Transcript Document

A review and critique of John
Naisbitt’s View of the Future
By Jack Carter, Principal, Wealth Generation
13889 62nd Avenue North, Maple Grove, MN 55311
Phone: 763-559-7425, fax: 763-559-0664, website: www.wealthgen.com
Mind Set! Reset your thinking
and see the future © 2006
• His “mindsets” are what we used to call
paradigms
• He focuses on mindsets developed for a
purpose, as opposed to inculcated beliefs
and prejudices, as through parenting
• Provides us with a perspective for nurturing
our own vision in our fields of interest
Presentation Outline
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Micro and macro mindsets
11 fixed stars to guide your thinking
5 pictures of transforming trends
Questioning some underlying assumptions
Refining assumptions to achieve a broader,
more moral and sustainable future
Micro and macro
mindsets/paradigms
• Micro: A woman married to a philanderer
interprets information about him in that mindset
• Macro: Naisbitt sees an evolving world shaped
by economic determinism over the long-term,
as opposed to others who see only a “clash of
civilizations.”
What does he mean by economic
determinism?
He’s not a realist or an idealist,
capitalist or socialist, or Chicago
school or mixed economy, Mormon
vs. Christian… What does he mean?
Navigating by way of 11 fixed stars
1. While many things change, most things remain the
same
2. The future is embedded in the present
3. Focus on the score of the game
4. Understand how powerful it is not to be right
5. See the future as a picture puzzle – your idea guided
by a few fixed stars combined into a single vision
6. Don’t get so far ahead people don’t know you’re
leading
Fixed stars continued…
7. Resistance to change falls if benefits are real
8. Things we expect to happen always happen
more slowly
9. You don’t get results by solving problems, but
by exploiting opportunities
10. Don’t add unless you subtract
11. Don’t forget the ecology of technology – ask
what’s enhanced, diminished, or replaced
Fixed star #1: While many things
change, most things stay the same
• The media constantly promotes change because
progress is one of America’s strongest themes
(90% of new products fail, e.g., Vanilla Coke gone November 2005).
• Products and markets change but buying and selling
and making a profit remains the same
• Improvements don’t change the substance of our
lives: go to school, get married, have kids, send them
to school… Home, family, and work are constants.
• Knute Rockne created the forward pass (1940) but the
goal was still a touchdown; Hank Luisetti, basketball…
Will and Ariel Durant’s 11 volume
Story of Civilization begins • “Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is
sometimes filled with blood from killing people,
stealing, shooting, and doing things historians
usually record… while on the banks, unnoticed,
people build homes, make love, raise children…
The story of civilization is the story of what
happened on the banks.”
• How many people here today share this sentiment?
2nd star: The future is embedded in the
present
• So why don’t we all see what’s coming?
• Individuals tend to see different things because we
have different mindsets
– depending on what you’re looking for
– the way you filter information
– and how you discipline your thinking.
• It’s not just “attitude.” Your mindset determines how
you receive information and how you think and act.
• To have a sense of direction, you have to have a
sense of the forest beyond the trees
3rd: Focus on the score of the game
• World affairs are not as transparent as sports but
you can still get a sense of what’s really happening
by checking indices and statistics
• Official state rhetoric is typically bright and
cheerful, but what’s the reality?
– For instance, the EU has lost economic ground against
the U.S. year after year (says Naisbitt).
– Angela Merkel got off to a good start in January 2006,
when she told Germany’s economic ministry to quell its
overly optimistic growth forecasts…
4th: Understanding how powerful
it is not to have to be right
• The most important of the 11 mindsets
• Einstein unlocked the secrets of time and space by
working on his own… By using his imagination
and focusing on substance, rather than pleasing his
ego.
He didn’t feel he had to be right like we do in school.
• “All of mankind’s problems stem from his
inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Blaise Pascal
(1623 -1662), French philosopher and mathematician, invented the 1st
adding machine and developed the modern theory of probability.
5th: See the future as a picture puzzle
• Sequence is the enemy of making connections
• Explorers don’t follow sequences…
• History is often taught in neat sequences of events,
yet we know that events are typically interwoven
and interrelated.
• You have to have a context to understand the future,
just as you do for history.
• People were hungry for a framework in the 1970s…
Megatrends evolved from categorizing stories from
160 daily newspapers, and publishing weekly trends
in his newsletter the “Urban Crisis Monitor.”
6th: Don’t get so far ahead of the parade
that people don’t know you’re in it
• 2nd most important of the 11 mindsets
• The history of civilization is that things get
better: life expectancy, living conditions,
freedom of choice for millennia (that’s pre 9/11).
• Leaders are willing to detach from the values,
rules, and expectations of their time to aspire to
higher goals.
It’s only natural to want to
hammer them down to restore the pecking order.
For example, explain the evolution of Neil Simon’s “Odd Couple.”
