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A host of catastrophes, natural and otherwise, as well as some pleasant surprises like the sudden end of the cold war without a shot being fired have caught governments and societies unprepared many times in recent decades September 11 is only the most obvious recent example among many unforeseen events that have changed, even redefined our lives. We have every reason to expect more such events in future. Several kinds of unanticipated scenarios particularly those of low probability and high impact have the potential to escalate into systemic crises. Even positive surprises can be major policy challenges. Anticipating and managing low-probability events is a critically important challenge to contemporary policymakers, who increasingly recognize that they lack the analytical tools to do so. Developing such tools is the focus of this insightful and perceptive volume, edited by renowned author Francis Fukuyama and sponsored by The American Interest magazine. Blindside is organized into four main sections. Thinking about Strategic Surprise addresses the psychological and institutional obstacles that prevent leaders from planning for low-probability tragedies and allocating the necessary resources to deal with them. The following two sections pinpoint the failures institutional as well as personal that allowed key historical events to take leaders by surprise, and examine the philosophies and methodologies of forecasting. In Pollyana vs. Cassandra, for example, James Kurth and Gregg Easterbrook debate the future state of the world going forward. Mitchell Waldrop explores why technology forecasting is so poor and why that is likely to remain the case. In the book's final section, What Could Be, internationally renowned authorities discuss low probability, high-impact contingencies in their area of expertise. For example, Scott Barrett looks at emerging infectious diseases, while Gal Luft and Anne Korin discuss energy security. How can we avoid being blindsided by unforeseen events? There is no easy or obvious answer. But it is essential that we understand the obstacles that prevent us first from seeing the future clearly and then from acting appropriately on our insights. This readable and fascinating book is an important step in that direction..
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Surprise is rarely a good thing in business Unexpected developments range in their effects from inconvenient to disastrous To avoid being blindsided, companies must develop a Competitive Early Warning system, or CEW, which combines strategic planning, competitive intelligence, and management action. Such systems let organizations manage risk more effectively and prevent "industry dissonance" -- when market realities outpace corporate strategies. Early Warning reveals how to:

* Change strategy to meet new realities * Learn from the mistakes of others via the book's eye-opening stories * Avoid common tactics like benchmarking and using consultants, which may do more harm than good * Tell executives what they need to know -- not what they want to hear

Each chapter ends with a Manager's Checklist of key points, and the book includes numerous charts, tables, and tools. With strong opinions and wry humor, world-recognized expert Gilad reveals how to anticipate and react to early signs of trouble..
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Picasso changed the way we look at art. Profit Patterns will change the way we look at business Picasso's work reflected the social and technological changes that swept through the early twentieth century. Equally pronounced changes are sweeping through today's business landscape, often at breathtaking speed.
        
Profit Patterns provides a powerful discipline to see order beneath the surface chaos. Pattern thinking helps entrepreneurs, managers, investors, and key talent anticipate the likely direction of changes even before they happen. It reveals the economic meaning of these changes and provides the tools to capitalize on them.
        
Based on groundbreaking research into over two hundred companies in forty industries, from major industrial firms to upstart competitors, Profit Patterns contains a set of ideas and action steps that can be taken by you and your team. Here's a sampling of what you'll find:

Practical  STRATEGIC  ideas:
        
Strategic Anticipation--the ability to "get it," to spot an emerging opportunity and chart a path there before the competition does.
        
Polarization--the winner-takes-all game, and why it's spreading to more and more industries.
        
Mindshare--the importance of seizing and holding on to the attention of key customers, investors, and talent.

Thirty Patterns:
        
A repertoire of moves and countermoves to help you understand and exploit the forces changing your industry. This knowledge base of patterns will allow you to harness the strategic learning of the past two decades, eliminating the need to create strategies from scratch.

In-Depth Examples:

How Cisco Systems, Honeywell, Capital One, SAP, Staples, Nokia, Dell Computer, Amazon.com, and Bang & Olufsen detected patterns in their industries and put them to work and, in many cases, developed an almost insurmountable lead over their competitors.

