation isn't a department. It's a shared human capability.

CRAVING THE FUTURE is valuable for leadership teams, innovation managers, marketing professionals, organizational development leaders, educators, and creative collaborators.

Use it to inspire leadership discussions, facilitate team innovation workshops, enrich design thinking initiatives, or launch a collaborative exploration of your organization's future.

You don't need an expensive consultant or specialized innovation credentials to get started. Just curiosity, thoughtful methods, and the courage to question familiar assumptions.

In a world shaped by artificial intelligence, technological disruption, and uncertainty, organizations need more than faster answers.

They need better questions.

What are people really craving that they aren't getting today? What could we create together that doesn't yet exist?

CRAVING THE FUTURE encourages readers to explore those questions through observation, creative collaboration, and experimentation.

Perhaps the greatest innovation challenge isn't a shortage of expertise. It's a shortage of permission to be curious.

Whether you're leading an organization, developing new products, facilitating workshops, or seeking a more optimistic approach to the future, this book offers practical tools for turning curiosity into innovation.

The future isn't simply something to predict. It's something we create together.

Michael Perman galvanizes teams to think and act differently about the future, leading prosperity, growth and positive social change. Over his career, Michael has provided brand strategy, insights and innovation advice to a broad spectrum of brands including, Levi's, Banana Republic, Athleta, Nike, Adidas, Starbuck, US Navy, Hyatt Corporation, Williams-Sonoma, American Signature Furniture, Del Monte, General Mills and more. Michael is CEO of C'EST WHAT? LLC, Purveyors of Mindfully Crafted Innovation Futures. Michael's firm provides strategic innovation consultation to large brands. Michael is regarded as an "out there"thinker, provoking interesting conversations and inspiring imagination of people around him. Michael is a sought after public speaker and leader of unique, multi-sensory innovation workshops that build esprit de corps and generate bold ideas and innovation strategies. He leads teams with confidence to move ideas from "fuzzy to fruition" Michael craves culinary arts, trail running in the woods, writing (duh), inspiring creativity in others, mindfully crafted futures and smoked salmon. He lives in Portland, Oregon - an innovation hotbed.