Future Visions for the Professions
An invitation to universities to lead the conversations that will shape the professions of tomorrow.
Who is helping to build the future of the professions?
Artificial intelligence, the transition toward more sustainable economies, demographic shifts, and new ways of organizing work are redefining what it means to be an engineer, lawyer, communicator, doctor, or teacher. Universities can not only prepare their students but also be spaces where that future is thought about, debated, and begins to be built collectively.
At Purpose & Ideas, we believe that professions evolve when the communities that make them up develop new conversations, capabilities, and forms of collaboration. That is why we propose Future Visions for the Professions: an initiative that brings together universities, students, employers, and other key actors to imagine together the future of a professional field and strengthen the ecosystem that makes it possible.
An intergenerational conversation
Each edition convenes final-year students, faculty, authorities, companies, public agencies, civil society, and professional associations. We do not seek to predict the future, but rather to develop the collective capacity to understand it, influence it, and act from the present.
Students contribute new perspectives and aspirations. Employers share the transformations they are already experiencing and the capabilities they are beginning to value. The university integrates both perspectives to strengthen its educational mission. When these voices dialogue on equal footing, a collective intelligence is activated that no single actor produces on its own.
How we do it
We facilitate the encounter using the Three Horizons framework, a recognized methodology for systemic transformation processes. It organizes the conversation around three questions: what in the present is worth strengthening? What emerging innovations anticipate new ways of practicing the profession? And what future do we want to build, and what actions can we start now? We work from three principles: attention to understand the changes, intention to build a shared vision, and agency to identify concrete actions we can begin today.
Format
Half-day (4 hours), in person, for 30 to 50 people. We deliver an executive summary, a map of trends, capabilities, and opportunities for collaboration, and recommendations for connecting the university with its ecosystem.
A collaboration model
The university convenes students, faculty, and authorities, facilitates the space, and leads the initiative institutionally. Purpose & Ideas designs the process, facilitates the experience, documents the learnings, and supports the university in approaching potential sponsors. Companies and employing organizations participate as strategic partners and sponsor the facilitation and logistical costs.
What does the university gain?
It leads a strategic conversation about the future of its discipline, positions itself as a reference in professional education, deepens its relationship with companies and organizations in the field, obtains input to update its curricular offering, and offers its students a unique experience with potential employers.
Its greatest potential emerges when several encounters are connected: we aspire to facilitate them at different universities and in different fields to build a knowledge base on how professions evolve. Universities that participate from the first editions will be part of a pioneering community.
If you want to explore how your university can lead this conversation, let's talk.
