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Future Savvy: Identifying Trends to Make Better Decisions, Manage Uncertainty, a |  |
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Future Savvy: Identifying Trends to Make Better Decisions, Manage Uncertainty, a | |
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.
作者简介 Adam Gordon, MS,MBA (INSEAD) is the director of The Future Studio, a consulting firm specializing in industry foresight and scenario planning. He develops industry and policy foresight to help private and public-sector organizations anticipate and evaluate opportunities, and innovate to exploit them. He trains in-company strategy teams and teaches industry foresight methods in various prominent MBA programs around the world. He has appeared on NPR's Morning Edition and CNN World Report. In addition to a number of radio shows worldwide.
编辑推荐 Review
"Future Savvy…will help you become a better consumer of forecasts, from economists, governments, think tanks and, yes, even journalists." The Globe & Mail (Toronto)
From the Author
Future Savvy provides a hands-on approach to judging predictive material of all types. After setting out the how-to insights in chapters 2-9, the book takes real forecasts and critiques them in chapter 10 to show the insights in practice. There's also a forecast filtering battery of critical tests to apply to any forecast to assess its validity, at the back of the book, so the reader comes away fully armed and able to shoot down bad predictions and improve their own view of the future accordingly.
From the Inside Flap
There is no shortage of forecasting available to businesses looking to anticipate and profit from future trends. But 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? Most important, which ones do you let guide your business's decisions? As huge an industry as business forecasting is, it's a wonder how amorphous it remains. As explained by author Adam Gordon, there is virtually no regulation, no serious accountability, and no quantifiable track record. "There is no accepted conceptual framework, agreed professional standards, or guidelines for application to policy or business decision making." In fact, there's not even a clear definition of what forecasting is. That said, it is unwise to discount the importance of forecasting. After all, your company's decisions will play out not in the present, but in a future that is bound to be different. What will the financial landscape be months or years from now? How will technology affect your company and your industry? What factors will shape the demand for your product or service? Understandably, it is imperative that you attempt to predict the future business environment, lest you be caught flat-footed by the ever-increasing pace of change. Future Savvy gives you a battery of critical tests to apply to any forecast in order to assess its validity and its relevance to your business's strategic decisions. In sifting through the endless reams of information you receive in the form of predictions, you will now be able to:
* Distinguish between (and apply) future-aligning versus future-influencing forecasting
* Combine short-, medium-, and long-term forecasting to create a three-dimensional model of the future
* Decrease reliance on so-called "hard" data that may not be as inarguable as you think
* See through biases in research, consider the source and motivation behind any analysis, and approach information from the perspective most relevant to your organization's needs
* Assess the value of forecasting as it pertains to the nature and timing of specific outcomes
* Avoid the common pitfalls in trend-based forecasting and use better alternatives
* Develop multiple future scenarios
* And more The author synthesizes all of these powerful analytical tools into a template that allows you to apply "forecast filtering," a systematic deconstruction that accounts for all possible sources of inconsistency, fallibility, or bias in any presentation of predictive information. The information you receive is only as solid as the approach you take to its interpretation. If your decisions are ill-informed, no one will blame the forecasters, whoever they may have been. Using the approaches in Future Savvy, you stand a much better chance of parlaying information into strong results, and "when you come across yet another breathless article about the latest new thing, you will have the tools to keep your head when all about you are losing theirs."
From the Back Cover
Why do some business predictions seem to "hit the nail on the head" while other miss their mark so badly? Do some companies and analysts have a crystal ball that affords them a clearer view of the future? or do they just seem to ride a tide of good luck? While circumstance, fortuitous timing, and good fortune may occasionally play into eventual outcomes, more often than not the quality of business forecasting is directly aligned with the care taken in its design, implementation, and interpretation. Future Savvy shows how to evaluate--more objectively and thoroughly--the business, technology, marketing, and cultural forecasts that flood the media daily, and reveals the strengths and shortcomings of think-tank and consultant reports, stock market analysis, government forecasting, and more. Gordon presents a clear, proven, repeatable methodology for "separating the wheat from the chaff" when researching and analyzing trends and data. A frank and illuminating guide to finding truths often obfuscated by hype and misinformation, Future Savvy takes a hard look at the factors that most often push potentially good forecasting off course. Pulling no punches and leaving a streamlined and constructive critical methodology, the book presents a comprehensive array of pointed questions that must be aimed at any predictive process in order to gauge its validity and the probability of its success
文摘 Excerpt. ? Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION
This book is about how to evaluate forecasts and extract value from them. It is written to help decision makers in commercial, policy, and nonprofit sectors, as well as ordinary people in daily life, make better judgments about predictions they read and hear, so they can appropriately plan for and profit from the future.
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 be able determine which ideas are worth taking seriously—worth planning for and investing in.
This book sets out 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.
Teaching a Donkey to Talk: Why Forecasts Can’t Be Trusted
There’s an ancient Uzbek parable about a con man who promised a local nobleman he could teach a donkey to talk—for a large fee—but it would take twenty years. Of course, in twenty years the con man, the nobleman, or the donkey would be dead.1 Predicting is safe for the same spurious reason. By the time outcomes emerge, there is almost never anybody around to say, “Hey, that never
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