About us

The Center for Strategic Thinking and Foresight (CSTF) is an Academic Research Center associated with the Faculty of Business Administration at the Universidad Externado de Colombia, who was born in 2000 guided by the principles of the French Strategic Foresight (La Prospective of the French school) and the forecasting.

The purpose of CSTF is to contribute to the development of the competitiveness of Colombian and Latin American territories and organizations: «illuminating the present with the light of the future;» and be aware that we are facing a time of accelerated changes, not only economic and social but also technological. CSTF recognizes that the world stopped being «analog» to become «digital,» and from there is migrating to being «intelligent» by leaps and bounds.

Just three years ago, on January 20, 2016, the «World Economic Forum» highlighted the implications that «artificial intelligence,» robotics and synthetic biology will bring to the planet and the consequences that these disciplines, called the «Fourth Industrial Revolution,» will cause countries, people and the economy of the world.

CSTF is responding as a laboratory to think about the future. This from the knowledge and generation of the future rather than engaging in the present. Hence the name: «science of hope» with which the prospective has also been called instills optimism, recognizing the possible alternatives we will have by thinking big and looking ahead.

For these reasons, the Center for Strategic Thinking and Foresight seeks to fulfill the task of stimulating the appropriation and practice of foresight as a discipline that generates positive changes, greater competitiveness, and working to identify the challenges of the Organizations. Doing that exercises the three functions of higher education: teaching, research, and extension.