claim that understanding potential scenarios helps individuals and organizations prepare with flexibility. Many corporations use futurists as part of their risk management strategy, for horizon scanning and emerging issues analysis, and to identify wild cards—low probability, potentially high-impact risks. Understanding a range of possibilities can enhance the recognition of opportunities and threats. Every successful and unsuccessful business engages in futuring to some degree—for example in research and development, innovation and market research, anticipating competitor behavior and so on. Role-playing is another way that possible futures can be collectively explored, as in the research larp Civilisation's Waiting Room. Weak signals, the future sign and wild cards In futures research "weak signals" may be understood as advanced, noisy and socially situated indicators of change in trends and systems that constitute raw informational material for enabling anticipatory action. There is some confusion about the definition of weak signal by various researchers and consultants. Sometimes it is referred as future oriented information, sometimes more like emerging issues. The confusion has been partly clarified with the concept 'the future sign', by separating signal, issue and interpretation of the future sign. A weak signal can be an early indicator of coming change, and an example might also help clarify the confusion. On May 27, 2012, hundreds of people gathered for a "Take the Flour Back" demonstration at Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, UK, to oppose a publicly funded trial of genetically modified wheat. This was a weak signal for a broader shift in consumer sentiment against genetically modified foods. When Whole Foods mandated the labeling of GMOs in 2013, this non-GMO idea had already become a trend and was about to be a topic of mainstream awareness. "Wild cards" refer to low-probability and high-impact events "that happen quickly" and "have huge sweeping consequences", and materialize too quickly for social systems to effectively respond. Elina Hultunen notes that wild cards are not new, though they have become more prevalent. One reason for this may be the increasingly fast pace of change. Oliver Markley proposed four types of wild cards: Type I Wild Card: low probability, high impact, high credibility Type II Wild Card: high probability, high impact, low credibility Type III Wild Card: high probability, high impact, disputed credibility Type IV Wild Card: high probability, high impact, high credibility He posits that it is important to track the emergence of "Type II Wild Cards" that have a high