BIBLIOGRAPHYThis is short annotated bibliography for futher reading and exploration.
Since part of our job is to be curators of ideas, please note that all of our services include high quality “primers” and curricula on foresight and future-oriented topics.
Foresight & Futures Thinking Ressources
“Futuring: The Exploration of the Future” by Edward Cornish (World Futures Society, 2004): This is an accessible introduction and survey of futures thinking and the field of foresight.
“The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility” by Steward Brand (Basic Books, 2000): This is an inspiring, thought-provoking case for long-term thinking by an important thinker in the field.
“The Future and Its Enemies” by Virginia Postrel (Free Press, 1999): A manifesto on the power of dynamism and the importance of embracing change as we move into the future.
Click here to read a review of this book.
“Future Hype: the Myths of Technology Change” by Bob Seidensticker (Berrett-Koehler, 2006): This book argues that technology rarely changes our lives as quickly as we expect, giving a well-reasoned counter-argument to those who overstate the changes wrought by technological innovation.
Click here to read a review of this book.
Scenario Planning Ressources
“The Art of the Long View” by Peter Schwartz (Currency Doubleday, 1991): This classic is still worth reading since it popularized scenario planning and foresight and is elegantly written.
“Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation, Second edition” by Kees van der Heijden (John Wiley & Sons, 1996): Rigorous insight into how to implement a scenario planning within an organizational setting.
“Peripheral Vision: Detecting the Weak Signals that Will Make or Break Your Company” by Day and Schoemaker (Harvard Business School Press, 2006):
From emerging technologies to changes in consumer tastes, tremendous opportunities and threats often begin as weak signals from the periphery. How good is your organization at sensing, interpreting, and acting on these signals?
“Profiting from Uncertainty: Strategies for Succeeding No Matter What the Future Brings” (Free Press, 2002): Strategic planner Schoemaker presents various examples of blindered business outlooks in this guide to making the best of a rapidly changing world.
"Driving through Fog: Managing at the Edge" by George S. Day and Paul Schoemaker, (Long Range Planning 37, 2004): This article argues that a monitoring of the periphery can help diffuse small problems before they becomes crises, with examples of how companies have been effected by ‘peripheral’ events.
“Creating Better Futures: Scenario Planning as A Tool for a Better Tomorrow” by Jay Ogilvy (Oxford University Press, 2002): This book presents a profound new vision of how the world is changing--and how it can be changed for the better, with self-defined communities (rather than individuals or governments) as the primary agents for social change.
“What If?: The Art of Scenario Thinking for Nonprofits” by Diana Scearce and Katherine Fulton (Global Business Network, July 2004): This guide aims to prepare nonprofit leaders for the future by familiarizing them with scenario thinking.
Click here to read a review of this report.
“The Living Company” by Arie de Geus (Harvard Business School Press, 1997): Why do some companies survive for centuries and countless changes in their business, while others don't? This beautiful book by a former Royal Dutch Shell planner helps us understand the secrets to corporate longevity in a world where so many organizations are not built to last.
Click here to read a review of this book.
Systemic Change
“Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges” by C. Otto Scharmer (Society for Organizational Learning, 2007): This book is about a leading-edge social technology — the “U process” — or methodology which was inspired by scenario planning, and has had some success in overcoming deeply entrenched social problems.
Click here to read an article about Theory U.
“Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future” by Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers (The Society for Organizational Learning, 2004): How would the world change if we learned to access, individually and collectively, our deepest capacity to sense and shape the future? This personal yet critical thinking book gives the reader an intimate look at the development of this new theory about change and learning.
“Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities” by Adam Kahane (Berret-Koehler Publishers, 2004): In this personal reflection of a long time scenario planning practitioner, Kahane tells his stories of involvement with the Mont Fleur Scenarios in South Africa and other crisis situations where deep listening and scenaric thinking led to break through political decisions.
"Places to Intervene in a System" by Donella H. Meadows (Whole Earth, Winter 1997): This is a good and highly influential summary of systems thinking by the author of Limits to Growth.
“The Slow Pace of Fast Change: Bringing Innovations to Market in a Connected World” by Bhaskar Chakravorti (Harvard Business School Press, 2003): This book explains why industries, including healthcare, get locked-in to a particular structure and how changes require a networked response.
Click here to read a review of this book.
Group Process Methods
“The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter” by Juanita Brown and David Isaacs (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2005): This book outlines the design principles and some practical tools and tips for World Cafés – a flexible, easy-to-use process for fostering collaborative dialogue, sharing collective knowledge, and discovering new opportunities for action.
“Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together: A Pioneering Approach to Communicating in Business and in Life” by William Isaacs (Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1999): This book emphasizes the importance of a successful dialogue to successful business operations, explaining how the "art of thinking together" can be used to create a communication bridge in organizations and communities.
“Open Space Technology, a User’s Guide” by Harrison Owen (Berrett-Koehler, 2008): This book is a support guide for using open space technology – a methodological tool that enables self-organizing groups of all sizes to deal with hugely complex issues in a very short period of time.
