Mind Set!: Reset Your Thinking and See the Future (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When Megatrends was first published nearly a quarter-century ago, Naisbitt was hailed as a cutting-edge futurist. Today, however, he's more like your crotchety grandpa, complaining about how he can't get through the voice-mail system to talk to a real person. Naisbitt's latest book reads like a manuscript that's been stuck in a drawer since 1985, as his insights into the future—corporations are becoming more powerful than nation states, video games are an art form—are embarrassingly behind the times. Although he touts 11 principles to help readers cultivate forward-looking thinking, these turn out to be banal guidelines like "focus on the score of the game" and "don't add unless you subtract." Tangential rants about hysterical environmentalists and free market capitalism as the only way to organize modern society reveal a creeping conservative mindset, but even here Naisbitt is bringing up the rear, touting Friedrich Hayek long after everyone else has moved on to Leo Strauss. In his eighth predictive tract, the author coasts on his reputation. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Naisbitt, prescient "futurist" and best-selling author of Megatrends (1982) and Megatrends 2000 (1990), reveals the process behind his ability to anticipate global trends. Naisbitt broke away from his small-town Mormon roots to become a top executive at IBM and Eastman Kodak and was an assistant to both presidents Kennedy and Johnson before becoming a global philosopher, studying trends by monitoring hundreds of daily local newspapers. In part 1, his 11 mind-sets reveal ways to approach the processing of information without the constraints imposed on us by preconceived ideas and popular culture. Mindset Four, "Understanding how powerful it is not to have to be right," is a prime example of how stubborn thinking, particularly in the fields of politics and medicine, puts huge constraints on the abilities of leaders to solve problems. In part 2, Naisbitt smashes many of the preconceptions we have about globalization and our perception of change. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: HarperBusiness; 1 edition (October 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061136883
• ISBN-13: 978-0061136887
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #277,825 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

80 of 86 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars (Never)Mind Set, October 29, 2006

By	James A. Hatherley (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I really wanted to like this book. It was Naisbitt's "Megatrends", and Peters' "In Search Of Excellence" that had initially turned me on to business/culture books that provoked interest and thought and dialogue, and helped develop personal growth.

There is just so much to learn from someone as distinguished and experienced as John Naisbitt. In fact, Mr. Naisbitt does take his readers on a global tour as attendees of his speeches and meetings. And yet, there is something missing that (at least for me) created a sense of ennui and paragraph skipping. At one point I felt so guilty that I was not giving the book a fair enough shot, I decided to begin anew and retrace the first 76 pages to revive my personal mind set. It still didn't happen for me.

For one thing, the book is a bit confusing. The majority of the book involves a description of 11 "mind sets" on which readers could evaluate past, present and future events. Fair enough. But the eleven mind sets were not especially insightful (e.g., Focus on the score of the game, Resistance to change falls if the benefits are real, Don't add unless you subtract et als.), and (too) often the examples were just too old/dated for too many people. (As a point of reference, I am nearing 60, and I am stunned by the lack of understanding of the historical significance of Viet Nam by bright young people under the age of 30. How, then, can many readers tie in the references to things happening at Harvard in the 50's, or when the author was part of the Kennedy Administration?).

And, then the author tries to connect his eleven mind sets to future trends. This part was pretty sketchy. Frankly, the thought that we are becoming a more visual society than one in which people sit idly by reading the next great novel, or burying themselves in five daily newspapers is hardly a revelation. Nor is the fact that China is ascending in terms of world significance a new idea. Nor too is the prediction that Europe will continue its descent into an irrelevant continent of countries in which a significant percentage of people will be on economy-killing welfare programs, while the rest are so despaired that they do not sufficiently bear children to pay for all the social largesse, all the while hating the American model of capitalism, a revelation of any depth.

Ultimately, I think that Mr. Naisbitt's Mind Set fails here because he has not kept pace with the height of the bar that he personally raised over twenty years ago. He references Megatrends (his 80's masterpiece which sold over 9 million copies) so many times, and with such reverence that I could sense that he was almost devining that you place Mind Set at the same level of distinction by association of his authorship. But, Megatrends was the seminal book of its time - so creative, so stimulating, and so important. Mind Set just isn't close to being in the same league.

Since then, other writers have raised the standard of business/cultural writing with well researched books that certainly challenge and stimulate the readers. They have expanded on the lessons learned from Megatrends, and they do it better than Mind Set.

As you can see from the other books that I have reviewed, I read many books in this genre. It is inevitable to compare/rate one book within the context of all the others that you have read, and, within this context, there are better books to read.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Intellectual Basis for Futurism with Brief Examples, April 9, 2007

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

Before considering if you want to read Mind Set! please realize that this book is quite different from Megatrends, Megatrends Asia, and Megatrends 2000. Those books attempted to describe the key elements of the future world that were still new and unfamiliar at the time: That's the key task of futurists.

Mind Set! by comparison, is a book about the methodology that Professor Naisbitt applies to take the information he gleans from local newspapers to discern the face of tomorrow. Mind Set! concludes with five brief examples of how to uses these methods.

If you are looking for a futurist's view on 2027, this isn't the book for you.

In fact, it's interesting that Professor Naisbitt has written this book at all: Futurist work and interest in it seems to be at quite a low ebb now.

To me, the book's main weakness is that he says less about how to acquire the information he analyzes than in prior books. You have to wonder how long local newspapers accounts will forecast the future: The local newspaper business is dying. To me, it would have been far more interesting to have looked at how the blogosphere can be used to supplement or replace local newspapers for this purpose.

