New designs for sustainability governance focus on creating institutional mechanisms to embed long-term thinking, foster integrative approaches across sectors and levels, and utilize new tools like digital twins and goal-based frameworks.

Key innovations include independent future generations commissioners, cross-functional corporate committees, and goal-based private governance that measures progress against self-defined targets, moving beyond simple regulatory compliance. These approaches emphasize complexity, participation, and adaptability to address systemic challenges and guide societies toward sustainable outcomes.

Source: Gemini AI Overview 8/26/25

Designing for new forms of governance for well-being involves shifting from an economic model focused solely on GDP growth to one that prioritizes human and ecological health. This emerging field integrates diverse approaches, such as participatory democracy, adaptive governance, and a “well-being economy,” to create systems that are more equitable, resilient, and responsive to the public good. 

Source: Gemini AI Overview

Designing governance for advancing knowledge requires moving beyond traditional hierarchical and centralized models to embrace collaborative, transparent, and adaptive approaches. New models are necessary to manage increasingly complex, interdisciplinary research, open science mandates, and the rising importance of data and knowledge commons. 

Source: Gemini AI Overview

Future technologies, from advanced AI to biotech and quantum computing, require new forms of governance that are adaptive, inclusive, and proactively designed for societal benefit. Traditional, slow-moving regulatory models are insufficient for addressing the speed, scale, and complexity of today’s innovations. Designing governance for these technologies involves a shift toward dynamic, multi-stakeholder frameworks that embed values throughout the innovation lifecycle.

Source: Gemini AI Overview

Designing for new forms of governance for collective benefit involves creating structures that foster collaboration, decentralize power, and center community needs rather than relying on traditional top-down, centralized approaches. These frameworks draw on principles from participatory democracy, the commons, and digital technologies to build transparent, equitable, and resilient systems.

Source: Gemini AI Overview

Designing new forms of governance for global peace requires a shift from state-centric models to more inclusive, polycentric, and networked approaches. The aim is to create resilient and legitimate systems that address the root causes of conflict—including inequality, corruption, and climate change—by involving a broader range of actors, from local communities to international institutions.

Source: Gemini AI Overview

James Allen Dator is Professor Emeritus and former Director of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies, Department of Political Science, and Adjunct Professor in the College of Architecture, of the University of Hawaii at Manoa; Co-Chair and Core Lecturer, Space Humanities, International Space University, Strasbourg, France; Adjunct Professor, Graduate School of Futures Strategy, Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology; Daejeon, Korea, and former President, World Futures Studies Federation.  He is editor-in-chief of the World Futures Review. He also taught at Rikkyo University (Tokyo, for six years), the University of Maryland, Virginia Tech, the University of Toronto, and the InterUniversity Consortium for Postgraduate Studies in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia.

He received a BA in Ancient and Medieval History and Philosophy from Stetson University, an MA in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD in Political Science from The American University. He did post-graduate work at Virginia Theological Seminary (Ethics and Church History), Yale University (Japanese Language), The University of Michigan (Linguistics and Quantitative Methods), Southern Methodist University (Mathematical Applications in Political Science).

Clement (Clem) Bezold, Ph.D., co-founded the Institute for Alternative Futures (IAF) in 1977 with Alvin Toffler and James Dator to encourage “anticipatory democracy” and foresight. During his four decades of leadership at IAF, he worked for international organizations and national governments, the largest corporations and non-profit
organizations, and communities on six continents.

In the process IAF developed the unique “Aspirational Futures” approach to foresight that stresses vision development and scenarios that explore expectable, challenging, and visionary space.

Source: Website

Designing for new forms of governance involves creating frameworks and systems that address the complexity, speed, and decentralization of the modern world. These emerging models move beyond traditional top-down bureaucracies, prioritizing approaches like network collaboration, participatory design, and leveraging new technologies, such as blockchain and AI.

Source: Gemini AI Overview