Research Scholar, H-Star, Stanford University
Robert Horn is a Research Scholar and Artist at the Human Sciences and Technology Advanced Research Institute (H-STAR) at Stanford University and CEO of MacroVu.com.
Trained as a political scientist, and now a futurist and strategist, Horn has worked extensively with task forces as a synthesizer to create scenarios, strategic plans, and the organizations that can execute them. He has worked with strategic planning on nuclear waste disposal (for the UK’s government agency); climate change and energy security issues (for the UK Foreign Office). He has innovated a new facilitated process that enables multidisciplinary task forces to better deal with social messes (aka wicked problems). He calls this work the “mapping of social messes and mega-messes.”
In many of these engagements, he has created a new form of mural that portrays the strategic context and future scenarios, the current decision-making issues, and the crucial interaction of the private and public sectors. For example, he recently finished such a 4 x 14 foot mural for the World Business Council on Sustainable Development task force – Vision 2050 that describes the requirement for the next 40-years and contains 350 milestones needed for a sustainable world. He is currently working with a task force on a European Commission sponsored project on resource efficiency by 2050.
Horn is one of the pioneers in the exploration and use of visual language (the tight integration of words and visual elements). He says in the subtitle of his book Visual Language, that this phenomenon is becoming a new form of “global communication for the 21st century.” He is a successful entrepreneur. He founded, and for 20 years was CEO of an international consulting company, Information Mapping, Inc. that has trained over 300,000 people in its analytic and communication methodologies.
Horn has taught at Harvard and Columbia universities. His consulting clients have included the Alberta Department of the Environment, Foresight Canada, International Futures Forum (UK), Boeing, AT&T, HP, and other Global 1000 companies. He is a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow.
Contact:
415-775-7377
http://www.stanford.edu/~rhorn