Explore the future to generate growth

There are many self-proclaimed futurists out there. Lee is an academically trained futurist from the University of Houston Futures program and a co-founder of the Association of Professional Futurists. A business futurist with extensive experience consulting to Fortune 500 companies, Lee knows how to translate foresight into business strategy and competitive advantage. He understands the challenges of bringing new products to market, and has worked with innovation, product and marketing teams to launch successful ventures.

When you work with Lee…

Lee is an experienced hand who works well under pressure. His high energy, commitment to excellence, and obsession with impact make him a collaborative partner who will deliver outstanding results.

THOUGHT PARTNER

An empathetic and intelligent thought partner who cares about you and your business, and is willing to think through your toughest challenges. Lee understands business and knows how to be flexible and creative when projects evolve and change.

experienced strategist

A pragmatic business futurist who can help you optimize decisions now by better understanding the opportunities and threats coming in the future. Lee thinks about how to stay ahead of the competition by gaining and sustaining category leadership.

HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE

A hands-on design and market researcher who has his finger on the pulse of the market. Lee has conducted thousands of interviews with business leaders, experts, technical audiences, and leading- edge consumers. Lee is comfortable with highly technical subject matter and senior technology decision makers.

CUTTING-EDGE KNOWLEDGE

A deep understanding of emerging and future technology. Based in Silicon Valley, Lee has led hundreds of projects for large technology companies, bringing cutting-edge technology products and services to market.

Flexible Team

A wide and deep network of highly skilled professionals who can bring additional expertise as needed, including futurists, subject matter experts, researchers, designers and marketers. Lee builds teams fit to purpose that bring shared values and effective collaboration to projects, enabling teams to scale up as needed.

Foresight Offerings

INNOVATION AND NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Where are the best emerging opportunities for innovation? How can we build a robust product pipeline?

FORESIGHT WORKSHOPS AND TRAINING

How can our organization use futures tools to get smarter about change?

Custom foresight work

What is the future of X?
Recent example: The Future of AI Thought Leadership

EXPERT NETWORKS AND PANELS

How can we leverage experts to deeply understand a specific subject or business category?

Custom applied trends work

Which trends will most impact our business short, medium, and long term? How can we focus on the most important ones?

DESIGN FUTURES/EXPERIENTIAL FUTURES

How can we create artifacts from the future to make it more tangible and real?

SCENARIO PLANNING

What opportunities and threats are coming? What likely alternative futures should we prepare for?

POST PANDEMIC FUTURES

How will COVID 19 impact our current and future business?

Clients

Lee has partnered with Fortune 500 companies and Silicon Valley startups. Much of his work has been with leading technology companies, in collaboration with innovation, product, design, and marketing teams. He has experience across many other categories, including finance, medical devices, automotive, food & beverage, and CPG companies.

Testimonials

Lee is an ace consultant with a passion for leading his clients into the future. He is constantly scanning culture, technology and the world in general for emerging evidence of future trends, asking himself and his clients, "How should business react now to get out ahead of the curve?" He is a natural leader, with a nimble mind that is always considering problems from many different angles. He is adept at uncovering the underlying issues to clients' problems and is laser-focused on delivering solutions to those issues. He consistently tackles the most complex, high-pressure consulting engagements with grace, aplomb and a healthy dose of Southern humor and wit. Lee is your go-to guide for navigating the future.
- Dave Decelle, Netflix

Lee led a Workplace of the Future project for Hewlett Packard while I was a market research manager in the Business PC team. Lee was incredibly innovative and insightful in identifying future trends that would impact the workplace. Lee utilized these insights to develop future scenarios that we used for product strategy planning. This project had broad engagement across the company, and many people remarked about the incredible value they received from the results. Even after 2 years since the project was completed, we are still using the insights in our product teams.
- Alex Dunnette, HP

Lee Shupp earned his stripes over the years as a "street futurist" where he innovated with an "ethnofutures" approach that brought much needed street smarts to the emerging discipline of foresight. Lee has a keen ear for new developments and is consistently at the leading edge of change, for which he has built a grateful list of clients over the years. It was my great pleasure to work with Lee on the Board of the nascent Association of Professional Futurists, where his savvy insights and dedication to building a community of professional futurists were vital to the building of the APF. Not only does he bring a keen intellect and insight to any situation or project, he is a tremendous colleague and always great fun to work with!"
- Andy Hines, Director, University of Houston Futures Program