"Future Savvy: Indentifying Trends
to Make Better Better Decisions, Manage Uncertainty,
and Profit From Change"
by Adam Gordon; AMACOM; New York,
New York; 2009; 283 pages; $24.95

People have been attempting to predict the future since the first homo sapiens looked at a cloudy sky and considered whether it might rain or not, snow or not, or clear up or not. Many of our predictive tools have gotten better since then, but according to author Adam Gordon, our ability to forecast trends and their possible resulting events are another matter. After three million years even our weather forecasts are subject to sudden change and the butterfly effect.
Gordon underscores the heart of his approach to economic and organizational forecasting this way:
“Predictive statements are all around us in the newspapers, on TV, at conference presentations, in industry reports, consulting documents, think tank studies, and so on. All claim to be valid, but the record shows that few are. So while forecasts are a crucial decision-success resource, they are not in themselves valuable, they are only valuable alongside a clear way to separate the wheat from the chaff. What’s valuable is being able to critically judge this torrent of information and to determine which ideas are worth taking seriously - worth planning for and investing in.
He goes on to note the book’s purpose:
“…to communicate tools and approaches that the forecast consumer can use to filter and evaluate statements about the future and thus judge what the real threats and opportunities are. It summarizes and orders the problems common in forecasting, as well as best practices, so that managers and decision makers of all types may be better able to critically interact with the barrage of forecasts that compete for their attention and resources and discriminate between worthy and unworthy ones.”
Gordon takes the view that forecasting is difficult at best and even well-respected experts in their fields will make predictions based on the current state of their art that are laughable. One of the farthest from the mark was made by J. Prosper Eckert, a father of electronic computing, who said of his brainchild Eniac in 1947, “I doubt that more than two of these computers will ever be needed.” Just for the record, Eniac’s computing ability wasn’t as powerful as a late 20th Century hand-held pocket calculator. Gordon’s point is whether or not you would have invested in IBM while it was developing its mainframe if you were solely guided by Eckert’s prediction.
Among the strong points made by the author are the differences between short-term, short-medium term, long-medium term, long-term, and ultra-long term forecasts. Short-term forecasts are anything from 24 hours to a year. These are most commonly used and are considered “bread and butter” operational forecasts. Short-medium term is anything between one year and three years. The techniques, technologies, and mathematical formulas are very similar to the short-term. Long-medium term is three to 10 year forecasts. These are most frequently used by governmental and non-governmental organizations to determine “technological and social shifts and infrastructural needs.”
Long-term forecasts look 10 to 25 years ahead. Until recently they were commonly used by Japanese industries, although they have been more commonplace in government. Finally there is the ultra-long term forecast that may vary between 25 years and 10,000 years. These are used by university graduate researchers, science fiction writers, poets, and others who like to pose “utopias and dystopias against which society is invited to measure its progress.”
The point Gordon makes is that each element that composes the basis for a forecast contains variables. Gordon reminds us that a three-year period when forecasting the growth of “wi-fi” is actually a long-term forecast. The same applies to the other elements.
“Future Savvy” contains a great deal of common sense that often gets left behind in analytics and forecasting. Gordon offers a way to make sense of it without resorting to mystery and a crystal ball.

-- Henry Holtzman

 

Here are the current top 10 bestselling books for business. The list is compiled based on information
received from retail bookstores throughout the U.S.A.

1. “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life,”
by Alice Schroeder (Bantam Books…$35.00) (1)*
Why there has always been far more to Buffet than meets the eye.
2. “Debt Cures “They” Don't Want You to Know About,”
by Kevin Trudeau (Equity Press…$25.95) (3)
What banks and credit card companies prefer you not to know.
3. “The Post-American World”
by Fareed Zakaria (W.W. Norton & Co…$25.95) (4)
Why the 21st Century will not be “the American Century.”
4. “Go Put Your Strengths to Work: Six Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance,”
by Marcus Buckingham (The Free Press… $30.00) (2)
How to identify and use your unique strengths at work.
5. “Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How It Can Renew America,”
by Thomas L. Friedman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux…$27.95) (**)
Why and how “green alternatives” can save the planet and the USA.
6. “Bad Money, Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism,”
by Kevin Phillips (Penguin Group…$25.95) (**)
How the global economy dropped into an intensive care situation.
7. “21 Distinctions of Wealth: How to Create Unlimited Abundance in Your Life,”
by Peggy McColl (John Wiley & Sons…$15.95) (5)
How to become wealthy and stay that way.
8. “The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008,”
by Paul Krugman (W.W. Norton & Co…$24.95 (**)
Why 2008 is beginning to look a lot like 1932.
9. “When Markets Collide: Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change,”
by Mohamed El-Erian (McGraw
Hill…$27.95) (10)
New investment strategies as seen by the global investment guru.
10. “Winners Never Cheat: Everyday Values We Learned As Children (But May Have Forgotten),”
by Jon M. Huntsman
(Wharton School Publishing…$19.95)(8)
Why playing by the rules is still the only way to win.
—————————————
(1)* -- Indicates a book's previous position on the list.
** -- Indicates a book's first appearance on the list.