32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
21st Century Update of Future Shock, June 29, 2003
In Inevitable Surprises, veteran futurist and scenario constructor, Peter Schwartz, takes an assignment done for Citicorp in 2001 and turns it into a discussion of seven themes for the future.
Here is the book's structure:
Chapter 1: Inevitable Surprises
Chapter 2: A World Integrated with Elders
Chapter 3: The Great Flood of People
Chapter 4: The Return of the Long Boom
Chapter 5: The Thoroughly New World Order
Chapter 6: A Catalog of Disorder
Chapter 7: Breakthroughs in Science and Technology
Chapter 8: A Cleaner, Deadlier World
Chapter 9: Inevitable Strategies
In chapter 1, he argues that scenarios can predict the future. His most telling example is having helped develop a scenario involving airplanes destroying the World Trade towers for the Hart-Rudman Commission that was reported a few months after President George W. Bush took office in 2000. But no one paid attention. He cites several other examples of denial that have led to corporate disasters from ignoring scenarios he helped construct. If you would like to learn more about scenario construction, I also highly recommend his fine book, The Art of the Long View, which was published in 1991.
What can we expect now? "First, there will be more surprises. Second, we will be able to deal with them. Third, we can anticipate many of them."
Chapter 2 begins by pointing out that the U.S. retirement age began climbing in 2001 and will probably continue to do so. People are living longer, are healthier, and either want to work (as his examples of wealthy, educated people show) or have to work (as his example of the airline attendant in her 70s who cannot afford to retire shows). Even after retirement, these people will be active and be part of society. Strom Thurmond's retiring from the Senate at 100 is described as what could become the norm in the future.
Chapter 3 is more about migration than population growth, which is expected to be pretty much over worldwide in the next 50 years. He focuses on Asians and Hispanics in the U.S., unwelcome Muslims in Europe, and Chinese become mobile around the world.
Chapter 4 describes a return of the old drivers of economic growth: greater productivity; better communications; and greater globalization. He feels that the next 3-4 years might be so-so, but that the good times will be back by late in the decade.
Chapter 5 was written before the war in Iraq began, but it describes the issue of having the U.S. operate unilaterally even when the international community doesn't agree -- becoming a rogue superpower in the eyes of much of the rest of the world. He builds up a theme that nations which are orderly internally and encourage order internationally will do best. Most countries will learn to compete in fostering orderliness, sort of like Singapore.
Chapter 6 describes a world of continuing terrorism, and high costs to offset it. This is not because terrorism really threatens individuals . . . but because the thought of terrorism is intolerable. By changing individual behavior around the world, terrorists are encouraged to continue. He seems establishing honest democracies in all the Middle Eastern countries as the only way around this. He's concerned about the potential of religious groups coming into conflict in other parts of the world.
Chapter 7 is the most intriguing part of the book. He speculates that we could be at the beginning of a new set of fundamental discoveries including new sources of energy, broad scale applications of nanotechnology (molecular devices) controlling biological processes and developing quantum computing, and far-out changes like changing fundamental reality so that science fiction (like teleportation) becomes science fact. If you're not familiar, though, with the background of what he's talking about, you won't get enough here to help you understand it.
Chapter 8 was written before the S.A.R.S. outbreak, but describes a similar scenarios about how new diseases may spread very rapidly and be hard to control. He's very optimistic about ordinary source of pollution being cleaned up, as fossil fuels are replaced by new technologies. In an area where you may not agree, he forecasts a bright future for the growth of atomic energy for power generation.
In Chapter 9, you are given some principles to use in trying to anticipate when to pay attention to concerning these scenarios for a business. These include having "strategic conversations" with colleagues, thinking about "timing," identifying "earning warning indicators," foster your own use of mechanisms that "engender creative destruction," try to avoid denial of the scenarios, think like a "commodity company," be aware of where your judgment is and is not "competent," and focus on learning, good environmental practices and financial infrastructure and support. He reminds readers that there are no "pat" answers or formulas to apply.
For most people, these trends are not new. What's new is his weaving of the trends together into a picture of what could emerge. Necessarily, the pictures are blurry.
The book's main weakness is in the flip and incomplete way that he sometimes introduces ideas. For example, he argues that nuclear reactors are not really dangerous because Israeli air attacks on the reactor in Baghdad failed to destroy the facility. Nowhere is there a description of how to handle the nuclear waste, especially the waste that can be turned into terrorist weapons. As a result, I'd encourage you to take this as "food for thought" rather than being "carved in stone" as inevitable.
After you finish, think about some trend that he did not mention that will be important to your life or your business and think about what will probably happen. My favorite example is the rapid growth in the use of antidepressant medications in the U.S. How will that affect our health, wealth and happiness? What will come next? You probably can think of a trend that has more meaning to you, such as the growth in regular exercise.
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Alternatives to denial & defensiveness before massive change, October 22, 2003
Since the future isn't what it used to be and only seems to get stranger by the day, Peter Schwartz's latest book should be a welcome guide to the "inevitable surprises" ahead. Schwartz isn't just any futurist; he's a kingpin at the Global Business Network and frequently consults to governments and large corporations. Schwartz argues that many of the big surprises ahead can be foreseen if we use scenario thinking to closely examining existing signs. With this point as well as in some details - such as the impact of shrinking populations - Schwartz is in accord with Peter Drucker. This book lays out the dramatic transformation and volatility we face over the next quarter century. The book's scope is wide enough that everyone is likely to find themselves startled and stimulated.
In case you read Schwartz's previous work and wonder whether he still believes in "The Long Boom", the answer is an undeniable and unashamed *yes!* Productivity and accelerating technological advances will return the economy to a long-term path of strong growth. This doesn't mean that Schwartz paints a pastel portrait of the future. We can expect a cleaner environment and opportunities in abundance, but must also anticipate massive migrations of people, declining populations in large parts of the Western world, a confusing and unruly international situation, global climate crises, plagues, and possibly an asteroid strike. Study this book, challenge Schwartz's thinking, and prepare yourself and your business for a wild ride ahead.
Schwartz believes that his forecasts and scenarios will stand up to the test of future history better than those of most prognosticators. The reason is that, in the grand tradition of "predetermined elements" in scenario planning, he is drawing out the implications of events that have already happened. Many of the big surprises are, in fact, inevitable. So why are we continually caught off guard? Schwartz pins the blame on our tendency as decision makers to react to the drivers of change either with denial or defensiveness. Neither kind of response is effective and both are "fundamentally irresponsible" as Schwartz puts it. In this book, he aims to help us understand the kinds of inevitable surprises lying ahead, and to suggest steps that organizations can take to thrive.
In the author's view, humanity faces greater challenges now than ever before. At the same time we have greater capabilities than ever before. Our greatest challenge is "to master our own accelerating power, without being swept away by it." Along with a few other well-grounded futurists, Schwartz has laid down a challenge along with weapons for tackling the future. Inevitably, most readers will read this book and find it both informative and engaging but few will incorporate the resulting ideas for action into their plans. When it comes to these large-scale shifts, *doing* has always been disadvantaged compared to *denial* and *defensiveness*. Being proven wrong about this would be a surprise but, alas, not an inevitable surprise.
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