Category: Forecasting

Stephen Jay Gould on Trends and Progress: The Problem With Trends

Stephen Jay Gould The Problem Trends and Progress The problem with trends. Trend-watchers need to be cautious that they understand the idea of trends, and that they don’t just find them, but that they actively watch them. Trends have a habit of going off the rails. Stephen Jay Gould, in is 1988 Stanford Presidential Address “TRENDS.

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17 Uncertainties that will Define (or Redefine) Your 2014

Download the entire paper here. 1. Workforce Dynamics Key Dynamic: Will the workforce effectively integrate, or will generational issues result in bifurcation? What skill gaps and needs for knowledge will emerge as each generation seeks to define its future? 2. Globalization Key Dynamic: Will the global economy march to ever more ubiquity, or will it.

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Oxford’s Rafael Ramirez on Scenario Planning

Watch an exclusive interview with Rafael Ramirez, Director of the Oxford Scenarios Programme and Fellow in Strategy at the Saїd Business School and Green Templeton College, Oxford University. A world expert on scenario planning and a founder of theories on the aesthetics of business, work and organisation, Rafael Ramirez has worked in over 25 countries,.

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Big Data is a Myth When Anticipating The Future

The Lera blog gets it right today, quoting Gary Hamel: “The problem with the future is that it is different. If you are unable to think differently, the future will always arrive as a surprise.” Big Data won’t foretell the future unless the future is just like today, and it never will be. If you.

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Why Near Term Business “Trend” Forecasts Shouldn’t Be Trusted

I received a trend notification today of “5 things that will change in the workforce in 2013.” (I will leave the name of the publication out.) One of those items was:  the end of annual reviews. If this was a decade long forecast, the end of annual reviews would represent a good, controversial, thought-provoking item.

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Why Big Data Won’t Make You Smart, Rich, Or Pretty

Why Big Data Won’t Make You Smart, Rich, Or Pretty

Why Big Data Won’t Make You Smart, Rich, Or Pretty The future of Big Data rather lies in the darkness of context change, complexity, and overconfidence Note: This article is updated from one that originally appeared at Fast Company. 2012 was declared the year of Big Data. The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) reported that 90.

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Ladies’ Home Journal Century-Old Predictions Came True

Interesting story on John Elfreth Watkins prediction made in The Ladie’s Home Journal back in December 1900. Interestingly accurate in some cases, but like Nostradamus or Biblical interpretation, we often see the past through the lens of the present and forgive the details. Some of the concepts are pretty close, but the details aren’t. And.

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Ten Serendipity Economy Lessons Learned from Playing Words with Friends

Ten Serendipity Economy Lessons Learned from Playing Words with Friends. The Serendipity Economy turns our industrial age bias toward linearity, productivity, and prediction on its head by suggesting that productivity doesn’t always lead to value and that increasingly, we can’t predict where value will emerge from our work or the magnitude of value that will.

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The Consumerization of IT: Remembering the Past and Learning from IT

For many of today’s workers, the consumerization of IT means accessing company e-mail from an iPhone or Android device. Those a little older will remember the onslaught of instant messaging, perhaps even the original push of the web. "Why," the CIO might ask, "does an 80-year old company with established markets and customers need a.

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If Governments Want Growth, They Need to Inspire Not Just Reinforce Negative Forecasts

Governments around the world need to start speaking and thinking in scenario planning terms and not just articulating single-minded dire forecasts. They need to do this in times of struggle and in times of prosperity. Today, for instance, "The Federal Reserve sharply downgraded its projections for the U.S. economy Wednesday, warning that weak growth and.

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