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Anna Simpson

Director, Chief Innovation Coach at Flux Compass

Hong Kong, Hong Kong

I support people and organisations to make sense of complex change so that they can build a more resilient future. I curate the Futures Centre, Forum for the Future's platform for monitoring change, and I'm also a writer and the author of two books, The Innovation-Friendly Organization and The Brand Strategist's Guide to Desire.

Anna Simpson Points
Academic 0
Author 143
Influencer 53
Speaker 27
Entrepreneur 10
Total 233

Points based upon Thinkers360 patent-pending algorithm.

Thought Leader Profile

Portfolio Mix

Company Information

Company Type: Company
Business Unit: Futures, Strategy, Innovation, Culture
Theatre: Hong Kong
Minimum Project Size: Undisclosed
Average Hourly Rate: Undisclosed
Number of Employees: Undisclosed
Company Founded Date: Undisclosed
Media Experience: 10 years
Last Media Training: 06/01/2018
Last Media Interview: 06/01/2018

Areas of Expertise

Culture 30.22
Design Thinking 30.10
Digital Transformation 30.04
Emerging Technology 30.80
Leadership 30.03
Sustainability 33.86
Innovation 33.02
Agile 30.03
Social 30.24
Climate Change 30.21
Diversity and Inclusion 30.12
Startups 30.08
Renewable Energy 32.29
Future of Work 30.02
Ecosystems 30.06
Management 33.27

Industry Experience

Agriculture & Mining
Consumer Products
Engineering & Construction
Higher Education & Research
Media
Professional Services
Textiles Production

Publications

17 Article/Blogs
What's the outlook for Iraq's children?
Futures Centre
November 26, 2018
As part of a scenario planning project for UNICEF, I went to Iraq to find out what Iraqis think about the future for children and youth.

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Tags: Design Thinking, Leadership, Social

WHY AGILE COMPANIES NEED TO TALK ABOUT MYTHS
Enlivening Edge / Disruption Hub
May 09, 2018
Last month I was working with a global venture capital company, headquartered in Hong Kong, to find ways to boost the creativity of its exceptionally talented and driven workforce.

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Tags: Design Thinking, Innovation, Leadership, Culture, Agile

Diversity – The Spice Of Innovation
Disruption Hub
October 19, 2017
We’re so focused on being human, that we think of nature as something beyond us. We build imaginary walls around our lives – and they constrain us. We fail to see the full range of possibilities for give and take.

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Tags: Innovation, Culture, Diversity and Inclusion

‘Sharing our Heritage to Shape our Future’, Social Media Technologies, Communication, and Informatics
Think Mind
October 01, 2017
This is a position paper about heritage and futures that the authors present for discussion to set the stage for a subsequent analysis of the topic supported by statistics and formal proofs.

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Tags: Emerging Technology

Curiousity: A Key to Innovation
Disruption Hub
August 07, 2017
In the Studio Ghibli film The Wind Rises, Jiro Horikoshi – a Japanese aerospace engineer – has a dream, in which he meets the Italian aircraft designer, Giovanni Caproni. (Caproni designed the World War II fighter the Ghibli – or ‘desert wind’ – that gave the animation studio its name.)

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Tags: Innovation

The Culture Question: What Does It Take To Embrace Change?
Disruption Hub
July 06, 2017
When a streetwear brand wanted to increase its appeal to girls, it sent a group of innovation agents out to an all-girl skate park in Manchester.

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Tags: Innovation, Culture

‘Futures Journalism: A strategy to shift our focus from current affairs to long-term solutions’, Journal of Futures Studies
forum for the future Singapure
March 20, 2016
Journalists have traditionally reported current affairs – or the very recent past – with the purpose of keeping their audience up to date.

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Tags: Emerging Technology, Sustainability

The Long View / An annual collection of futures insights
Futures Centre
January 01, 2016
in 2015 and 2016, Forum for the Future published The Long View, an annual collection of insights into the most crucial shifts taking place today.

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Tags: Emerging Technology, Sustainability

Energy Culture
Green Futures
October 01, 2014
The way we use and buy energy is changing. In recent years, many people in the Western world have come to take power at the flick of a switch for granted. Blind to the costs of their high-power lives, few could say where the energy came from, how much they used, or what is was worth

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Tags: Startups, Renewable Energy

Ep #24 – What Your Customers Really Desire with Anna Simpson
Roger Dooley
September 18, 2014
This week on The Brainfluence Podcast, I welcome Anna Simpson to the show. Anna is the Curator of the Futures Centre and Editor of Green Futures, a publication of the Forum for the Future in Singapore.

