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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.4012
EAN num: 9780385267328
ISBN number: 0385267320
Label: Currency Doubleday
Manufacturer: Currency Doubleday
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 272
Printing Date: April 15, 1996
Publishing house: Currency Doubleday
Release Date: April 15, 1996
Sale Popularity Level: 11014
Studio: Currency Doubleday
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Rated by buyers -
This book is excellent!! This book makes understanding the future almost as easy as a carnival card reader. This book isn't a book of prophesy. It is a book that teaches you how to formulate your own prophesy for your unique situation.
The author has a unique way to do this. He urges readers to seek keys. These keys are things in the environment which indicate other things will occur. The average reader after finishing the book will change their way of looking at the world. Through his explanation of how to make a scenario you learn how to gather information from unknown sources and focus on what is important. It is like an unveiling of magic keys to the world. These keys aren't of course magic but something new. The newness opens minds.
The book is dry in places but I think everyone will enjoy this book.
Rated by buyers -
Heard THE ART OF THE LONG VIEW, written and read
by Peter Schwartz.
The book's subtitle caught my attention: PLANNING FOR THE
FUTURE IN AN UNCERTTAIN WORLD . . . I thought to myself,
"Wouldn't that be a great thing to do?"
Schwartz, one of the nation's leading futurists, actually
answers my question--showing how it can be done through
the use of scenario-building . . . this enables managers to:
* "invent and then consider, in depth, several stories of equally
plausible futures" so that they can make "strategic decisions
that will be sound for all plausible futures."
I liked the examples that were given, including many from his
work at Royal Dutch/Shell . . . the one describing the thought
behind a new natural gas field offshore from Norway helped
make the whole scenario concept much clearer to me . . those
involved at the time had to consider whether the U.S.S.R. would
continue to be an enemy of Western Europe and not ship
its own low-cost natural gas to that market.
This informative book was very first published in 1991 and revised
in 1996 when it came out in paperwork . . . I'd be curious
to see a 2008 edition.
Rated by buyers 
-
This book, written by Peter Schwartz, probes readers to take the time to map out their future, whether personal or business, by way of "scenario building." Too many of us go on expecting (or hoping) for things to just fall in to place- optimists! Schwartz, who worked for Shell during the energy crisis in the 70s, uses his experiences of using scenario building to teach the reader how to plan major decisions in their organizational and/or personal future. This craft isn't about predicting the future, but rather a way to formulate the probability of events and construct plausible futures that allow people to consider different futures so the can be prepared.
One thing that I did like was his idea of "reperceive." People are reluctant to see how the world really is and concoct this fantasy of how the world works, and in most cases it is just that, a fantasy-world. Before individuals plan for the future, they have to very first "reperceive" it or "question their assumptions about the way the world works, so that they can see the world more clearly."
The negative points about this book had to do with how out of date it is. Written in the late 80s, I couldn't get past the many references to old technologies and political and economical events to be able to enjoy the book. In attempts to forecast the year 2005, scenarios are built on events and political situations of the 80s which makes for very boring reading because it entails a lot of detailed events that happened before I was born. While this future is not totally wrong, it is pretty generalized- anyone who is that vague about the future would be on point.
In all, this book was okay. It didn't knock my socks off- but it did bring back fond memories of the Sony Walkman.
Rated by buyers 
-
This is one of the books on the Navy's recommended reading list, which is why I picked it up. The author is touted as one of the world's leading futurists. I'm not sure how one gets the title of leading futurist, but I'm guessing it's not because of his accuracy or sucess in predicting the future. It's actually funny, because in his book he puts forward three possible scenarios for the world in 2005, none of which hit the mark. Of course, there are portions of all three which ring true, which is probably the biggest thing I learned from this book. If you want to be a leading futurist, the very first rule is the same as that of any other fortune teller. Be vague! The second rule is: hedge your bets. Give lots of different possibilities.
This book is strikingly out of date, coming before the internet, wireless communications, the global war on terrorism, etc. One would think that a leading futurist might have predicted some of these in 1991, but he did not. He also displays a lot of the pessimism that was rampant in America in the 1980s, when Japan seemed to be the way of the future and America destined for decline. Mr. Schwartz missed the Japanese economic stagnation as well, in spite of being a leading futurist. He tends to let his political views seep through a little too much, his bitterness and hatred of Ronald Reagan and everything he did is palpable and Reagan is continuously cited as the cause of many of the nation's and world's ills.
I would say that the most valuable part of the book would have been the sources he used to glean upcoming trends and changes before they were generally known to the public. Unfortunately, they like the rest of the book, are sadly out of date. Many of the periodicals are no longer being printed, wiped out by the power of the internet. Without that, the book is really reduced to a process for creating some stories of the future, but without a glimpse of the major changes that are coming these stories, like Mr. Schwartz's views of the 21st century, will fall very short of the mark and will not be of much use to planners.
Rated by buyers -
The Art of the Long View is a good book for anyone who has just started a study of the various methods people use to look into the future. This book gives a great intro to scenario planning that is used by big corporations. With rich resources of information and time, the big boys can afford to use such a process. Unfortunately, for a small business, scenario planning is a time consuming affair that probably won't yield payoffs. While I learned something about the methods, I actually got more out of going to Peter's website for a better overview.
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