Future Forecasting

According to futurists Rolf Jensen and Mika Aaltonen, we are currently "between dreams". We've managed to achieve many of our material goals, only to face ever-growing global competition in an ever-slowing economy. Here's the good news: With the rise of social media and online resources, consumers are growing more powerful. Individuals are exploring more options. And smart businesses are discovering more ways to appeal to this powerful new community. Welcome to The Renaissance Society.

The future is big right now - for perhaps the first time, our society is more focused on what is going to happen in the future than what is happening right now. In Trees on Mars: Our Obsession with the Future, cultural critic and indie entrepreneur Hal Niedzviecki asks how and when we started believing we could and should "create the future." What is it like to live in a society utterly focused on what is going to happen next?

Our world is constantly buffeted by new and dramatic changes we can't fully grasp. No one is fully prepared for the challenges, crises, and risks that lie ahead. The Extreme Future is a blueprint for what's next and how to navigate these changes.

Gods of the Valley downs the businesses and big problems with Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple, examining upcoming market trends and potential disruptions that impact today’s tech giants and rating the businesses accordingly.

Is it possible to predict your financial future? Most business owners spend more time focused on the weather forecast than the status and forecast of their business. The truth is that the weather changes very quickly and is uncontrollable, but our business forecast is much more in our control. What if you could see into the future of your business? What if you had less stress, chaos, and uncertainty, and more influence over where you are going financially?

How do Michelin-ranked food stalls in Singapore and the decline of Swiss watches force all luxury brands to rethink their business models? What insights can the world's quietest place and a clothing dye produced by former tobacco farmers reveal about serving enlightened consumers? The answers to these questions may not be all that obvious. And that's exactly the point. For the past eight years, marketing expert and Georgetown University Professor Rohit Bhargava has curated his best-selling list of non-obvious trends.

The tumultuous changes of the past decade, including China's economic rise and the financial meltdown, were just the beginning. The next cataclysmic wave is surging relentlessly ahead, demanding leaders who can steer their companies through complexity and change. Leadership 2030 uncovers six megatrends that will dramatically impact organizations' markets, cultures, systems, and processes.

Technology is advancing faster than ever - but for better or for worse? On the one hand, astonishing technological developments from personalized genomics to self-driving cars to drones to artificial intelligence could make our lives healthier, safer, and easier. On the other hand, these very same technologies could raise the specter of a frightening and alienating future - eugenics, a jobless economy, complete loss of privacy, and an ever-worsening spiral of economic inequality.

The challenge to be a "future-fit" leader is as unrelenting as it is difficult. Leading in a Changing World is about the current and future challenges that leaders face. It explores the type of thinking, behaviour, and habits that leaders will need in order to successfully navigate the unfolding future. This completely updated and revised edition for the 2020s adds new insights gained from the work the authors have done with many leaders since they first published this book. It’s more practical, and picks up key issues that leaders are dealing with.

Bombastic headlines about science and technology are nothing new. To cut through the constant stream of information and misinformation on social media, or grab the attention of investors, or convince governments to take notice, strident headlines or bold claims seem necessary to give complex, nuanced information some wow factor. But hype has a dark side, too. It can mislead. It can distract. It can blinker us from seeing what is actually going on.

Following his first two ground-breaking books, What’s Your Moonshot? and Magnetiize, John Sanei turns his endless curiosity to the perspectives, perceptions and prejudices that prepare us for our illogical future. He breaks down the four types of seeing - HINDsight, PLAINsight, INsight and FOREsight - we humans use to guide us through the world and into the future. Then, with 20 shots of vivid, eye-opening FOREsight, he gives listeners the opportunity to peer into what that future could be and ask the types of questions that will allow us to embrace it with optimism.

Customization is coming in every industry, for every product. Embrace it or get left behind. Smart brands such as Chipotle, Zazzle, Nike, and Pandora are ditching the outdated 20th century model of a one-size-fits-all approach to providing products and services. From a Netflix movie night to a marriage courtesy of eHarmony, customization is changing every corner of American life and business.

Welche Zukunft erwartet uns? Lässt sich dazu überhaupt etwas aussagen? Prognoseinstrumente gibt es viele, weltanschaulich Philosophisches noch weit mehr, und der Begriff "Utopie" hat seine Bedeutung mehrfach ins Gegenteil verkehrt. Wir blicken in diesem Spektrum Kompakt-Hörbuch von den Prozessen in unserem Gehirn bis hin zu der Frage, ob und wie wir uns wohl auf Kontakt mit Außerirdischen vorbereiten sollten. Spektrum Kompakt bündelt als Hörbuch Artikel zu aktuellen Themengebieten.

In What's Your Moonshot? trend and innovation strategist John Sanei explains how to ask the bigger, bolder, more courageous questions that will help you thrive - rather than merely survive - in our exponentially changing times. With a future-focused victor mindset, Sanei decodes the mega-trends that are reshaping human behavior and the way we do business - not to mention, the way we live our lives.

How much government control is too much control? How much can government spend? How can government influence the level of unemployment? As Bernstein shows how to navigate an ever-changing economic landscape, his timeless insights throughout this audiobook make The Price of Prosperity as vital and important today as when it appeared in an environment fundamentally different from our own.