“Mapping Dialogue: Essential Tools for Social Change” by Mille Bojer Marianne, Roehl Heiko, and Knuth Marianne (Taos Institute Publications, 2008): This book provides a closer look at transformative dialogue tools and processes for social change. It profiles ten of the most innovative dialogue methods in use today, and reviews another fifteen methods as well.
Managing Risk & Uncertainty
“Predictable Surprises: The Disasters You Should Have Seen Coming, and How to Prevent Them” by Max H. Bazerman and Michael D. Watkins (Harvard Business Review, 2003): This article agues that many of the events that we consider surprises are predictable without hindsight and that well-prepared businesses should be able to profit from preparing for these ‘surprises’.
Click here to read an interview with the authors.
“The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Random House, 2007): This is a fun and important read on how and why the ‘impossible’ happens all the time and deeply shapes our history.
Click here to read a summary of this concept.
Click here to read an article by the author.
"Why Foxes Are Better Forecasters Than Hedgehogs" by Philip Tetlock (Long Now Foundation Lecture, January 26, 2007): This is a fascinatingly insightful lecture on Tetlock’s psychological research on predictions – he finds that it’s not what you think but how you think that matters most for successful predictions.
“Everybody’s an Expert: Putting Predictions to the Test” by Louis Menand (The New Yorker, October, 2005): This article discusses how so-called ‘experts’ are held to no more accountability than the rest of us, resulting in the fact that these ‘experts’ are often no more knowledgeable than the rest of us.
"Daniel Kahneman: The Thought Leader Interview” by Michael Schrage (Strategy + Business, Winter 2003): Nobel Prize–winning economist Schrage parses the roles of emotion, cognition, and perception in the understanding of business risk.
Design
“In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World” by John Thakera (MIT Press, 2005):
This book is about a world based less on stuff and more on people, about what we can do that technology can’t, and about services designed to help people carry out daily activities in new ways.
Click here to read a review of this book.
“Cradle-to-cradle: Remaking the Way we Make Things” by William McDonough and Michael Braungart (North Point Press, 2002): This is one of the best and most beautifully written books on sustainable designs for the future.
Click here to watch a video lecture on this concept.
Leadership
“The Neuroscience of Leadership” by David Rock and Jeffery Schwartz (Strategy + Business, Summer 2006): An article with long-lasting implications for how people and organizations change.
"On Leadership” (Harvard Business Review/Harvard Business School Press, 1998):
A collection of eight of the Harvard Business Review’s best articles on leadership in today’s business world.
Click here to read more about this book.
“Leadership on the Line” by Ronald Heifetz and Martin Linsky (Harvard Business School Press, 2002): This is an encouraging book about how, despite the inherent dangers of change, businesses recreate themselves.
Click here to read an interview with the author.
Click here to read a second interview with the author.
Innovation
“The Opportunity and Threat of Disruptive Technologies" by Clayton Christensen (Harvard Business School Interactive, 2000 (Faculty Seminar Series)): This lecture series is about how technology sometimes outpaces the market; it claims that disruptive technologies are often the standards for the future and that the businesses that keep up will be the ones that succeed.
“Seeing What’s Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change” by Clayton M. Christensen, Erik A. Roth, and Scott D. Anthony (Harvard Business School Press, 2004): This book provides an ‘outside-in’ perspective on predicting industry change, and the winners and losers.
Click here to read more about this book.
"The Innovation Sandbox" by C.K. Prahalad (Strategy + Business, August 2006):
To create an impossibly low-cost, high-quality new business model, start by cultivating constraints.
“Serious Play: How the Best Companies Innovate” by Michael Schrage (Harvard Business School Press, 1999): Serious Play, is a first-rate user's guide for managers, project leaders, and other innovators looking to unlock key strategies and practices for successful innovation.
“The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO” by Tom Kelly (Currency, 2001): In this book, Tom Kelly gives readers a look at the operations of IDEO, one of the most successful innovators of the past 20 years.
Click here to read more about this book.
Click here to read a review of this book.
“Blue Ocean Strategy” by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne (Harvard Business Review, October 2004): This article argues that the trick to business success lies not in out-competing rivals in close quartered fights for market space, but in creating your own ‘blue ocean’ of uncontested market space.
Organization & Culture
“The Three Ways of Getting Things Done: Hierarchy, Heterarchy and Responsible Autonomy in Organizations” by Gerard Fairtlough (Triarchy Press, 2005): This book argues that heterarchy and responsible autonomy can be just as effective as hierarchy in managing an efficient business.
Click here to read a review of this book.
Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship
“How to Change the World” by David Bornstein (PRESS INFO): The best and brightest are no longer flocking to traditional industries – they are becoming social entrepreneurs. Author of Banker to the Poor, Bornstein's book is one of the best on the subject.
Click here to visit the book’s website.
“Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why Nobody Saw it Coming” by Paul Hawken (Viking 2007): A combination of history, current events, motivation and vision for the future, this book outlines the history, growth, and successes of the social and environmental justice movement and posits that it is humanity’s powerful immune response to our ecological crisis.
Click here to watch a video lecture.
"Social Innovation: What it is, Why it Matters, How it can be Accelerated" by Geoff Mulgan (Oxford, Said Business School, March 2007): This report examines the history, process and theory, and practice of how social innovation happens in NGOs, the public sector, movements, networks and markets.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
