Professional biography
Hardin Tibbs is a UK-based futurist and business strategist with extensive experience of scenario-based strategic thinking. He is a futures researcher, strategic analyst, process facilitator, and presenter, with a background in product development and visual communications. In addition to his strategy work, Hardin has made significant contributions on issues involving technology and environment.
Hardin is CEO of Synthesys Strategic Consulting Ltd. in London, and he is an Associate Fellow at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University, where he helped to develop the executive education Scenarios Programme.
His work is focused on helping organizations move forward with confidence in an environment marked by accelerating social and technological change, and rising economic and environmental instability. He has worked with major companies, government agencies, and non-profit organizations in the United States, Europe, Australia and Asia. This work has spanned a wide range of industries, government agencies and institutions, including electricity, aviation, cement, insurance, household products, food, biotechnology, urban infrastructure, natural resources, taxation, transport and defence. In addition, he frequently gives presentations on future-related topics.
Hardin returned to the UK in 2001 from Australia, where he established Synthesys Strategic Consulting in 1996. Before moving to Australia, Hardin was a senior consultant with Global Business Network (GBN) in California, playing a role in its development in the 1990s as an influential scenario consultancy. Before this Hardin was a consultant at the Cambridge, Massachusetts headquarters of Arthur D. Little, an international management, technology and environmental consulting firm.
Hardin is the author of an influential white paper, Industrial Ecology: An Environmental Agenda for Industry (Arthur D. Little, Inc., 1991, and GBN 1993). This paper helped define industrial ecology, a new approach to industrial sustainability.
Hardin has an MSc in Management and a BA degree in Industrial Design Engineering. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (RSA) in London, UK.