A Workbook:

An aid to launching your own process of responding to change.

In today's turbulent and discontinuous business world, it's no longer useful to analyze your industry in static, conventional ways. Profit Patterns provides the means to act before the ground shifts beneath you once again. It is the mental operating system for winning when the rules of the game change with such great frequency..
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Born in the first year of the 20th century, it is fitting that Margaret Mead should have been one of the first anthropologists to use anthropological analysis to study the future course of human civilization This volume collects, for the first time, her writings on the future of humanity and how humans can shape that future through purposeful action. For Mead, the study of the future was born out of her lifelong interest in processes of change. Many of these papers were originally published as conference proceedings or in limited-circulation journals, testimony before government bodies and chapters in works edited by others. They show Mead's wisdom, prescience and concern for the future of humanity..
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Jean Sullivan is one of the major figures in Christian literature to have emerged in France since the 1960s. Anticipate Every Goodbye is the memoir of the death of Sullivan's mother, a woman who imparted a simple faith to her son..
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There is no doubt that the pace of business has accelerated--products go from concept to release faster than ever, business partnerships and alliances are established (and dissolved) more quickly, competitors react more swiftly to any tilt in the playing field. Whether your business is microprocessors or airplane manufacturing, it will live or die by the degree to which you can anticipate demand for your products and services. In Getting It Right the First Time, John Katsaros and Peter Christy argue that the most successful businesses will be those that accurately predict market conditions--especially the market changes that will occur within the crucial 18-to-36-month innovation window. Or, to paraphrase hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky: "skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it is." Showcasing dozens of colorful examples of lucrative successes and missed opportunities (from high-tech to financial services to medical devices), the authors present a detailed plan for how you and your company can learn to: identify your top customers in advance of entering the market, successfully position your company and its products to those customers, and catch emerging trends before your competitors do. Eschewing traditional market research techniques--such as focus groups, polls, and surveys-- Katsaros and Christy demonstrate how "expert interviews" with potential early adopters can help identify your "killer app"--the function that customers most value--and avoid costly trial-and-error. In a viciously competitive world where your company may have only one chance to score big, Getting It Right the First Time provides essential guidance for entrepreneurs, marketers, product developers, and business strategists, and offers new insight into the dynamics of innovation..
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In the mid 1980s systems integration visionary Vivek Ranadivé broke the real-time information barrier and helped to digitize Wall Street. With his international bestseller The Power of Now, he helped usher in the real-time business revolution of the late 1990s. Now with this groundbreaking new book, Ranadivé brings news of the next big leap in business systems evolution-The Power to Predict.

Real-time business gives companies the ability to monitor and react to changes and address problems as they occurr. But no matter how sophisticated their information-gathering and data mining systems are, they're still playing catch-up. In The Power to Predict, Ranadivé forecasts the next step in achieving breakthrough business performance, a new approach he calls Predictive BusinessTM: the ability to anticipate business problems and opportunities and to act preemptively. Predictive Business allows companies to take real-time information, correlate it with historical patterns, and recognize events that hold tremendous profit potential.

In an effort to stay ahead of the curve, a handful of companies have been quietly making the transition from reactive organizations to proactive, anc are well-suited for a customer-centric business paradigm. Ranadive takes us inside a number of these companies-including Amazon, Pirelli, Harrah's, E. & J. Gallo, Wal-Mart, and 7-Eleven--to show how they are making that transition, and are able to:

• Anticipate customer needs and be ready satisfy them the minute they emerge
• Be prepared for sudden events such as a power outage, spikes in demand for a product or service, logistic issues due to changing weather patterns, or evolving customer requirements

In The Power to Predict you'll discover how your company can accomplish these goals by continuously matching real-time events with historical patterns to improve business processes. Just as important, you'll get expert insight to improve business processes and advice on what it will take to align your company's resources, technology, and culture into an unstoppable, world-class Predictive-Business.

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