Peter Schwartz (1) (1946–)
Author of The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World
For other authors named Peter Schwartz, see the disambiguation page.
About the Author
Peter Schwartz is cofounder and chairman of Global Business Network, part of the Monitor Group, and is a partner in the venture capital firm Alta Partners
Image credit: Photo © Esther Dyson
Works by Peter Schwartz
The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World (1991) 657 copies, 7 reviews
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Schwartz, Peter
- Birthdate
- 1946
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, B.S., aeronautical engineering, 1968
- Occupations
- teacher
business strategist
futurist
speaker - Awards and honors
- National Merit scholarship
- Short biography
- Peter was in born in 1946 to Klara and Benjamin Schwartz, Hungarian Jews who had been in concentration camps and were living in a displaced persons camp in Stuttgart, Germany. The family soon moved to Norway, where they lived until Peter was five. At this point, they emigrated to America, and found a new home in Camden, New Jersey. Peter grew up there, attending school with such future stars as Steven Spielberg. He won a National Merit scholarship, and was able to attend Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on full scholarship.
After graduating in 1968 with a B.S. in aeronautical engineering, Peter taught high school in Philadelphia and worked in the innovative student housing program at UC Davis. In 1972 he became an employee at the Stanford Research Institute, where he began to develop his unique method of scenario planning, and rose to director of the Strategic Environment Center. In 1982, he moved to London to work for Royal Dutch Shell as head of scenario planning. In 1985, while giving a speech at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory of UC Berkeley, he met his future wife, Cathleen Gross. He moved to live with her in Berkeley, California in 1987, and they bought a house together and were married, and had one son, Benjamin, born in 1990. Peter has written several books, on a variety of future-oriented topics. His first book, The Art of the Long View is considered by many to be the seminal publication on scenario planning, and is used as a textbook by many business schools. He founded GBN, an “information hunting and gathering company,” in 1988 and describes it as a high level networking and corporate research agency. He publishes and lectures widely and served as a script consultant on the films "The Minority Report," "Deep Impact," "Sneakers," and "War Games." - Nationality
- USA
- Places of residence
- Norway
Camden, New Jersey, USA
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Menlo Park, California, USA
London, England, UK
Berkeley, California, USA - Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
I've been calling myself a futurist for the past five years, and for five years, I've been lying. But no longer, because I've read this book, which is every bit as a thought-provoking as Science Fiction for Prototyping proved disappointing. Peter Schwartz is one of the founders of the Global Business Network consulting firm, and honed his skills designing scenarios for Shell Oil in the 1980s. In The Art of the Long View, he makes a strong case for the utility of scenario planning, explains show more how to develop a proper futurist mindset, and how to create your own scenarios.
Scenario planning is not predicting the future. Rather, it is about challenging the official future, and the assumptions that underlie it. Scenarios force you to examine your unspoken beliefs and values, the evidence supporting them, and how you might react in the future. An organization that includes scenario planning in its process is better able to react to rapidly changing conditions, and less likely to be rendered slowly obsolete through technological change.
Scenario planning is inherently interdisciplinary. A scenario plan has to include technological, economic, cultural, and political factors, as well as individual psychology. Broad areas of knowledge rather than deep and narrow research is better suited at picking up on trends. The ideas and forces that most powerfully influence the future originate on the margins of society, among the dispossessed, the utopian, or the just plain weird. Finally, Schwartz includes a detailed, 8 stage guide to using scenarios in your own organization, with a good balance of theories and examples. Perhaps the ultimate success of scenario planning is that it creates a shared language to talk about the future.
Scenario planning might not be about predicting the future, but a futurist who makes no predictions isn't very useful. The book was published in 1991, and some parts feel oddly anachronistic, like the Japanophilia, the groping towards a 'digital global teenager', and the absence of the War on Terror. On the other hand, he offers three scenarios for the world in 2005: New Empires focused on regional militarism, Market World with multicultural entrepreneurialism, and Change Without Progress, where the wealthy hollow out states, and fear of losing what little remains prevents successful action. Change Without Progress is strikingly similar to the world today, with our 1%ers and 99%ers, paralyzed multinational bodies, and collapsing infrastructure.
