Henry Coutinho-Mason

Henry Coutinho-Mason has spent much of his career asking one question: what will people want next?

But he did not start out as a futurist. A qualified accountant working in financial services, he left that world in 2010 to co-found 3Space after seeing how difficult it was for charities and community organisations to access empty commercial property. The idea was practical: take buildings sitting unused and put them back to work for public good.

That same year, he joined TrendWatching.

Over the following decade, Coutinho-Mason became its Managing Director, helping turn emerging consumer behaviour into practical questions for businesses around the world. Its research and methodology were used by more than 100,000 professionals, and his first book, Trend-Driven Innovation, set out a framework for moving beyond spotting trends to acting on the expectations they create.

That distinction – between seeing change and doing something with it – has stayed central to his work.

His second book, The Future Normal, co-written with Rohit Bhargava, explored 30 ideas already beginning to reshape how we live and work. Their next, Future Words, turns to language itself, inventing 100 terms for behaviours and tensions emerging faster than our vocabulary can keep up. It is due to be published in October 2026.

He has also continued experimenting with how people encounter future thinking. VisuAIse Futures turns the traditional keynote into a collaborative AI-powered experience, asking an audience to generate and interrogate possible futures together rather than simply listen to someone describe them.

Coutinho-Mason has made a career out of looking ahead.

The more distinctive part is his insistence that foresight should lead somewhere.