Future Savvy: Identifying Trends to Make Better Decisions, Manage Uncertainty, and Profit from Change

Future Savvy: Identifying Trends to Make Better Decisions, Manage Uncertainty, and Profit from Change

by Adam Gordon (Author)

Synopsis

There's no shortage of predictions available to organizations looking to anticipate and profit from future trends. Apparently helpful forecasts are ubiquitous in everyday communications such as newspapers and business magazines, and in specialized sources such as government and think-tank forecasts, consultant reports, and stock-market guides. These resources are crucial but they are also of very mixed quality. While everyone knows a future-focus is crucial for strategic vision and organizational readiness, what information from the endless sea of sources is valid? How do you know which predictions to take seriously, which to be wary of, and which to throw out entirely? Which ones do you let guide your decisions? Future Savvy provides a hands-on approach to judging predictive material of all types, including providing a battery of critical tests to apply to any forecast to assess its validity, and judge how to fit it into everyday management thinking. In a colorful book with many examples, Adam Gordon synthesizes information assessment skills and future studies tools into a single template that allows managers to apply systematic forecast filtering to reveal strengths and weakness in the predictions they face. The better leaders' view of the future, the better their decisions - and successes - will be. Future Savvy empowers both business and policy/government decision-makers to use forecasts wisely and so improve their judgment in anticipating opportunities, avoiding threats, and managing uncertainty.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 304
Publisher: Amacom
Published: 01 Sep 2008

ISBN 10: 0814409121
ISBN 13: 9780814409121

Media Reviews
Future Savvy...will help you become a better consumer of forecasts, from economists, governments, think tanks and, yes, even journalists. The Globe & Mail (Toronto)
a book that will make fascinating reading for anyone involved in forecasting --Foresight Magazine
If you care at all about preparing for the future, read this book. -- Online Magazine
Given recent developments in the US economy and their implications and probable impact insofar as the global economy is concerned, the publication of this book is indeed timely. -- Dallas Business Commentary Examiner
.. .a guide for prognosticators and scenario planners, a set of warnings against such common errors as overreliance on numbers, overlooking your own bias, and ignoring the oscillations of history... -- Strategy+Business
.. . offers a great deal of common sense that often gets left behind in analytics and forecasting... -- Inland Empire Business Journal
.. .Gordon's book will be a useful primer and refresher on the art of proper forecasting and on detecting the artifice and subtlety of persuasion via anticipatory declaration. --Research Technology Management
Author Bio
Adam Gordon is an expert in strategic foresight and its application to real-world industry and policy leadership. He has been an analyst, consultant, planner, facilitator, and teacher in the field, and his work has been featured on NPR' s Morning Edition and CNN World Report. Adam is the director of The Future Studio, UK, and was previously a Senior Associate at Coates & Jarratt, Inc., a futures consulting firm in Washington, D.C. He maintains an author blog forum on topics related to Future Savvy at www.futuresavvy.net