Scenario planning is not a strict methodology that automatically produces valid results, it's an attitude towards the future that is based on broad understandings of historical forces and skepticism about the status quo. The results will vary on the quality of the questions you can ask, the data available, and the conversation you foster. But as far as crystal balls go, scenario planning is one of the best. show less
Scenario planning is not predicting the future. Rather, it is about challenging the official future, and the assumptions that underlie it. Scenarios force you to examine your unspoken beliefs and values, the evidence supporting them, and how you might react in the future. An organization that includes scenario planning in its process is better able to react to rapidly changing conditions, and less likely to be rendered slowly obsolete through technological change.
Scenario planning is inherently interdisciplinary. A scenario plan has to include technological, economic, cultural, and political factors, as well as individual psychology. Broad areas of knowledge rather than deep and narrow research is better suited at picking up on trends. The ideas and forces that most powerfully influence the future originate on the margins of society, among the dispossessed, the utopian, or the just plain weird. Finally, Schwartz includes a detailed, 8 stage guide to using scenarios in your own organization, with a good balance of theories and examples. Perhaps the ultimate success of scenario planning is that it creates a shared language to talk about the future.
Scenario planning might not be about predicting the future, but a futurist who makes no predictions isn't very useful. The book was published in 1991, and some parts feel oddly anachronistic, like the Japanophilia, the groping towards a 'digital global teenager', and the absence of the War on Terror. On the other hand, he offers three scenarios for the world in 2005: New Empires focused on regional militarism, Market World with multicultural entrepreneurialism, and Change Without Progress, where the wealthy hollow out states, and fear of losing what little remains prevents successful action. Change Without Progress is strikingly similar to the world today, with our 1%ers and 99%ers, paralyzed multinational bodies, and collapsing infrastructure.
Scenario planning is not a strict methodology that automatically produces valid results, it's an attitude towards the future that is based on broad understandings of historical forces and skepticism about the status quo. The results will vary on the quality of the questions you can ask, the data available, and the conversation you foster. But as far as crystal balls go, scenario planning is one of the best. show less
Schwartz is the author of the very influential Art of the Long View, the book that made scenarios a household word. This 2003 book is a follow-up to that, a very necessary one. In addition to cataloging the surprises that he thinks are inevitable, he also expounds on the importance of using scenarios correctly – as the Bush Administration recently failed to do.
The use of three scenarios (four is too confusing, two is too limiting) is now standard practice in almost any kind of planning. show more While this book came out too early to deal with the Go Long/Go Strong/ Go Home scenarios, Schwartz does discuss the failure of such obviously pre-determined planning. The purpose of scenarios is not to predict the future accurately. If it were that simple to predict the future, everyone would do it. The goal is to look at possibilities that stretch your thinking. Whether oil prices are going to go up or down, planners should break through their assumptions and prepare for futures that will not go the way they would like. This “re-perception” is the real value of using scenarios.
It also shows the phoniness of the Bush planning and scenario use during the run up to the surge. Going home was never a possibility and no amount of reality could make it so. Going long is the reality that has resulted, but those words could not be used, since they would expose the bankruptcy of the policy, even though it was likely the best description of the policy from the beginning. Go strong is also a misuse of words, since we are only going back to the number of troops that were insufficient in the past. It was predetermined what Bush’s decision would be and no new thoughts or perceptions would be permitted. No voice would be given to futures that would not be to Bush’s liking.
Moving from the immediate politics, the book is chock full of great ideas, especially for a reality based community. Schwartz even acknowledges the possibility that America will turn into a rogue super-power, citing that as one of the few events that can shutdown what he sees as an inevitable future of wonders. Don’t worry. He is not looking through rose colored glasses. Vastly increased surveillance. The near certainty of deadly plagues. Large scale migrations, not all of them voluntary.
The most useful takeaway is the chapter on inevitable strategies – how to prepare not just for futures we can foresee, but those we can’t. Even when the broad strokes are clear, the secondary effects of those stroke can be world changing.
Inevitable Surprises: Thinking Ahead in a Time of Turbulence
Chapter 1 - Inevitable Surprises
Chapter 2 - A World Integrated with Elders
Chapter 3 - The Great Flood of People
Chapter 4 - The Return of the Long Boom
Chapter 5 - The Thoroughly New World Order
Chapter 6 - A Catalog of Disorder
Chapter 7 - Breakthroughs in Breaking Through: Science and Technology
Chapter 8 - A Cleaner, Deadlier World
Chapter 9 - Inevitable Strategies show less
The use of three scenarios (four is too confusing, two is too limiting) is now standard practice in almost any kind of planning. show more While this book came out too early to deal with the Go Long/Go Strong/ Go Home scenarios, Schwartz does discuss the failure of such obviously pre-determined planning. The purpose of scenarios is not to predict the future accurately. If it were that simple to predict the future, everyone would do it. The goal is to look at possibilities that stretch your thinking. Whether oil prices are going to go up or down, planners should break through their assumptions and prepare for futures that will not go the way they would like. This “re-perception” is the real value of using scenarios.
