Joseph F. Coates, M.S.

Joseph F. Coates, M.S., Hon D., FWAAS, FAAAS is a world-renowned thinker, writer, and speaker on the future.
 
After leading Coates & Jarratt, Inc. through more than two decades of designing and delivering studies on the future of technology, business, and government, Joe retired from the company he founded to become a consulting futurist.
 
In the course of his pioneering future studies, Joe has consulted with 45 of the Fortune 500 companies and numerous smaller firms, scores of professional, trade, and public interest groups, and with all levels of government.
 
He is the author of more than 300 articles, chapters, papers, and publications and currently writes columns for Technological Forecasting and Social Change and Research and Technology Management, and is on the editorial boards of nine publications. He is coauthor of 2025: Scenarios of U.S. and Global Society Reshaped by Science and Technology, Future Work: Seven Critical Forces Reshaping Work and the Work Force in North America, What Futurists Believe, and Issues Management: How You Can Plan, Organize, and Manage for the Future Issues. He was also on the editorial board of the Encyclopedia of the Future.
 
He authored Science and Technology Looking Out 25 Generations, Management From A to Z: 2057, Teens in Time, Mea Culpa? No., Eighty-Two Assumptions About the Next Twenty-Five Years: Refining Our View, Review and Commentary of The Singularity is Near:When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil, New Ideas: An Increasingly Diverse Workforce Makes Traditional Diversity Programs Passé, Looking Ahead: Anticipating Disaster, or Putting the Fear of God Into Top Management, Looking Ahead: A Visible End to Innovation? I Think Not, and Looking Ahead: 14 Technology Trends. Read the full list of his publications!
 
Joe presents to about 50 groups per year all over the world. His speeches on the future appear in Vital Speeches of the Day and Representative American Speeches. For two years Joe created and hosted a program on the future for National Public Radio, and, as an active member of the World Future Society, he plans, organizes, and takes part in sessions at Society meetings.
 
Joe was an adjunct professor at the George Washington University, where he taught graduate courses on the future and on technology. His career includes work as an analyst for a nonprofit think tank and positions with the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. He holds 19 patents from his first career as an industrial chemist.
 
He is President of the Kanawha Institute for the Study of the Future and was President of the International Association for Impact Assessment and was President of the Association for Science, Technology and Innovation. He is a Member of the Human Resources Planning Society, the Planning Forum, and the United Nations Environmental Program’s Advisory Group on Technology Assessment.
 
Joe earned a B.S. in Chemistry from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1951 and his M.S. degree in Organic Chemistry from Pennsylvania State University in 1953. He received an Honorary Doctorate from Claremont Graduate School in 1985. He is a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
 
Listen to his interview about Packaging Now to 2025. Read his New York Times interview.