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Tags: Customer Experience, Emerging Technology

The Cotton Conundrum: Securing the future of a very important fibre ( 2013)
forum for the future
July 01, 2013
Cotton is threaded through human history.
Domesticated thousands of years ago in India,
South and Central America and Southern Africa, it
showcases the best and the worst of humanity – from
innovation and creativity to slavery and environmental
degradation.

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Tags: Sustainability

Brands Weigh Up Their Social Role
global POLICY
January 01, 2013
Our current model of consumerism is broken. That is no new insight, nor is it a bad thing. Few of the late high street shops will be sorely missed, from Comet to HMV to that trader in nostalgia, Past Times (BBC, 2013).

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Tags: Emerging Technology, Sustainability, Marketing

Futuristas Why women are crucial to change
forum for the future
November 12, 2012
If we could do just one thing to mend our broken economies, stressed ecosystems, food crises and social unrest, then investing in women might be a good bet.

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Tags: Sustainability, Future of Work, Ecosystems

Water Works Green solutions for a blue planet (2012)
forum for the future
October 23, 2012
It’s not just for drinking. Without reliable access to water, all our essential systems – from manufacture to transport to trade – would run aground.

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Tags: Sustainability

Beyond the Finish Can London 2012 give sustainability a sporting chance?
forum for the future
July 18, 2012
This Special Edition explores the legacy of the Games for a sustainable future. It demonstrates how major global events can create an impetus for innovation, and how investors, businesses and decision makers can make the most of the opportunity.

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Tags: Sustainability, Supply Chain, Procurement

‘Moving Mountains: How can faith shape our future?’
forum for the future
July 29, 2011
If you want to change people's hearts and minds, priorities and lifestyles, talk to their core beliefs. And in a world where the majority of the population adheres to a religion or spiritual world view, nothing rivals the impact of faith.

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Tags: Sustainability

Tomorrow's food, tomorrow's farms
forum for the future
March 01, 2011
With a growing population to feed in the UK and around the world, and a spread of environmental challenges including climate change and freshwater scarcity threatening to derail efforts to maintain and increase agricultural production,

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Tags: Sustainability, Climate Change

2 Books
The Innovation-Friendly Organization: How to cultivate new ideas and embrace the change they bring
Palgrave Macmillan
February 15, 2017
This book explores five cultural traits – Diversity, Integrity, Curiosity, Reflection, and Connection – that encourage the birth and successful development of new ideas, and shows how organizations that are serious about innovation can embrace them. Innovation – the driver of change and resilience – It is totally dependent on culture, the social environment which shapes how ideas emerge and evolve. Ideas need to breathe, and culture determines the quality of the air. If it’s stuffy and lacks flow, then no idea, however brilliant, will live long enough to fulfil its potential.

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Tags: Innovation, Management

The Brand Strategist's Guide to Desire: How to give consumers what they actually want
Palgrave Macmillan
March 12, 2014
Brands are supposed to meet their customers' needs; but does industry understand what really matters to them?

The Brand Strategist's Guide to Desire provides a ground-breaking model for understanding and responding to consumer desire, offering brands a way to build strong relationships and gain a lasting competitive advantage. Through interviews with sociologists, psychologists and leading brand consultants, Anna Simpson explores five common desires: community, adventure, aesthetics, vitality and purpose. She argues that, by examining motivation, companies can understand how to develop successful products and services that offer real value.

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Tags: Customer Experience, Marketing

1 Executive
Associate Director, Futures - BSR
BSR (Business for Social Responsibility)
September 01, 2021

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Tags: Renewable Energy

1 Keynote
Why lasting beauty starts with sustainability
Futures Centre
December 01, 2015
Athens in November. Crisp sunlight by day, vociferous cafes by night. We're told the marble walls used to be painted in vibrant pigments. We're told the graffiti - rich streets used to house more shops. Exports have suffered from capital controls.

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Tags: Sustainability

11 Panels
'Waste to Wealth: Circular Economy Creative Mapping Workshop'
Green Is The New Black
April 01, 2018
A one-day experience that has been designed to make us think differently, as a platform to openly share successes, challenges, and to be inspired by the next wave of business thinking.

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Tags: Innovation

‘An Introduction to Scenario Planning’
Eventbrite
January 01, 2018

An Introduction To Future Scenarios Tickets, Wed, Jan 24 ...
www.eventbrite.com
Eventbrite - Anna Simpson, Chief Innovation Coach at Flux Compass presents An Introduction To Future Scenarios - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 at nakedHub Bonham Strand, Hong Kong Island.