7th: Resistance to change falls if
benefits are real
• Make the benefits of change transparent
• In Europe, they do the opposite. They establish
worker benefits before presenting challenges.
• Naisbitt has seen what the Chinese can do once
benefits are made clear. They have enormous energy
and an astounding “against all odds” determination.
(He ought to know, he has traveled in and out of China since 1967).
– Millions of Chinese are seeking ways out of poverty
– They have great entrepreneurial spirit
– Stories given are framed in the America Dream format.
8th: Things we expect to happen
always happen more slowly
• Leonardo da Vinci designed several airplanes Albrecht
Berblinger 1st hang glider 1811, Wright Brothers 1st powered… 1903
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•
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Television introduced at the 1939 World’s Fair > 1960s
Picture phones 1939 too, just catching on now
Fax machines took 20 yrs to become popular
Enterprise software took 30 yrs after IBM 360
Biotechnology and nanotechnology will evolve all
through the 21st century
Note: He ignores rates of change like how it took 37 years for radios to enter 50 million
homes, but only 4 years for the Internet; or in China how in just a few years 377
million people were carrying cell phones and 111 million were on the Internet.
9th: You don’t get results by solving
problems but by exploiting opportunities
• “The reasonable man adapts himself to conditions that
surround him. The unreasonable man adapts surrounding
conditions to himself. All progress depends on unreasonable
men.” George Bernard Shaw
• Bet on exploiters like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, not
problem solvers like Hillary and Al Gore.
– Schwarzenegger was ready when Davis was forced out…
– Fred Smith started Federal Express in 1973, $32B today with 260,000
employees. It wasn’t luck. He saw an opportunity and acted on it.
– Naisbitt knew LBJ had no program when he announced his “jobs for all”
initiative – even the hard-core unemployed > Ford Foundation.
• Problem solvers are dealing with yesterday. Change favors the prepared mind.
th
9
continued, closing quotation
“People are blaming their circumstances for what
they are. I do not believe in circumstances. The
people who get on in the world are people who get
up and look for the circumstances they want, and
if they don’t find them, they create them.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856 -1950)
Irish playwright. His plays, including Pygmalion (1913) and Heartbreak House (1919),
established him as the leading English-language playwright of his
time. He promoted socialism in works such as The Intelligent
Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928).
10th star: Don’t add unless you
subtract
• You can accumulate knowledge for decades… but
wisdom is knowing what to do with what you know.
• Growth is regrouping at a higher level. People
institutions, and societies grow when they continue to
reconceptualize their roles and missions, adding and
subtracting, to more demanding levels.
• Growth occurs from the bottom up. I say, Top-down is
very different. Business becomes a game of chance. For instance,
Yahoo misses its quarterly goal by a penny. Investors dump its stock.
th
11 :
Don’t forget the ecology of
technology
• The evolution of technology is running ahead of cultural
evolution. Consequences are rarely considered:
– What will be replaced?
– What will be enhanced?
– What will be diminished?
• Computers in every classroom? Doing what? Ok, but…
• Naisbitt wants a computer and a poet in every classroom.
• I say, human nature & self-knowledge are as important as …
– Ignorance of the symbolic power of poetry is the reason people of
different religions don’t like and often kill each other (us vs. them).
– To remain competitive, today’s workers need to know themselves
and be able to develop their interests more than ever (EQ and IQ).
Now 5 macro mindsets to help you
picture your future
1. Visual narrative replaces the written word
a) For example, MTV overpowers newspapers, novels,
poetry, and scripture. Television has “reptilian” appeal.
2. Nation-states and their economic indices are
undermined by global economics
3. Europe continues to decline
4. China begins to dominate
5. What about the Next Big Thing?
Picture your future:
st
1
of 5
• A visual culture is overwhelming the written
word of novels, poetry, and scripture
• Upside: I say, the democratization of art is a backdoor
to understanding the depths of consciousness
• Downside: MTV is creating a national crisis in reading
• Or is it even worse? Do wealthy owners learn anything
from their art collections, or is art just another cool
thing to have like yachts, sports cars, and racehorses?
The forces driving our visual
transformation
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
The slow death of the newspaper culture (not newspapers)
Advertising: It’s back to picture is worth a 1,000 words
Upscale design for common goods (major trend)
Architecture as visual art
Fashion, architecture, and art
Music, video, film, games
The changing role of photography (known and not known)
The democratization of American art museums
From nation-states to economic
domains: picture 2nd of 5
• Each economic domain functions as if it
were part of the center of the network
• Economic Domain Index much more available and far more accurate than GDP index
• As countries become more interdependent
they will need to enhance their identities by
becoming more culturally nationalistic
China: the periphery is the center:
picture 3rd of 5
• Naisbitt says, communism is dead in China
• China is walking the path of globalization and
decentralization more than any other country
in the world.
