The Hames Group was founded in 1995 when Richard Hames, together with a small group of friends who were equally disenchanted and frustrated by current societal paradigms, imagined a new kind of collaborative commons focused on the design of better, more informed, global futures. This business idea gave rise to three practice domains:

• RESEARCH - Researching alternative futures through numerous, diverse, higher-level lenses and worldviews

• ADVICE - Advising nation states, multinational corporations, governments and international NGOs on current patterns and future memories so that they are better prepared to respond and adapt to the unexpected and unintended consequences of change

• DESIGN - Designing whole-of-system methodologies for innovating and conserving social and financial value in dynamically complex environments.

Today, The Hames Group comprises the research capability of the Asian Foresight Institute. The Hames Group is retained by the State of the World Forum as the lead strategic architect for the decade-long Global Transition Initiative designed to green the global economy by 2020. In that capacity we also direct the future scenarios work conducted by the Forum.

Outside of that our influence reaches far and deep. Using purposefully designed collaborative inquiry methods (such as transformational narrative) we monitor global issues and events, constantly searching for alternative meanings from mainstream orthodoxies by examining the emergent structural forces underpinning change.

We then try to make sense of what is really going on through a deep awareness of the internal realities (psychological and cultural factors) within each context.

As a consequence of this integral approach, our worldviews are genuinely world views - incorporating diverse opinions and experiences. This in turn helps to transcend current thinking and to impart greater levels of systemic consciousness in our client communities, corporations, educational and government institutions.