Future Savvy
Subtitle: identifying trends to make better decisions, manage uncertainty, and profit from change
By: Adam Gordon.
Publisher: American Management Association
Published: 2009
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 294
ISBN-13: 9780814409121
Subjects: foresight; Strategic planning; predictions; risk management; scenario planning
First sentence: This book is about how to evaluate forecasts of the future and extract value from them.
Description: Nobody can predict the future, but some forecasts are clearly better than others. Foresight is important—all decisions we make today will play out in the future. So wouldn’t it be useful to be able to tell a good forecast from a bad one? And even more so in these uncertain times.

“Future Savvy,” shows readers how to discern quality in future thinking, with examples and case studies of interest to business and policy/government decision-makers. It views expert foresight as a crucial resource, but it puts sharp tools in the hands of forecast users.

Thinking clearly about the future—about complex change—is hard to do. There’s no shortage of predictions available to business, policy or government institutions wanting to know more about the future. In fact it’s ridiculously easy to get predictions on any topic: we’re bombarded with projections every day—in newspapers and business magazines, and from government agencies, think tanks, consultant reports, stock market guides, and so on.

What’s hard is knowing when they are right.

Which of 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? Which ones do you let guide your decisions?

Future Savvy says ordinary people can judge that. Dismayed, to say the least by what passes as future thinking, the book holds up a mirror to the forecasting field—often over-quantified, or bound up in technobabble or wishful thinking—and offers a one-stop everyday reference that helps foresight consumers critically evaluate what analysts, consultants, brokers, and other gurus and talking heads are saying about tomorrow.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Recognizing forecast intentions; title: The quality of information; title: Interpretation and bias; title: Paradigms and perception; title: The utility principle; title: Drivers, blockers, and trends; title: The limits of quantitative analysis; title: The systems perspective; title: Living with alternative futures; title: Forecast filtering in action; title: A forecast filtering checklist.