A review and critique of John Naisbitt’s View of the Future

By Jack Carter, Principal, Wealth Generation13889 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

• 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 present3. Focus on the score of the game4. Understand how powerful it is not to be right5. See the future as a picture puzzle – your idea guided

by a few fixed stars combined into a single vision6. 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

• 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 centuryNote: 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.

9th 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.

11th: 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 worda) 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 decline4. China begins to dominate5. What about the Next Big Thing?

Picture your future: 1st 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. The slow death of the newspaper culture (not newspapers)

2. Advertising: It’s back to picture is worth a 1,000 words

3. Upscale design for common goods (major trend)

4. Architecture as visual art

5. Fashion, architecture, and art

6. Music, video, film, games7. The changing role of photography (known and not known)

8. 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 avail-able 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 pre-9/11 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.