What are the mind sets he uses? Let me paraphrase them so they make more sense:

1. Unimportant everyday details change a lot: the fundamentals of life remain constant. His caution is to avoid getting carried away with seeing temporary trends as permanent changes.

2. The future already exists: you only need to extrapolate from it. This is a hoary point that I assume he got from Peter Drucker.

3. Focus on the score of the game: look at the actual measures. Politicians and newsmakers try to bend our perspectives away from what's happening. The key numbers tell the real story.

4. Understand how powerful it is not to have to be right: massive failures follow those who blindly follow a doctrine (whether fascism or communism).

5. See the future as a picture puzzle: assemble your perspective by seeing how a variety of current trends fit together. Don't rely on any one source to answer the whole question.

6. Don't project ahead of what people can appreciate: otherwise, the new perspective adds no value. Seemingly, an argument in favor of blandness, this is simply the old test of connecting the dots.

7. People will change to gain improvements. It's easy to overestimate resistance, in particular, to new technology that requires us to change our habits.

8. Things that we expect to happen take longer than expected. Remember the forecasts of everyone owning a car-plane in the 1950s? We should be all using them by now.

9. Breakthrough change comes only when someone can exploit an unusual opening, such as happened after the fall of communism. Those who try to solve problems through government action aren't going to be very successful.

10. Don't overload people with perspectives and details.

11. Evaluate technology in terms of the nontechnical constraints.

In each of these sections, Professor Naisbitt provides his aphorism and a few examples. In most cases, I think you'll find the material to be suggestive rather than instructional in nature. If you already have a sense of how to do forecasting, that's okay. If you are totally new, I think you'll be a little at sea.

About 60 percent of the book is then devoted to five future projections where he briefly mentions (one page on each one), the principles he primarily replied on to reach these conclusions. The weakness of this section is that the conclusions are so obvious as to make you feel like futurism is a waste of time. It would have made more sense to pick less obvious areas for demonstrating his conclusions.

1. Videos, attractive designs, use of color, and visual imagery are replacing the written word as a key influence.

2. Industries are organizing globally for supply, distribution, and production rather than by nation.

3. China's economic growth will continue, to be followed by political freedom. The nation will become a global design and branding base, rather than just a source of low-cost production labor.

4. Europe will experience slow growth, burdened with below-replacement birth rates, tough policies against immigration, and high social welfare costs.

5. The importance of new technologies will slow down while the application of technologies developed in recent years will accelerate. Although he doesn't directly say it, biotechnology and nanotechnology are immensely slow methods of invention. He sees nothing else on the horizon that could cause a sudden shift. This is a good point. Generally, technology takes forever to move into mainstream application.

After having read this review, I also think you need to consider what the role of the futurist is: Perhaps they just keep us from jumping on trendy ideas too far. That can be good. Most of the biggest corporate crack-ups I've seen up close came because the leaders believed the world was going to change faster than it did. They raced ahead to serve markets then that still don't exist.

36 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Questioning what really drives the future..., July 17, 2006

By	Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I just had the pleasure of reading an advance copy of John Naisbitt's Mind Set!: Reset Your Thinking and See the Future. There's a lot in this book that I'd like to recommend for those who think everything is "the next big thing"... It's really not.

Contents:
Part 1 - Mindsets: Most Things Remain Constant; The Future Is Embedded In The Present; Focus On The Score Of The Game; Understand How Powerful It Is Not To Have To Be Right; See The Future As A Picture Puzzle; Don't Get So Far Ahead Of The Parade That They Don't Know You Are In It; Resistance To Change Falls For Benefits; Things That We Expect To Happen Always Happen More Slowly; You Don't Get Results By Solving Problems, But By Exploiting Opportunities; Don't Add Unless You Subtract; Consider The Ecology Of Technology
Part 2 - Pictures Of The Future: Culture - A Visual Culture Is Taking Over The World; Economics - From Nation-State To Economic Domains; China - Will The Dragon Devour Us Or Will It Be The Dragon We Ride?; Europe - Metamorphosis To History Theme Park; Our Evolutionary Era - No Next Big Thing
End Notes; Index

Naisbitt, the author of Megatrends, came up with a number of mindsets that can help someone understand where things are going in the future. From that initial list, he pared down the items until he came up with what he felt are the most important eleven items that matter. These mindsets, if understood, directly affect how you view current events and interpret your surroundings. For instance, it's easy to look at each new technology and think that it will change everything. But in reality, the same underlying forces continue to drive people's lives. Business is in a constant state of flux, but it still ends up being all about buying and selling. In sports, the one-handed jump shot in basketball completely changed the look of the game in 1936, but the game itself was still the same... score a basket. Once you strip away the fluff and hype, it's easier to understand where the general flow of life is going. Or my favorite... don't add something unless you subtract something. Setting a cap on a situation (be it a sports roster or a number of menu items in a restaurant) forces you to weigh the merits of each item, keeping only the things that return value and dropping items that no longer measure up to the others. Something to remember before you make yet another commitment...

Part 2 of the book applies a number of these mindsets to different current events and situations. Personally, I found this part of the book a bit more unfocused than the first. While I understand that the visual is becoming more important in today's society, I had a hard time staying focused on where the chapter was going. He does tie the mindsets into the conclusions he draws, but I found the mindsets themselves to be more personally useful for my own life.

Definitely worth reading, even if you don't necessarily agree with him on how the mindsets play out. I'll be revisiting the mindsets a number of times to get them firmly embedded in my brain. And don't be surprised if I turn down some "adds" because I'm not ready to "subtract" something...