Markku Wilenius is a professor of future studies at the Turku School of Economics at the University of Turku. In addition, he was nominated in 2016 as a UNESCO Chair in Learning Society and Futures of Education, and his chair was in September 2020 renewed as chair of Transformational Learning and Planetary Futures. He served 2020-20201 as a Dean of Dubai Future Academy. He has worked and published for over 25 years with future studies. He has led over 50 research projects on a wide range of future-related topics, from technologies to climate change and cultural competencies. He built a pioneering international master’s program for future studies at the Turku School of Economics with his colleagues. He has served for several years as a top executive in Allianz, the world’s largest private insurance company, leading their Trends & Strategy unit, among other things.
Wilenius has worked in all areas related to learning, innovation and sustainable development. Over the last fifteen years, he has worked with various governments, businesses, public sector organisations and NGOs for making the change towards more intelligent strategy and action. His work in recent years has spanned globally, including multiple European countries (especially Germany and the UK), the USA (California, Silicon Valley, UCLAs), Australia (Technical University of Sydney), the Middle East and also some other interesting and rising countries like Cuba. He lived in Dubai from 2020-2021 for his work for Dubai Future Foundation. Since then, he has moved back to Finland and works now internationally from there.
He has published books and articles widely and is a renowned speaker. His most recent book was born out of his interest in long-term socio-economic waves and is called “Patterns of the Future. Understanding the Next 40 Years of Global Change” (World Scientific, London, 2017). He is a member of the prestigious Club of Rome, committed to investigating global futures.