FORESIGHT CAN SAVE YOUR CAREER—AND MAYBE YOUR LIFE

BETHESDA, MD—Foresight may be the best way to get and keep a job. In today’s dodgy employment climate, workers ignore business trends at their own peril. But with foresight, the power to shape your future is in your hands, according to a report from the World Future Society.

A new report from the World Future Society focuses on foresight and its key importance to success in business and life. "People who lack foresight are only too likely to find themselves unemployed when jobs are lost to new technologies, competition from overseas, or shifts in consumer tastes," the report notes. "Developing foresight may be the best way to safeguard our current jobs and future employability."

Foresight can also save your life. Knowing about health, well-being, medical advances, new therapies, treatments, drugs, and dangerous activities is important to making decisions. There are smokers alive today who heeded scientists’ warnings about the dangers of cigarettes, while their less-prepared neighbors died from cancer and heart disease.

The eight-page report, entitled "The Art of Foresight," includes sections on:

Foresight in business and government.

The growth of foresight techniques, from pioneering RAND Corporation "think-tankers" to today’s consultants and futurists.

Ways to anticipate the future, including trend analysis, modeling, polling, computer simulations, and scenario development. A sample trend analysis on the consequences of the increase of the elderly is highlighted.

Foresight resources available from the World Future Society, including books, reports, periodicals, and courses.

The report was prepared by Cynthia G. Wagner, managing editor of the Society’s magazine THE FUTURIST, and Edward Cornish, the magazine’s editor. Cornish is the author of a new book, Futuring: The Exploration of the Future, which will be published in June 2004.

The report is available for $4 from the World Future Society, 7910 Woodmont Ave., Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814. It is also included in the May-June 2004 issue of THE FUTURIST, which may be purchased from the Society or at www.wfs.org.