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Tags: Emerging Technology

Sensemaking / Hearing it from Gen Z: a social media masterclass
Futures Centre
December 11, 2017
Into a room of professional women in their 20-50s, all members of the American Chamber of Commerce, enter three 14-year old girls, fresh from a hike up Hong Kong’s ‘twins’, still in their tracksuits.

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Tags: Social

Futures Webinar: Committing to Net Positive. The next wave of leadership
YouTube
November 24, 2017
To achieve the SDGs and put the world on course to a safer, cleaner, fairer future for all, we need transformational change. Practices in the field need to be redefined away from incremental, reduction targets towards absolute, systemic and regenerative goals.

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Tags: Emerging Technology, Innovation

CULTURE MASTERCLASS: UNBLOCK INNOVATION IN YOUR COMPANY
Dif
November 08, 2017
Companies are increasingly recognising the need to find agile ways of working, but struggle against a culture geared towards generating more of the same. In this interactive workshop, participants will explore five elements crucial to unlocking innovation, guided by the author of The Innovation-Friendly Organisation, and rapidly prototype their own culture hacks.

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Tags: Innovation, Management, Culture

‘Future of Food’, Foodie Futures,
Foodie
September 01, 2017
It‘s a big claim to say we have an amazing line-up, so you didn‘t think we‘d stop after the morning, did you? In fact, the morning session is really just enough to whet your appetite about our food‘s future.

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Tags: Emerging Technology, Innovation

Sustainable HR: Are You Hiring For The Future?
METTA
August 31, 2017
Priyanka Gothi, founder of Retired Not Out, Kimberly Arth, founder of PIVOT, and Anna Simpson, author of The Innovation-Friendly Organization presents an in-depth discussion about sustainable hiring. They explore Hong Kong's hiring landscape, and ways to boost the labor force through utilizing virtually untapped sources of highly skilled talents.

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Tags: Emerging Technology, HR

‘Can Hong Kong be Asia’s Greenest City?’
Eventbrite
August 09, 2017
Eventbrite - Mett? presents Leadership Breakfast: How can Hong Kong become Asia’s greenest city?

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Tags: Innovation

‘Dare to Fail’, Metta, Hong Kong
Flux Compass
June 29, 2017
On a Friday evening at Metta - Hong Kong's community for entrepreneurs - Anna joined a fireside chat exploring what it means to embrace failure, highlighting the importance of culture to innovation.

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Tags: Innovation, Culture

Sensemaking / Blockchain: the ultimate answer to post-truth?
Futures Centre
April 28, 2017
“How much time does each of us spend thinking deeply about the difference rapid technological change will make to lives on the ground?”, asked KK Han, one of the founders of EcoHub, at our inaugural Asia-Pacific Futures Salon at the ArtScience Museum in Singapore.

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Tags: Blockchain, Emerging Technology

Moderator, ‘Living Smart’ Panel at Future Everything, Singapore, 2015
Living Smart
October 17, 2015
What it means to be at the human end of technology? What does it mean to live within a Smart Nation, in a society that is always ‘on’? This session will examine how technology has impacted life at a profound level, often interacting with us in fascinating and unanticipated ways. What is smart and how did we get here, and what can we expect to see next?

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Tags: Innovation, Sustainability

2 Podcasts
Futures Journalism: A Manifesto by Anna Simpson
PlayerFM
June 01, 2015
In this episode, Anna Simpson, a Singapore-based author and curator of Forum for the Future’s Futures Centre, examines the current crisis in the prac­tice and institutions of journalism and news reporting, and argues the need for journalism to evolve by learning from the practices of futures and foresight research.

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Tags: Emerging Technology

The Future of Business
Fast Future
April 29, 2015
The Future of Business explores how the commercial world is being transformed by the complex interplay between social, economic and political shifts, disruptive ideas, bold strategies and breakthroughs in science and technology.

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Tags: Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Innovation, Culture

2 Speaking Engagements
PRIMING YOUR WORK CULTURE FOR INNOVATION
Green Is The New Black
April 20, 2018
The Innovation-Friendly Organisation, Green Is the New Black, Hong Kong, 2018

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Tags: Innovation, Management, Culture

‘The Brand Strategist’s Guide to Desire’
issuu
September 08, 2014
Ilkley Literature Festival Programme 2014

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Tags: Sustainability

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Anna Simpson