Powerful Times: Rising to the Challenge of Our Uncertain World - Hardcover

Kelly, Eamonn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0131855204 ISBN 13: 9780131855205

Publisher: Financial Times/ Prentice Hall, 2005

Synopsis

Understand the most revolutionary human transformation in four centuries... and prepare for it!

We're not just living through an age of change: we're living through a 'change of age': the most profound inflection point in human history since the Enlightenment. That's the thesis of Eamonn Kelly's remarkable new book Powerful Times. From terrorism and nuclear proliferation to emerging technologies and economic globalization, Kelly weaves together 7 powerful 'dynamic tensions' that will reshape human life in the coming decades. Kelly offers breakthrough insights into how these tensions will conflict -- and how they'll resonate, creating giant waves of change beyond anything we've ever faced. He takes on the truly big questions. To answer pivotal questions, Kelly draws on breakthrough 'scenario planning' techniques he pioneered: techniques hundreds of top organizations now rely on. Simply put, this book will help you prepare for humanity's most profound transition in 400 years.  For every executive, strategist, manager, entrepreneur, public policymaker, and citizen interested in the trends that will most powerfully impact business and life in the coming decades.

Eamonn Kelly, the CEO and president of Global Business Network, the renowned future-oriented network and consulting firm, has for over a decade and has been at the forefront of exploring the emergence of a new, knowledge-intensive economy, and its far-reaching consequences for society, organizations and individuals. He has consulted with senior executives at dozens of the world's leading corporations in virtually every leading business sector; with key global and national public agencies, and with major philanthropic foundations. Kelly co-authored What's Next: Exploring the New Terrain for Business and The Future of the Knowledge Economy, and authored GBN's 2003 Scenario Book.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Eamonn Kelly's imagination is grave, prehensile, and informed by a splendid breadth of context. This is an absolutely fascinating book, and one I look forward to re-reading at the earliest opportunity."
—William Gibson, science fiction writer, author of Neuromancer andPattern Recognition
"The world is changing fast in ways we dimly comprehend. Eamonn Kelly provides us with the ideas to better understand what is going on. He lays out the dilemmas we face and hints at ways in which the global agenda might evolve. He is a master of the 'big picture.' This is must reading for those who need to know about the future of planet Earth."
—Ged Davis, Managing director and head, Centre for Strategic Insight, World Economic Forum
"This book is a wake-up call for all who may not recognize the powerful uncertainties that are shaping our future. Those of us in business will need to upgrade our skills to learn how to balance market and moral wisdom, and to move from our narrow focus on competition to embracing adaptiveness as well."
—Crawford Beveridge, Senior Vice President of People and Places, Sun Microsystems
"The world around us is a very confusing and complex place; making sense of where we are, let alone where we are headed, is fraught with uncertainty. In Powerful Times, Eamonn Kelly has given us a something far better than predictions that can be proven wrong. He has crafted an insightful map of the plausible landscapes unfolding in front of us, a map that enables us to navigate these surprising times. Kelly helps us to understand and prepare for the often contradictory and paradoxical cross currents shaping our future so that we are equipped to make better decisions today that will stand up to an uncertain tomorrow."
—Peter Schwartz, co-founder, Global Business Network; author, Inevitable Surprises
"History is unleashed, the future is unwritten, and this is the best assessment of today's highly turbulent driving forces that you are likely to find anywhere. Reading Eamonn Kelly's book is like watching him break a kaleidoscope and number the bits."
—Bruce Sterling, science fiction writer (Holy Fire, The Hacker Crackdown); Viridian design activist; Wired blogger
"I love this book; it is an easy and thought-provoking read. In a world seemingly torn by multiple uncertainties and tensions, Powerful Times sorts them out for us into a clear map of outcomes and consequences. And rather than dispense formulas—like so many business books—Kelly challenges us to think for ourselves about strategies we might not have otherwise imagined."
—Luis Jimenez, senior vice president and chief strategy officer, Pitney Bowes
"Eamonn Kelly's Powerful Times could as well have been called The Art of the Wide View. In times of great upheaval, he demonstrates, the critical skill for decision makers is to avoid being prisoner of one's expectations. Kelly shows us how to array our forces so as to be prepared not just for rose petals being strewn at our feet, but also road bombs. Kelly's profound lesson is that 'both/and' thinking is the only way to make hard decisions in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty."
—Joel Garreau, author of Radical Evolution- The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—and What It Means to Be Human
"Any company that bets on a single future is likely to be blindsided by events that fall outside their peripheral vision. Eamonn Kelly's insights will help organizations tune their peripheral vision, perhaps even see out the back of their heads, so they can anticipate the most lethal threats or take advantage of a currently hidden opportunity."
—Daniel Rasmus, director of information work vision, Microsoft; IT industry observer; former vice president of Forrester Research
"Kelly carries on the rich tradition of Global Business Network in raising the important questions that society, business, and government will be facing in the future. Powerful Times does a masterful job of framing these questions with a richly illustrated story of how the future is unfolding right before us."
—Andrew Hines, executive director, Association of Professional Futurists; lecturer in future studies, University of Houston
"In Powerful Times, the practical realities of scenario thinking instruct the reader from start to finish. Kelly's storytelling makes easy reading of the otherwise daunting realities of future challenges and proposes frameworks for the decisions we must make as individuals and corporations in a changing and interdependent world."
—Nancy Ramsey, author, The Futures of Women
"Anyone trying to anticipate the future—to seize the great investment opportunities or to dodge potentially enterprise-ending risks—should pay attention to Eamonn Kelly's insights, honed from years of scenario thinking on the world business stage. A distinguished futurist, Kelly has filled his canvas so richly that any perspective will gain from his explication of the global forces that envelop all human enterprise—from the impacts of India, China, and AIDS to the range of energy or meteorologic futures that could unfold from this moment forward. Kelly argues cogently that while continued wealth and prosperity are plausible, they are no one country's or region's manifest destiny."
—Eric Best, global scenario strategist, Morgan Stanley
Prepare for a revolutionary global transformation
History is truly in motion, unfolding before us at a breathtaking pace and leaving us to wonder and worry about what will come next. In this book, Eamonn Kelly illuminates a set of dynamic tensions that will transform tomorrow's global economy, culture, geopolitics—and your life.
Will fundamentalists of all stripes obliterate secularism and usher in a new age of faith?
How will the emergence of China and India change everything from economics to values?
Will U.S. military hegemony prevail or be trumped by non-state actors?
Will scientific and technical advances accelerate or be slowed down by concerns over their risks and ethics?
What will happen as developed nations rapidly age?
Will global markets increase prosperity for all, or plunge some areas into decline?
Can humanity manage its growing planetary footprint?
And how can we, as individuals and organizations, mobilize and align our passions and power to create better futures?
Kelly has spent 15 years helping organizations understand what's coming next so they can embrace risk, master uncertainty, and act with confidence to shape their own destinies. After reading this book, you'll never hear the news, peruse the papers, or make decisions in the same way again.
© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

About the Author:

Eamonn Kelly is CEO and president of Global Business Network, the renowned future-oriented network and consulting firm. For over a decade, he has been at the forefront of exploring the emergence of a new, knowledgeintensive economy, and its far-reaching consequences for society, organizations and individuals. He has consulted with senior executives at dozens of the world's leading corporations in virtually every leading business sector; with key global and national public agencies, and with major philanthropic foundations. Kelly co-authored What's Next: Exploring the New Terrain for Business and The Future of the Knowledge Economy, and authored GBN's 2003 Scenario Book.

About this edition

• Publisher: Financial Times/ Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0131855204
• ISBN 13: 9780131855205
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368