LFL – Luiss Future Lab

Home center: Research Center on Technology and Market Behavior X.ITE - Insight Technology Enhanced

The Future Lab aims to be a meeting place for conducting research on projects related to possible futures. For each research project, working groups gather facts and documents, formulate research questions, conduct interviews and workshops, and map out the pathways that lead to identifying actionable decisions. Expert heuristics is the primary research method in futures studies, with formats ranging from scenario construction to backcasting, and in some cases, the Delphi method and weak signal analysis. Topics are selected based on interdisciplinary projects that are of interest to stakeholders as well as students. The experts to be involved are selected primarily from among Luiss faculty, but the network can naturally expand to include external contributors. The method is selected in collaboration with stakeholders who support a research topic with their personnel and financial resources. The research becomes part of the students’ educational experience, both intellectually and in terms of networking. The fields of study and research are diverse, encompassing everything from businesses to cities, technologies to the arts, and individuals to organizations.

LFL projects yield various types of outputs and outcomes, ranging from papers to exhibitions, conferences, and the development of actual project drafts, often in conjunction with resources provided by stakeholders. All the research on futures initiated, collected, or simply reported by the Luiss Future Lab will be compiled into an Annual Report, which will be presented at an annual conference.