'In the purpose economy' (Ranjay Gulati, 2022), business interests are no longer paramount but are part of a whole palette of potentially conflicting interests. According to Heide et al. (2018), strategic communication has been defined as ‘the study of how organizations use communication purposefully to fulfill their overall missions'. The interaction between all stakeholders is central and the mission of one's organization is no longer leading. This requires a different role for the strategic communication profession.

Communication strategists must navigate between all the different stakeholder interests and even be able to represent the interests of stakeholders who themselves have no voice or have not yet been born. Here strategic communication enters the realm of futures research. However already in 2007, Van der Duin & Bouwman stated "Communication studies pay little attention to futures research..." To this day, this seems to be the case in the field of strategic communication in the Netherlands. To act future-conscious (Ahvenharju et al. 2018), it is necessary to gain the capacity for futures literacy (Miller, 2018). Futures literacy gives professional words and techniques to be able to interpret futures and use them in communication practice.