Skip to main content

Andrew Hines

Fulbright Specialist Award Project, Bureau at Higher Education Commission (OHEC) for the Thailand Ministry of Education in Bangkok, Thailand

Andy Hines is the current Program Coordinator at the University of Houston's Graduate Program in Foresight. Since 2005, he has been a Lecturer for the Foresight program, bringing together the experience he earned as an organizational, consulting, and academic futurist. He also speaks, workshops, and consults through his firm Hinesight, which he established in 2010.

Hines enjoyed earlier careers as a consulting and organizational futurist. From 1990 to 1996 he was a partner with Coates & Jarratt, Inc., a think tank and consulting firm that specialized in the study of the future. After that from 1997 to 1999, he ran the North American Trends Program and then established and ran the Global Trends Program for the Kellogg Company. From 2000 to 2005 he was the Futurist & Senior Ideation Leader at Dow Chemical with a mission of using futures tools and knowledge to turn ideas into new business opportunities. Hines then became the Director and Managing Director of Social Technologies (now Innovaro) between 2006 and 2010.

Hines is motivated by a professional hunger to make foresight practical and useful, and he believes that foresight can help deliver the insight that is so needed in today's organizations and the world. His goal, he says, is to infect as many change agents as possible with this message. Integrating foresight into organizations and exploring the role of shifting personal values in understanding the consumer landscape are among Dr. Hines' specialties. Hines delivers keynote addresses for his clients in business, government, and not-for-profit organizations on a wide range of futures-related topics. Using a variety of foresight methods such as scenario planning, he also designs and facilitates workshops for the purposes of strategy development, new business and product development, and understanding changing customer preferences. In his twenty-plus years as a futurist, Hines has served hundreds of clients including the MD Anderson Cancer Center, Nissan, the Lumina Foundation, Clorox, California Officer Standards and Training (POST), Library of Congress, CableLabs, and The Hershey Company.

In 2001, he co-founded and served as first Board Chair of the Association of Professional Futurists, has authored one book -- ConsumerShift: How Changing Values Are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape (No Limit Publishing, 2011) -- and has co-authored four others - Teaching about the Future (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight (Social Technologies, 2007), 2025: Science and Technology Reshapes US and Global Society (Oak Hill, 1997) and Managing Your Future as an Association (ASAE, 1994).

He has also authored several hundred articles, speeches, and workshops, including the 2003 Emerald Literati Awards' Outstanding Paper accolade for best article published in Foresight for "An Audit for Organizational Futurists" and the 2008 award for "Scenarios: The State of the Art." Between 1996 and 1997, Hines was also a contributing editor to The Futurist, Associate Editor of Foresight - The journal of future studies, strategic thinking and policy, and is currently on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Futures Studies.

Dr. Hines has appeared on several radio and television programs, including KRIV-26 News to discuss the future of libraries, CNN to examine the future, Houston PBS's Latina Voices on the future of jobs, and the CBS "Early Show," to talk about a study MTV commissioned his team at Social Technologies to investigate: "The Future of the Youth Happiness." His has been quoted and interview in numerous publications including The New York Times, Newsweek, The Guardian, The Futurist, Financial Times and the Houston Chronicle.

Hines received his undergraduate degrees in history and political science from Salem State College in 1987, obtained his Master's degree in futures studies from UHCL in 1990, and completed his Ph.D. in foresight from Leeds Metropolitan University in 2012.