• From 1978 to 1997, Chm Deng Xiaopin
introduced economic reforms because, “The
socialist cat wasn’t catching any mice.”
• Free enterprise everywhere… Hollywood too.
Europe: mutually assured
decline: picture 4th of 5
• The “Statue of Europe” has two hearts and 25
mindsets. The 25 mindsets that do not blend: tradition,
ambition, welfare, and economic leadership. Her two
hearts beat for economic supremacy and social welfare
• Workers in Europe prefer unemployment to moving
100’s of miles to a new job. (Salt Lake City vs. Tuscany?)
• He says, Europe is most likely to become a theme park
for well-off Americans and Asians.
Reservoir of Innovation: picture
5 of 5
• Growth through innovation is the new mantra for
business.
• The next 50 years will be an era of absorbing,
extending, and perfecting breakthroughs
• All innovations take time to digest… as the IBM 360
took till the 1990s from the 1960s
• Forget about the Next Big Thing. It’s mostly hype,
like the dotcom boom and bust
• Now is the time for picking ripe fruits!
Questioning Assumptions
• For all his expertise on futures, Naisbitt still sees
through outdated industrial1, Adam Smith, and pre9/11 paradigms: top-down command and control,
survival of the fittest, and our future will always be
better. 1. See handout of Tofflers’ Industrial vs. Informational paradigms.
• He sees division of talent replacing division of labor,
like players on today’s soccer teams are global. His
mindset implies that global powers would stack the top
of their firms with star players, and enslave everyone
else. That’s a bogus paradigm in a knowledge-based
economy, where workers at all levels have to be
empowered to innovate and compete globally.
More Opinions
• He says, the answer is better education for everyone,
but our schools are poor, and like U.S. steel, propped
up by subsidies & unions with little accountability. He
sees privatization as the only answer.
• Does globalization mean Americanization? No, he
says, and then spins from economics to culture, saying
that America itself is changing more than the world
is changing. Our cultural affect on the world will be
minimal… limited to what people eat, what people see
in movies, and what they wear. (In fact, American economics and
pop culture are powerful and well known influences in nearly every country).
Speculation meets wisdom
• Naisbitt says, that nation-states will have to strengthen
their identities (theme park identities?). But nevertheless,
people everywhere want the same things:
•
•
•
•
Their mother tongue (Japan and Europe?)
Family
A sense of community
Cultural heritage
• The strengths with which we hold our values differ
widely from nation to nation and person to person.
• Nation-states must “celebrate identity” and educate.
• I say, what’s needed is a wisdom that strengthens and
doesn’t undercut anyone’s national identity. Whoever has
it, leads the world regardless of size, Russia or Singapore.
Naisbitt is way out of his depth
when he advises:
• We tend to draw too wide of a circle around
what we think we have to know…
• Limit your vision around your own
Economic Domain
In other words, trust me! Mind your own
business, and everything will work out.
Better to find an expert in global
history and culture: Henry Kissinger
• Global economics may finance nations but it’s not a
substitute for global order… Its upheavals will create
political backlashes that threaten global stability.
• The nation-state remains the world’s basis of national
sovereignty and political accountability since 1648.
• A state is by definition the expression of a concept of
justice that legitimizes its internal arrangements, and
determines its ability to protect itself from foreign
dangers and domestic upheaval.
Source: Kissinger in Does America Need A Foreign Policy? Sept 2001
Kissinger says…
• An American foreign policy based on domestic politics
withers our leadership because its prescriptions are
irrelevant to many forces shaping the new world order.
• In the face of the most profound and widespread
upheavals the world has ever seen, the U.S. has failed to
develop concepts relevant to emerging realities.
• Globalization has produced unprecedented prosperity,
albeit uneven. Instantaneous communications make
decisions in one area, hostage to those in another. It
remains to be seen if downturns can be equally fast and
extreme, and if America can retain its global authority.
Source: Kissinger in Does America Need A Foreign Policy? Sept 2001
Leadership must have moral grounding
Closing paragraph: “While traditional patterns are
in transition, and the very basis of experience and
knowledge is being revolutionized, America’s
ultimate challenge is to transform its power into
moral consensus, promoting its values not by
imposition but by willing acceptance in a world
that, for all its seeming resistance, desperately
needs enlightened leadership.”
Source: Kissinger in Does America Need A Foreign Policy? Sept 2001
Conclusion
• Naisbitt is one of the world’s leading experts on
future trends and he has provided us with some
powerful tools we can use to customize our futures.
• However, he is limited by his own paradigms, or
political affiliations, as his views are pre-9/11, social
Darwinist, and industrialist1 in a knowledge-based
economy, where workers at all levels have to be
empowered to innovate and compete globally.
• In my mind he provides a useful chest of tools, but
not a viable vision of the future.
1. See handout comparing Tofflers’ Industrial and Informational paradigms.
Thanks for your time and interest.