The Futurity Archetypes were developed by Dr. Cynthia Selin as an experimental tool to help individuals and teams better understand their differing approaches to the future. After decades of practical experience helping organizations reimagine what’s ahead, it became clear that our view of the future is never objective—it’s shaped by deep patterns in how we think, feel, and make decisions.

The goal is simple: to help people understand themselves and each other better. In a world moving fast—filled with volatility, complexity, and deep uncertainty—collaboration across difference is a critical capacity. Futurity Archetypes offer a way to get into more valuable, more strategic conversations, faster.

The Futurity Archetypes are grounded in research on how we relate—both individually and collectively—to time; how cognitive biases influence decisions under uncertainty; and how different postures toward risk shape action. They also emerge from a deep curiosity about how people imagine the future—and how those imaginations both expand and constrain what we see as possible, and how we make sense of our own agency. Years of working with teams in foresight and scenario planning have revealed how worldviews, personality types, values orientations, and disciplinary lenses shape the way we engage with change.

Rather than offering fixed categories, Futurity Archetypes illuminate the varied epistemologies (ways of knowing) and ontologies (assumptions about what the future is) that inform our thinking. Inspired by the Enneagram but reoriented through a futures lens, they offer a way to explore how we each navigate uncertainty, transformation, and time itself.

The Enneagram offers a widely recognized and well-used framework for understanding core motivations and patterns of perception. Its popularity—and the creative, psychological, and even spiritual exploration it has inspired—makes it a compelling scaffolding for examining how people engage with the future. By mapping familiar inner dynamics onto future-oriented behavior, the Futurity Archetypes connect personality insight with strategic imagination.