The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World

by Peter Schwartz

Doubleday/Currency
Publication Date: May 1991
Price: $24.00, Hardcover
Pages: 258 pages
ISBN: 0-385-26731-2

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We met in what was then Ian Schrager's new hotel in New York, the Royalton, and I remember thinking that it was extremely apropos: it was an image of the future that we would be charting. Harriet Rubin and Napier Collyns had hatched the prospect of this book: the idea that Peter Schwartz' technique of building scenarios, honed at Stanford Research Institute, Royal Dutch/Shell and the then-relatively-new organization Global Business Network, could be codified into a manual.

Of all the books I've worked on, this has the most timeless quality. I still use it as a text in the scenario class that I teach at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. Some of the examples (such as the Global Teenager trend) are out of date, but the conceptual approach still works: Use the myriad possibilities of the future as a way of focusing attention, creativity and decision-making in the present.

See other editorial consultations: 

   Inevitable Surprises by Peter Schwartz (2003)
   The Invisible Continent    by Kenichi Ohmae (2003) 
   The Living Company by Arie de Geus (1997)
   The Last Word on Power by Tracy Goss (1996)
   Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will by Noel Tichy 
& Stratford Sherman (1993)
   Confronting Climate Change  by Irving Mintzer (editor) 
& Amber Leonard (1992)
The Art of the Long View by Peter Schwartz (1991)
   The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge