Hermosa Beach, CA

Monday, January 18, 2010

Prior to the December 31 deadline, the various media presented a deluge of "annual predictions" from companies, news pundits, bloggers and more - all forecasting what 2010 will bring. And January 2010 has followed suit with another avalanche of bogus prognostications, which most will end up to be.

Despite the bad record of these crystal ball gazers, executives and management devour these predictions as though they had a good chance to come true. In point of fact, most all such predictions are just the proverbial "Blah, Blah, Blah."

Why do these so often turn out wrong? One explanation is that people are just not held accountable for wrong predictions. But the more correct one is that predictions are frequently based on what we think we know, on what has happened in the past, and on a trend we believe will continue.

While that may have made sense in more stable times, the chaos theory points out that the past cannot be counted on to predict the future. To put it in another context, Harvard economist Lawrence Katz noted on the issue of jobs in The Wall Street Journal, "One thing we've learned is that when we attempt to forecast jobs 10 or 15 years out, we don't even get the categories right." The very idea behind this quote is that the past or even trends alone cannot be relied upon to determine what tomorrow will bring – in jobs or business in general. Yes, trends and predictions are important components of the informational input, but good decisions need to have more and better information from the broader spectrum of the competitive landscape.

Competitive Intelligence expert, Seena Sharp, author of the recently published Competitive Intelligence Advantage, points to some of the more famous failed predictions - not so much to show what they had missed, as to what they had failed to take into account. And, that makes all the difference.

Many people have predicted the end of inventions, including the US Patent Office Commissioner, Charles Duell, who wanted to close down the office in 1899. What he failed to realize is that, as L. Gordon Crovitz said, "The more we invent, the more we invent."

So, if you want to gain a competitive advantage about the future and what it means for your company, move away from the microscope most predictors use, and start looking through a "macroscope" that sees the larger picture. You are more likely to get it right, and less likely to spout the usual "blah, blah, blah!"

Seena Sharp

Principal

Sharp Market Intelligence

Hermosa Beach, CA

310.379.5179