Garland E. Future, Inc. How Businesses Can Anticipate and Profit from What’s Next

New York: American Management Association, 2007. — 272 p.A professor friend, as part of a study comparing American and Japanese innovation practices, was interviewing the CEO of a top ten firm in Tokyo. Having taken so much of the man’s time, he apologized. The CEO replied that there was nothing more important in his work than talking to people about the long-term future. Compare him to the typical Fortune 500 CEO, who is caught up in micromanagement despite claims to the contrary. Find the American CEO who can talk knowingly about the longterm future for two hours without notes; flip charts; or that cursed sham substitute for knowledge, the tedious PowerPoint presentation. This kind of CEO behavior influences those in his or her succession plan, creating an upper echelon immune to concepts and forecasts beyond the product line and the next few years. How can we overcome the systemic indifference to the mid and long-term future? Garland’s book can be a giant step in that direction. His experience as a consulting futurist and as a business intelligence specialist serving many kinds of enterprises gives him the qualifications to lay out the reliable description presented in this book about how to study the future. Garland’s snappy style and illustrations of how the process works may lure even the mossiest of mossbacks to give it a try. Garland’s approach can accomplish three things. First, it can help people usefully explore the future to influence organizational decision making. Second, it may induce executives to continually think about the future and make it central to planning. Third, it will make people wiser sponsors, buyers, and users of future studies and their claims.Foreword.Today’s Chaos; Tomorrow’s Opportunity.
Tools and Techniques.
Futurism: The Antidote to Chaos.
Systems Thinking: A Superhighway to Change.
Analyzing Trends: Real Change vs. Media Hype.
Into the Future: Making Judgments; Evaluating Forecasts.
Strategic Implications: What the Future Means to You.
Scenario Generation: Drawing a Picture of the Future.
Communicating the Future—Even to the Skeptical.
Drivers of the Future.
Aging: Preparing for a New Grey World.
Information Technology: Falling in Price, Increasing in Power.
Health Care: New Gadgets vs. Following Doctors’ Orders.
Biotechnology: Scratching the Surface of the Secrets of Life.
Energy: Getting More out of Less.
Nanotechnologies: Smaller Is Better.
Media and Communications: Six Billion Channels for Six Billion People.
Ecology and Sustainability: Growth Can Be Good.
Where Do We Go from Here?
Notes.