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Instead of producing a conference issue as in the recent past, Strategy &Leadership will invite selected keynote speakers and session presenters at the Strategic Leadership Forum's annual international conference to submit articles for publication throughout the year.
In the July/August issue, for example, keynoter Christopher Bartlett described the shift in the roles of management and the organizational forms that will foster success in the years ahead. Dwight Gertz, who led a discussion with UPS's Kent Nelson and USAA's Gen. Robert T. Herres on aligning companies for growth, is one of the authors in this issue; in the November/ December 1996 issue, Hamish McRae, associate editor of The Independent in the U.K., will offer a reprise of his address on the five seismic forces that will affect future business throughout the world. John Naisbitt, in an inspiring presentation on day two of the conference, discussed key points from his most recent book, Megatrends Asia. In our next issue, Aya Yamaura of Japan's Daiichi Corporation will critique his analysis of these trends. Other important articles will be scheduled throughout next year.
In this brief overview, we will try to present the flavor of the 1996 conference in Atlanta and accent a few of the important issues in strategic leadership that were introduced.
The Challenge of the New Realities
Alvin Toffler, influential social critic and author of The Third Wave, opened the first day of meetings with an insightful and challenging view of the new realities. He cautioned attendees not to view the various forces of change as isolated events. Instead, he believes the entire business environment is being transformed by the turbulence arising out of "third-wave" events. The result will be a revolution in thinking as powerful as the Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries and at least as profound in affecting social change as the firstwave shift to an agrarian society and the second-wave leap to the industrial age. Because revolutions upset and transform trends, he advises that extrapolation will no longer be a helpful strategic tool.
Most of Toffler's comments focused on the effect of third-wave change on society and the economy. We will have a new way of creating wealth as knowledge replaces labor and capital as the critical factor in production. Money...