It also shows the phoniness of the Bush planning and scenario use during the run up to the surge. Going home was never a possibility and no amount of reality could make it so. Going long is the reality that has resulted, but those words could not be used, since they would expose the bankruptcy of the policy, even though it was likely the best description of the policy from the beginning. Go strong is also a misuse of words, since we are only going back to the number of troops that were insufficient in the past. It was predetermined what Bush’s decision would be and no new thoughts or perceptions would be permitted. No voice would be given to futures that would not be to Bush’s liking.
Moving from the immediate politics, the book is chock full of great ideas, especially for a reality based community. Schwartz even acknowledges the possibility that America will turn into a rogue super-power, citing that as one of the few events that can shutdown what he sees as an inevitable future of wonders. Don’t worry. He is not looking through rose colored glasses. Vastly increased surveillance. The near certainty of deadly plagues. Large scale migrations, not all of them voluntary.
The most useful takeaway is the chapter on inevitable strategies – how to prepare not just for futures we can foresee, but those we can’t. Even when the broad strokes are clear, the secondary effects of those stroke can be world changing.
Inevitable Surprises: Thinking Ahead in a Time of Turbulence
Chapter 1 - Inevitable Surprises
Chapter 2 - A World Integrated with Elders
Chapter 3 - The Great Flood of People
Chapter 4 - The Return of the Long Boom
Chapter 5 - The Thoroughly New World Order
Chapter 6 - A Catalog of Disorder
Chapter 7 - Breakthroughs in Breaking Through: Science and Technology
Chapter 8 - A Cleaner, Deadlier World
Chapter 9 - Inevitable Strategies show less
I’ve based this review just based on the Blinkist summary of the book. A summary inevitably misses much but I’ve found the Blinkist summaries to be remarkably good at distilling the essence of the book. And if I find it sufficiently stimulating, I’ll purchase and read the full version. In the meantime, Here are a few extracts from the summary that seemed to capture the main messages of the book:
People want a combination of financial success and happiness.....This tells us that show more financial success is important, but ideally, this money won’t come at the expense of happiness or a healthy work-life balance.
The answer to this [equation of balance] lies in taking all the aspects of your life into consideration and emerging with a path that allows you to be successful without sacrificing important things like family, friends and health.
iI you are serious about securing a fulfilling career, you’ll eventually need to look at things from a long-term perspective.......There’s a saying that your career should be thought of as a marathon, not a sprint. It’s likely that 85 to 90 percent of your personal wealth will likely be accumulated after your fortieth birthday. [Basically the law of compound interest at play].
Until then, it’s best to take your time and figure out what you really like doing and how you can become an expert in your field. This way, you won’t be stuck doing something you hate for the next 45 years.
The three pillars are:
• transferable skills,
• meaningful experiences and
• enduring relationships.
Picture being 40 years old, losing your job and being forced to start all over again on your own.......You should spend your twenties and thirties gaining skills....Now, the best ones to have are transferable skills, which can be applied to a variety of different jobs. You can get these by picking up academic degrees, foreign languages and computer skills, as well as more personal characteristics like communication skills and emotional intelligence.
Having strong and persuasive communication skills is an excellent trait for any job. You should also be working in different environments in order to build meaningful experiences.
People who spend their career in one environment probably know how to do one thing efficiently but get overwhelmed when confronted with something out of the ordinary.
So take chances and move from a corporate environment into an entrepreneurial one that might provide the opportunity to launch a new brand from the ground up. Or perhaps work abroad for a while. Either way, don’t be afraid to fail, as failure also comes with important lessons.
The best relationships you can form all fall into one of four levels:
1. The first level is your basic contacts,......These might not be the strongest connections, but they’re useful for sharing a message
2. The second level contains the experts, who are people that carry specific knowledge and have access to certain information that could one day be the solution to a major problem.
3. At the third level are the critical colleagues, which include your boss and other people who have the most impact on your career success.
