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crowd, but they are rare and regularly just lucky hits. You find experts who predicted the market crash of 2008 or more singular stock market developments correctly, but it is in hindsight only. The problem is less that true gurus are not recognized as such, but that their correct predictions in hindsight do not guarantee they will be right in the future. Some formerly acclaimed geniuses of the financial markets were just running Ponzi schemes using the money of new investors to pay interest to the existing ones. All this is in principle has been known since the 1950s when Herman Kahn tried to establish the science of futurology. Out of his well funded and staffed Hudson Institute he correctly predicted many trends in the expansion and proliferation of existing technologies, but with the nascent information technology of that time, he missed the trend really shaping the future. In the decades since then humankind has learned to be more cautious when trying to look into the future. With life as usual and gradual development the rule, the possibility of technological revolutions and disruptions have to be taken into account. Disruptive innovations and technologies have gained attention since Clayton M. Christensen coined the term a decade ago. However, by their very definition the effects of such rapid developments are hard to predict and they are often caused by unique situational determinants. In sum, the reason for prognostic inaccuracies and failures is simple. Prognoses cannot be better than the understanding of the processes leading to them, and even if these processes are fairly simple, complex interactions can arise. The worldwide fitness boom at the beginning of a year is a typical example of this. There is only one basic process responsible, the weakness of will, a phenomenon known for many centuries and scientifically studied for decades. Individuals are also aware of this weakness and can often tell heartwarming stories of their problems. At certain times, like New Years Eve they try to cope with it by making resolutions for the coming year. Typically, however, the weakness of will wins out over time and ironically the strength of the resolution and its timing indicates how weak the will actually is. So it is a fairly safe prognosis that many of those signing up for fitness programs in January will be out again by April! Hopefully though, some will overcome their weakness; they will typically do this by taking other factors into account like not trying to overachieve and looking for a social setting which makes the fitness work enjoyable. These successful individuals have a better model of themselves, they consider the side effects and try to set a framework in which the short term resolution can in fact have long term positive effects. It is this good model which decides if a prognosis deserves this label or is just a wild guess based on singular arguments. It is tempting to predict aspects of the future, but the focus must be on the understanding of the processes leading to them. Possibly a flap of a butterflys wing in Brazil may set off a tornado in Texas, as eminent chaos researcher Edward N. Lorenz speculated in the 1970s. However, given the multitude of flaps it is nevertheless more helpful to look for the more proximate causes. Predictions, especially when they come around in numbers, have a tendency to obscure the lack of knowledge behind them. It is the deepening of the knowledge of underlying processes which will really help to make the year a good one.
Managing Essentials
International
Herman Kahn (1972). Things to Come: Thinking About the Seventies and Eighties. New York: MacMillan Disruptive Innovation (Clayton M. Christensen) www.managing-essentials.com/3a1 Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterflys Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas? (Edward N. Lorenz,Presented before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, December 29, 1972) www.managing-essentials.com/3a2