Julian is one part of the team behind Near Future Laboratory, a design-led innovation practice, who invented design fiction as a thing and practice. When not designing and publishing books, podcasts, and doing consulting, he runs the Near Future Laboratory Discord, a Hypercollaborative where people come together to practice the craft of futuring and design fiction.

We speak about how to balance structure’s need for managed expectations, and imaginations need to jam. How listening to each other and trust in one’s self and each other can make beautiful things. How making things is our differentiator.

• LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE:
  
  
• Apple Podcasts
  
  
• Spotify
  

• New Future Laboratory and Julian Bleecker
  
  
• Near Future Laboratory Podcast
  
  • My favorite episode: N°44 — Meow Wolf, Public Policy, and Design Fiction with Stephen Bennett
    
  
  
  
• What’s a design fiction?
  
  
• Participate and learn about design fiction through General Seminar, buy the excellent book The Manual of Design Fiction, and practice design fiction daily with The 2023 Work Kit of Design Fiction
  
  
• Our own design fiction, Avery’s Journey
  

Julian Bleecker is a creative leader with the range of a generalist. He is at his best when he is working with organizations translating the “now” into the “next”. He is an engineer with multiple degrees, so he knows what it means to execute on ideas. He has a PhD in technology and culture, giving him unique perspectives and insights into the meaning of new ideas and how they will fit within marketplaces.

“It’s invigorating to me to just have that feeling that there are other people out there who have the same questions, the same desires; and the approach to doing what I think we all want to do, which is to find the way to just make a corner of the world a little bit more habitable, a little bit more curious, a little bit more inspirational, and a little bit more activating of the imagination.”

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