Today the term futurist applies to visionary leaders, innovators, thinkers, writers, consultants, presenters and others who "look to the future" and just as frequently to those who "provide analysis of the future" via such methods as visioning, intuition, analogy, argument, logic, planning, policy analysis, cultural criticism, strategy development, marketing, roadmapping, goalsetting, forecasting, modeling, statistics, trend analysis, operations research, investment, surveys, horizon scanning, scenario development, prediction, prediction analysis, prediction market development, risk analysis and management, and other future-oriented activities.
Anyone who has ever wondered about tomorrow or planned for the next week is a futurist at some level. Futurists need no formal education, yet the best futurists strive to be both transdisciplinary scholars and systems thinkers. See Foresight and Futures Studies - A Brief History (below) for details.