Resources Industry Futures Lab

Why It Matters

The industry is facing a convergence of urgent pressures: the need for decarbonization, growing regulatory complexity, rapid digital advancement, and shifting workforce expectations. The Lab is designed to address five key priorities:

• Futures Thinking & Strategic Foresight: Embedding long-term planning and anticipation of global shifts into industry strategy.
• Decarbonization & Energy Transition: Accelerating the shift to sustainable energy sources and low-carbon operations.
• Data & Digital Transformation: Driving alignment on AI, digital twins, and data standards to enable smarter operations.
• Regulatory & Legacy System Challenges: Facilitating collaborative pathways through entrenched, risk-averse systems and compliance hurdles.
• Collaborative Innovation: Creating a trusted, neutral space for shared insights, cross-sector learning, and strategic alignment.

What the Lab Will Do

The Futures Lab will pilot new ways of thinking and working—by exploring strategic questions, co-creating tools and frameworks, testing forward-looking approaches in real-world contexts, and helping the industry understand, test, and adopt emerging innovations. Through partnerships with technology providers, academic institutions, and other industries, the Lab will surface and assess future-enabling tools and strategies. It will host collaborative pilots, develop frameworks, and provide a platform for exploring “what’s next” in a low-risk, high-value environment. Results will be shared across the sector to accelerate learning and adoption.

A Proven Concept Across Industries

Futures labs have transformed innovation strategies in aerospace, energy, healthcare, and beyond—reducing adoption risks, aligning stakeholders, and building capacity for long-term resilience. The resources industry now has a unique opportunity to apply this proven model to its own transformation.