by Michael Arbow, MBA
Partner, RSD Solutions Inc.
Predicting the future is fun for you are never wrong until it happens: one of my past times is looking back at future predictions and comparing them to the current reality. Great insight can be gained from this – usually it is that trends don’t continue indefinitely because some other reality appears like higher energy prices or some form of political (in) stability. My favourite forecaster of the social and economic reality of the 21st century is William Draves (left in above photo) and his book “Nine Shift” which looks at the nine shifts in human behavior that will come about this century. His book is interesting for it not only makes the predictions but also provides the time line for them to occur. Published in 2004 this little read book is spot on on innumerable levels.
The above quote is from a recent Bloomberg article on US employment - the realization about this century being different is right on cue with Mr. Draves's forecast. In his book, Draves believed it would be around 2012 that the world would begin to realize that we are living in a very different economic and social environment – and this for a trend that started at the birth of World Wide Web.
Does this story sound familiar to your business – are you in a state of denial that we are now living within a new paradigm and that 20th century business practices and risk management techniques will get you through the new (?) century? Definitely food for thought and I would recommend to you to have a read of Mr. Draves’s book to perhaps learn about the “Shifts” that are taking place or check out his website for current confirmations.
(A special thank you to Jeff Roach (http://jeffroach.ca) (of Sociallogical (http://sociallogical.com) for introducing me to Nine Shift)
For more on William Draves, follow the link: http://www.nineshift.com/
For more on what is different, click on the link to the Vivien Lou Chen’s article in Bloomberg: http://tinyurl.com/3dbyp2k
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