Background of Future Search
The name ‘Future Search’ was derived from its two ancestors — community based ‘Future Conferences’ developed by Ronald Lippitt and Eva Schindler-Rainman’s and organisational based ‘Search Conferences’ developed by Eric Trist and Fred Emery. Both share a common ancestor in Kurt Lewin’s ‘action research’.
The term ‘Future Search Conference’ is also sometimes used to refer to the Future Search conference method, although the term ‘conference’ can be a little misleading as it commonly conjures up images of people seated in theatre style listening to expert presentations - a far cry from what takes place in a Future Search.

