And therein lies the key word: opportunity. Identifying
opportunities is tricky business these days, when changes are
happening faster, bigger, and more profoundly than ever before. In
executive suites from
Houston to New York to
London to Santiago,
corporate leaders realize that in this fast-changing world,
businesses that ignore warp-speed change today will be roadkill by
tonight. Hence the growing importance of the business futurist, a
breed that focuses on the practical rather than fanciful, whose
brains are down to earth instead of lost in space.
In fact, futurists say they've seen an explosion of corporate work
in recent months, likely because companies that spent three to four
years focusing on survival are now more optimistic and ready to
think about tomorrow - but not so optimistic that they're willing
to take unnecessary risks or make decisions without information
that's as complete as possible. Executives are calling on futurists
for speeches, workshops, retreats, even hands-on consulting.
"Companies come to futurists because they want to know how better
to deal with uncertainties," says futurist Bob Treadway. "Our job
is to make the uncertain a bit more certain."
TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE
Doesn't strategic planning - a long-accepted corporate function
usually handled internally - suffice to clue in execs to tomorrow's
headlines? Futurists scoff: "Old-style strategic planning doesn't
cut it because events happen so fast," says John Luthy, a futurist
from Boise,
Idaho. By the time strategic planners cobble together
their reports, he says, the near-term future has already
unfolded.
Even defenders of strategic planning admit that the process leaves
plenty of room for futuristic thinking, because strategic planning
and futurism attack different time horizons. Planners usually try
to home in on a 12- to 24-month time frame, and futurists start
their ruminations at two years out. Most business futurists are
comfortable chewing over outlooks for 5, 10, 25 years, or maybe
even longer, and only where hard data is available to construct
long-term forecasts.