Aksinya Staar
Strategic Foresight Advisor & Futurist
Who I am
Futurist,
Storyteller
The future is everyone's agenda. Designing it deliberately is rarer than it sounds. I bring a polymathic, multi-disciplinary lens to that design – expanding what institutions believe is possible, and strengthening their capacity to move toward it.
As a Strategic Foresight Advisor and Futurist I work with international organisations, cities, and governments across Europe, Asia and the USA
What I do
Future Design
Future Narratives
My material is narrative – the stories institutions tell about what is coming, and the far older stories they have forgotten they once told.
My work examines where technological change, institutional design, and social imagination meet, across AI, education, governance, urban futures, and democratic capacity.
Regular speaker and lecturer at international conferences, policy forums, and academic institutions.
How I work
Hindsight -> Insight -> Foresight
Polymathy is the method: hindsight into insight into foresight. Questions travel through the past and across disciplines before turning toward what may come.
The methods are strategy simulations, future storytelling, and future risk intelligence, carried by two decades across talent, learning systems, and the ethics of emerging technologies.
Through research, writing, advisory practice, and public speaking, I expand what institutions believe is possible and strengthen their capacity to move toward it.
What I bring
Multidimentional, Polymathic Lens
My formation spans linguistics, pedagogy, psychology, philosophy, futures studies, world and art history, Asian studies and extensive work across talent, education, and the ethics of emerging technologies.
My books, Why Polymaths? and Future of Work: From Industrial to Polymath Mindset, and the forthcoming Learners: Forgotten History and Untold Futures of Education, provide the research foundation for this work.
Future Storytelling for Politics
Working with governmental and non-governmental organisations and political leaders to map emerging technological, economic, and social change, and to translate that foresight into a vision that inspires voters.
Strategy Design &
Futures Simulations
Moving organizations beyond linear problem-solving through strategic world-design simulations: immersive futures environments in which leaders do not discuss complexity from a distance, but govern under it firsthand.
Foresight Capability Building
Building the internal foresight capacity that institutions need to keep imagining and shaping the future long after any single engagement ends – deployable at citywide, national, and transnational scales (FutureSense Programm, masterminds, workshops).
Board & Policy Advisory
Working with institutions to articulate the stories they will need to tell to citizens, partners, and themselves about who they are becoming and what futures they are choosing to build.
Signature Programmes Teaser
futures design, in practice
Planet-City 2060
A strategy game and complexity-design workshop in which participants govern the future of a mega-city in 2060 will bring, and feel the consequences of design choices made decades in advance.
FutureSense
Institutional foresight programmes designed for Europe, India, and Hong Kong, building the muscle organisations need to keep designing their own futures, long after any single engagement ends.
Nation Storytelling
No civilization sustains itself on infrastructure and governance alone – it needs an account of itself that its people, and its neighbours, can recognise and believe. I help create new powerful stories based on scientific foresight methodology.
BOOKS
My foresight method began in research. Why Polymaths? traces, across history and across the sciences of mind, why the institutions of the industrial age systematically underestimated the value of cross-disciplinary capability – and why that underestimation is now a strategic liability. Future of Work: From Industrial to Polymath Mindset extends the argument into the future economy. Together, they are the intellectual scaffolding for every scenario, simulation, and nation narrative I design.
Why Polymaths? How Multi-Specialists Revolutionize The Way We Learn, Work and Live
Movers and shakers have always shaped our world — and many of them were polymaths. Yet today, we praise their genius while ignoring the versatility that powered their breakthroughs.
Since the industrial age, specialization has ruled. Diverse talents are seen as unfocused, and polymaths often hide their range to fit narrow job roles. But in a complex world, we need those who connect dots across fields.
This book explores polymathy through:
History – across cultures and time
Science – mind, genes, and brain
Modern Life – education, careers, and real stories.
Discover the dazzling beauty of polymathy spread across 450 pages.
"It’s a panoramic view of what we currently know about polymathy, plus a whole bunch of new ideas."
Jan Schlösser, PhD
Future of Work: From Industrial to Polymath Mindset
This 287-page book dives into how AI is reshaping the way we work — and why the era of hyperspecialization may be coming to an end.
To thrive in this shift, we need a different mindset. A polymathic one. By blending knowledge across fields, we unlock humanity’s greatest strength: versatility. It’s this versatility that fuels innovation and helps us face complex challenges head-on.
Packed with practical insights, this book is a must-read for leaders and professionals in People & Culture.
It offers fresh strategies for spotting, supporting, and growing polymathic talent — essential for navigating today’s fast-changing world of work.
"A genuine eye-opener. Realising we're still shackled to an industrial-age mindset, despite the clear urgency for change, is quite staggering. The author builds on her earlier work, making polymathy both accessible and highly relevant."
Paul Taylor, People & Culture Director
The lens I bring
The knowledge domains behind the foresight practice
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Futures & Foresight
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Talent (Talent Acquisition, Management & Development)
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Psychology
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Learning (Pedagogy, Androgogy, Alternative Education)
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Linguistics (incl.Languages: German, English, Russian, Italian, French, Sanskrit),
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History (Global History, Art History),
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Asian Studies (India, China, Islamic Countries),
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General Complexity
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Anthropology
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Philosophy (incl. Philosophy of Technology and AI Ethics),
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Online Marketing/Communication
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Web 3 Data Space
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Participative Governance
"If you want a strategic thinking partner who sees around corners and cares as much about why as how and what if… let’s talk."
For inquiries, opportunities, or thoughtful conversations — reach out: