Special Feature : Books about the future
We are often asked to recommend books that deal with underlying socio-economic or cultural trends in a commercially interesting way. Here is our selection. We will regularly add and update.
Clicking : 16 trends to future fit you life, your work and your business. Faith Popcorn (with Lys Marigold). Harper Collins 1996.
Some people are snobby about Faith Popcorn - but not us. Though she is often a bit new-ageist for our taste, we think she is very good at what she does - which is slicing feasible trends out of a very large blancmange of data. You do not have to love her slightly gushing writing style but you do have to accept that her trend-coinages are highly thought- - and reflecting on the commercial implications - action-provoking. The "clicking" motif is very well-sustained in this particular volume whose readability is much enhanced by the way the chapter construction allows you to dip in and out according to your interests. We particularly like the section on "Icon Toppling". (We used to think Icon Toppling was a Welsh scrum-half before we discovered Popcorn!). Most active forecasters we know read and use Faith Popcorn. And quite right too.
? Next - A vision of our lives in the future. Ira Matathia & Marian Salzman. Harper Collins. 1997
This is less fun than Popcorn and we sometimes found it hard to agree with all the trend-predictions the authors make. (And what are we to make of phrases like the "British sense of effortless superiority"? Eh? Or "Berlin - think Christopher Isherwood and Cabaret".) But the book in its subject-matter does cover a great deal of ground and at the very least does try to give clear opinions about which changes matter most, where commercial opportunities are greatest, etc, etc. The bits on the future of the Internet are, in our view, the best - and are indeed holding well to fresh scrutiny. There are lots of good quotes too from real people. The perspectives on modern Europe - coming as they do from two North American analysts - remind us of that line from Robert Burns. Something about how it would from many a blunder free us to see ourselves as other see us.
Visions - how science will revolutionise the 21st century and beyond. Michio Kaku. OUP. 1998
For all the books there are about how new technologies will change our lives we do not really know that many good ones. But we do like Visions for its sheer accessibility. It works too as a serviceable history of the Internet while delivering a very insightful narrative on just how strangely chaotic and random crucial scientific developments can actually be. We honestly do not want to criticise (because we like the book), but it could and should have been a great deal shorter. Was it editorially wise to let pass phrases like "...So, when Newton first gazed alone at the vast, uncharted ocean of knowledge..." or "Aoooeeehiooaaaa! A low, almost inhuman howl fills the room..."? (No, we are not making this up!). But in the main this is a jolly good read.
Driving Change - how the best companies are preparing for the 21st century. Jerry Yoram Wind & Jeremy Main. Kogan Page. 1998.
Do you know any good books about the theory of how modern business works? We don't. We know plenty that tell interesting anecdotes about the things that companies do. But where are the analysts who can provide models of corporate behaviour and who can successfully cluster real-life examples into proofs and predictions? While these questions hang, we find ourselves seriously schizo about Driving Change. Its American business school authors are well-informed and well-meaning but too often the text gives itself over to what we might variously call "the tyranny of good ideas" or "the degeneracy of lists". Maybe we can quickly show what we mean by this quote from the chapter entitled "Society's Claims" : "Almost any company may find itself today pilloried for its real or concocted abuses, but here are some danger signals to watch for - * Doing business in countries ruled by dictator......* Making products that can injure or affect the health of the customers......". Gosh! It's a pity this because the authors do otherwise try to speak to the intelligence of their audience and they correctly identify the factors in the external environment which bear down most heavily on corporate life. But the hey-here-is-another-hot-tip chorus does grind.