4. Finally, the fourth level contains the champions, such as your mentors and the small number of people who are there to offer support and advice.
Now that you have them in order, it’s good to regularly check in and identify your key contacts. And it’s always good to spend the most time with those who make you feel intelligent, stronger and more able to conquer your career goals.
Careers last an average of 45 years,
The first stage is all about getting yourself in the game, so this includes putting together a plan for your job search and building connections to land that first gig.....Creating a spreadsheet can be useful, as you can fill in the first column with around 20 different companies......LinkedIn can be a good tool for establishing these contacts,
Once you find a connection, send a short e-mail, along with your resume, to see if they’d be willing to spend 15 to 20 minutes talking about their job.
With job hunting, having a connection within the company always provides a huge advantage and increases your chances.....This first stage is also a time to discover what you are good at and improving these skills.
No matter what, the 15 years of the first stage in your career should always be about finding ways to continue accumulating knowledge, better understand your strengths and overcome your weaknesses.......The main goal here is to lay a solid foundation to build upon during the next two stages.
Stage two is about becoming an expert at it by building upon your core strengths and making sure you stand out from the rest......A great way to set yourself apart is to find your “sweet spot,” which is the intersection between what you are good at, what you love doing and which service you can provide the world.
So, if you are a talented communicator, you might focus your time and energy on building a reputation as being the best public speaker in your company.......Or, if you are a creative genius, work at becoming the company’s visionary and go-to person for innovative ideas.
You should be familiar with your weaknesses as well as your strengths. You can use this information to your advantage by building a strong team that contains people with skills that complement one another...... No one is perfect, so use this time to surround yourself with teammates that can compensate for the areas that aren’t your strongest.
Because people are living longer, a person’s career can last longer than it ever has before.
[So later in life] you can plan ahead, you can still pass the torch on to others and maintain a sense of contribution and value. Succession is one of the most popular ways to go about this, as it ensures your company is prepared and can seamlessly transition from one leader to the next.
Depending on your area and depth of knowledge, your third stage [I guess he means retirement] could include time spent teaching a college course or perhaps offering classes in your neighbourhood to help people of all ages learn a new skill.
It’s important to stay up-to-date on all the latest developments if your expertise is going to stay relevant......So, use your mentoring sessions with the younger generation to both pass on knowledge and stay informed on current topics.
The key message in this book: We often underestimate how long a career is and miss out on the big picture by focusing on short-term successes. We can fix this short-sightedness by recognizing the long journey that constitutes a successful career and equipping ourselves with the right skills and relevant experiences to attain long-term satisfaction.
My take on the book. Actually quite useful. And I’ll try and get my young son to read it. (Don’t like my chances). But it’s very directed at a corporate type of career with a distinctively American bias. I also think he’s underplaying the impact of people living longer and populations aging. Inevitably this is going to mean that people will probably be working longer. I rather liked his point that once you had your foot in the door, that it was smart to find your niche.....like being the best communicator. And this would apply no matter whether you were employed as an engineer or a nurse.
Nothing really revolutionary here but some good solid advice. Four stars from me. show less
People want a combination of financial success and happiness.....This tells us that show more financial success is important, but ideally, this money won’t come at the expense of happiness or a healthy work-life balance.
The answer to this [equation of balance] lies in taking all the aspects of your life into consideration and emerging with a path that allows you to be successful without sacrificing important things like family, friends and health.
iI you are serious about securing a fulfilling career, you’ll eventually need to look at things from a long-term perspective.......There’s a saying that your career should be thought of as a marathon, not a sprint. It’s likely that 85 to 90 percent of your personal wealth will likely be accumulated after your fortieth birthday. [Basically the law of compound interest at play].
Until then, it’s best to take your time and figure out what you really like doing and how you can become an expert in your field. This way, you won’t be stuck doing something you hate for the next 45 years.
The three pillars are:
• transferable skills,
• meaningful experiences and
• enduring relationships.
Picture being 40 years old, losing your job and being forced to start all over again on your own.......You should spend your twenties and thirties gaining skills....Now, the best ones to have are transferable skills, which can be applied to a variety of different jobs. You can get these by picking up academic degrees, foreign languages and computer skills, as well as more personal characteristics like communication skills and emotional intelligence.
Having strong and persuasive communication skills is an excellent trait for any job. You should also be working in different environments in order to build meaningful experiences.
People who spend their career in one environment probably know how to do one thing efficiently but get overwhelmed when confronted with something out of the ordinary.
