Since 1996 Daniel Erasmus, as a leading futurist and thinker, has been conducting scenario planning processes on technology, governance, education and the environment for governmental, foundation, and corporate clients. Daniel is a founder and director of the Digital Thinking Network (DTN), a consulting firm that provides scenario thinking and process transformation as well as expert systems that bring real-time analysis of media and public discourse to forward-looking organizations. With an international staff, Daniel has worked with clients that include Royal Dutch Shell, Schlumberger, Sanoma, Telenor, Vodafone, KONE, Nokia, Rabobank, the city Rotterdam, and the Dutch Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Economic Affairs, and Spatial Planning, etc.
Client acquisitions based on DTN scenarios and recommendations have facilitated € 400 million in direct profits in 3 years (2001-4). DTN Scenarios and NEWSCONSOLE analytics have anticipated the 2014 Oil Price Collapse- leading to mergers in the Oil Field Service sector using our Early Learning System. Additionally The DTN anticipated the global financial crisis (in early 2006) for a multi-national bank, allowing it to prepare for the financial crisis two years before it happened. The recent Chinese Economic Slowdown, New Breakthrough technologies in energy; etc. have been anticipated by The DTN (scenario thinking) and NEWSCONSOLE (big data)
Over the last 20 years he has facilitated more than a 100 scenario sets for the future of the information society on 4 continents, conducted more than 1000 high level multi hour video interviews with global thought leaders from inventors of the Internet Vint Cerf & Bob Kahn; entrepreneurial pioneer of mobile payments Takeshi Natsuno or founder of Rakuten Shinnosuke Honjo ; to Nobel Laureates George Akerlof and James Mirrlees; to author of Limits to Growth Jorgen Randers; climate change discover scientist Jim Hansen; to CEO of SWIFT Gotfriedd Leibrand, CEO of TCS Natarajan Chandrasekaran; to one of the sushi masters of the Emperor of Japan Eiji Sato-Oyakata and HRH Price Carlos de Bourbon de Parne, etc.
Daniel pioneered the use of scenarios to facilitate deep dialogue about the changing information society and its impact on our organisations, our work, and our societies. His initial ideas appeared in the 1999 Financial Times Mastering Information Technology series under the title, A common language for strategy. Since 1996 Daniel has facilitated more than one hundred scenarios on these issues culminating in the three year project and conference series Ci’Num: The future of digital civilisation in 2030+.
The DTN’s public sector transformations include the Economic Development Board of Rotterdam’s creation of an International Advisory Board and the groundbreaking initiative to half Rotterdam’s CO2 emissions by 2025 and to transform Rotterdam into Europe’s leading intercultural city; a 2020 Vision and transformation for the ministry of Foreign Affairs, etc.
