A portrait of the future by Naisbitt
In an exclusive chat with ET, celebrated futurist John Naisbitt shares his views on a range of issues.
By Vikas Kumar and Malini Goyal, TNN |
| John Naisbitt Futurist |
He spoke about globalisation long before anyone did in the 1980s. He predicted the rise of China and Asia in 1996, much before the now famous Goldman Sachs’ BRIC report.
Celebrated futurist John Naisbitt, 77, who has bestsellers like Megatrends and High Tech & High Touch to his credit, will be letting readers in on his craft with his upcoming book Mind Set! Slated for an October ’06 launch, the book provides insights into the framework he has been using to evaluate and make sense of the future.
In Mumbai to speak at the IBM Forum ’06, Naisbitt took time out to share his views on a range of issues — from the future of Asia to the role that women will play in business.. Here are excerpts from the interview:
Among the eleven mindsets in your new book, which one is your favourite?
Clearly, “Understand how powerful it is not to have to be right.” I could not have written Megatrends or any of my other books without that mindset. If I feared being wrong, I would not have dared to say many of the things I did. But not only that, if you have to be right you are standing in your own way, limiting what you can do, and how fast you can grow. The compulsion to be right is the enemy of creativity and growth.
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Anything else that you wish to highlight from the book?
One of the key mindsets is that you get results not by solving problems but by seeking opportunities. Problem solvers are necessarily dealing with yesterday. Another is — don’t get so far ahead of the parade that people don't even know that you are there in the parade.
How difficult is it to predict the future during a time when change is happening at a faster pace?
It’s actually easier now. We are moving into a period of evolutionary, continuous change, where we’re testing and perfecting the breakthroughs we’ve already made. That’s more predictable and organised. I think unpredictability has gone down, and we’ll see more of incremental change.
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Going forward, how do you see globalisation playing out?
I see the emergence of economic domains, which have no regard to borders. The world is reorganising itself around economic domains. For example, you may have one economic domain for the automobile industry, irrespective of geography. Soon, the GDP may not be a good measure for a country’s economy. In the past, we had GNP which took into account all economic activities by Indian companies within India and outside. Then we moved to GDP, which became a better measure of a country’s economic activities. That may change in future, as economic decisions will overwhelm political decisions.
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How will this impact the cultural identity of nations?
As we become more global, we will increasingly hold on to our cultural identities. Take Korea, which was an insulated country till the Japanese left. See how they have prospered today. They have become more reliant on the outside world, and at the same time they have become more aware of their culture. I see Koreans becoming more Korean and Indians becoming more Indian.
What are your views on outsourcing?
It’s so beneficial that I don’t see why this outcry continues. Europe has more foreign players in its football teams than local players. In this baseball season in the US, 37% of the players are foreign players. We’ve been outsourcing sports and paying foreign players millions of dollars. Why is it that nobody ever complains? What has happened to sports will happen to business too.
Technology and the internet have had tremendous impact on the way we work and play. Going forward what are some of the big changes you expect?
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Revolutions and change seem to come in clusters. In the last few years of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, we had most of the inventions like electricity, the airplane, the automobile, and the telephone, happening. We spent the next 100 years building on and perfecting those inventions. So the 21st century will be spent perfecting those things we started in the last few years of the previous century. That’s why I like to say that the future is embedded in the present. New areas like biotechnology and nanotechnology are all building on the breakthroughs in IT. There’s not going to be a next big thing anytime soon.
What are your views on Asia, and the India-China wave?
What I wrote about is being played out. But this race between India and China that’s being written about, is a bit ridiculous. The race is only between companies in India and China in their respective economic domains. Arcelor-Mittal is the biggest steel company in the world, and none of it gets made in India. None of it will count in the GDP of the country. GDP is absolutely ridiculous — in fact, it means nothing. We need new measures; we need a new index — the Economic Domain Index.
What kind of role do you see for women, since they’re still a minority in the corporate world?
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It will change — it takes time to fill the pipeline. Women are more socially acculturated and will be better CEOs in the times we are in, than men. Men are more suited for a militarised kind of corporate environment, which isn’t going to be the case. Women are better suited to the kind of needs companies will have in future. Look at Japan. I call them a miracle — they managed that growth with half the talent, that is, without the women.
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