So take chances and move from a corporate environment into an entrepreneurial one that might provide the opportunity to launch a new brand from the ground up. Or perhaps work abroad for a while. Either way, don’t be afraid to fail, as failure also comes with important lessons.
The best relationships you can form all fall into one of four levels:
1. The first level is your basic contacts,......These might not be the strongest connections, but they’re useful for sharing a message
2. The second level contains the experts, who are people that carry specific knowledge and have access to certain information that could one day be the solution to a major problem.
3. At the third level are the critical colleagues, which include your boss and other people who have the most impact on your career success.
4. Finally, the fourth level contains the champions, such as your mentors and the small number of people who are there to offer support and advice.
Now that you have them in order, it’s good to regularly check in and identify your key contacts. And it’s always good to spend the most time with those who make you feel intelligent, stronger and more able to conquer your career goals.
Careers last an average of 45 years,
The first stage is all about getting yourself in the game, so this includes putting together a plan for your job search and building connections to land that first gig.....Creating a spreadsheet can be useful, as you can fill in the first column with around 20 different companies......LinkedIn can be a good tool for establishing these contacts,
Once you find a connection, send a short e-mail, along with your resume, to see if they’d be willing to spend 15 to 20 minutes talking about their job.
With job hunting, having a connection within the company always provides a huge advantage and increases your chances.....This first stage is also a time to discover what you are good at and improving these skills.
No matter what, the 15 years of the first stage in your career should always be about finding ways to continue accumulating knowledge, better understand your strengths and overcome your weaknesses.......The main goal here is to lay a solid foundation to build upon during the next two stages.
Stage two is about becoming an expert at it by building upon your core strengths and making sure you stand out from the rest......A great way to set yourself apart is to find your “sweet spot,” which is the intersection between what you are good at, what you love doing and which service you can provide the world.
So, if you are a talented communicator, you might focus your time and energy on building a reputation as being the best public speaker in your company.......Or, if you are a creative genius, work at becoming the company’s visionary and go-to person for innovative ideas.
You should be familiar with your weaknesses as well as your strengths. You can use this information to your advantage by building a strong team that contains people with skills that complement one another...... No one is perfect, so use this time to surround yourself with teammates that can compensate for the areas that aren’t your strongest.
Because people are living longer, a person’s career can last longer than it ever has before.
[So later in life] you can plan ahead, you can still pass the torch on to others and maintain a sense of contribution and value. Succession is one of the most popular ways to go about this, as it ensures your company is prepared and can seamlessly transition from one leader to the next.
Depending on your area and depth of knowledge, your third stage [I guess he means retirement] could include time spent teaching a college course or perhaps offering classes in your neighbourhood to help people of all ages learn a new skill.
It’s important to stay up-to-date on all the latest developments if your expertise is going to stay relevant......So, use your mentoring sessions with the younger generation to both pass on knowledge and stay informed on current topics.
The key message in this book: We often underestimate how long a career is and miss out on the big picture by focusing on short-term successes. We can fix this short-sightedness by recognizing the long journey that constitutes a successful career and equipping ourselves with the right skills and relevant experiences to attain long-term satisfaction.
My take on the book. Actually quite useful. And I’ll try and get my young son to read it. (Don’t like my chances). But it’s very directed at a corporate type of career with a distinctively American bias. I also think he’s underplaying the impact of people living longer and populations aging. Inevitably this is going to mean that people will probably be working longer. I rather liked his point that once you had your foot in the door, that it was smart to find your niche.....like being the best communicator. And this would apply no matter whether you were employed as an engineer or a nurse.
Nothing really revolutionary here but some good solid advice. Four stars from me. show less
This is a book about the use of scenarios in business planning and societal planning. There is a key difference between Schwartz’ approach and the everyday use of scenarios in interaction design: Schwartz advocates the development of multiple scenarios expressing parallel plausible futures, and then using the scenarios to make decisions and prepare for different courses of action. The book outlines the elements of planning-scenarios and the craft of building them, along with a number of show more examples mainly drawn from business planning. The multiple-scenario approach and the emphasis on the big picture are valuable takeaways for interaction designers, perhaps mainly in concept and product development work. show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 11
- Also by
- 1
- Members
- 948
- Popularity
- #27,124
- Rating
- 3.6
- Reviews
- 8
- ISBNs
- 60
- Languages
- 8