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Profit Patterns: 30 Ways to Anticipate and Profit from Strategic Forces Reshaping Your Business by Adrian J. Slywotzky, David J. Morrison, Ted Moser, Kevin A. Mundt, and James A. Quella. New York: Random House, 1999, 464 pp., $27.50, cloth [ISBN: 0-8129-- 3118-1].
As the old saw has it, "Predictions are difficult-particularly those about the future." Yet the corporate strategist, in the face of uncertain future events, many of which involve multiple, interdependent causes that sometimes can only be partially understood even after the fact, is expected to divine that future and chart a course that will facilitate organizational survival and, more importantly, success. The executives who get it right, such as Jack Welch, are lauded, while those who miss the mark ... well, at least they have their stock options.
Notwithstanding the uncertainty of future events, current trends and developments at least permit some measure of consideration, analysis, and projection. We may not know exactly where the technological revolution will go, particularly as we project out to longer and longer time horizons, but we can extrapolate from the most recent events to the very near-term future or at least use those events to better understand the present. Still uncertain, by most measures the latter form of analysis admits of at least somewhat more certainty than long-term projections. The catch is twofold, and is based upon recognition of the speed and scope of change: In today's hypercompetitive world, events occur so rapidly that even developing an understanding of the present represents a significant challenge, and projections to the future, even the near-term, are made uncertain by a compression of the event time horizon brought about by discontinuous change.
Slywotzky and associates approach this topic from the standpoint that events, regardless of the rapidity of change, are reducible to fundamental patterns....