In ancient cultures, each village had a shaman or medicine man who would visit the invisible world to obtain vital information, guidance, and healing for members of the tribe. These edgewalkers have contemporary counterparts in today's organizations—those individuals who don't fit squarely into any one box; in their metaphorical travels they interpret trends from the marketplace, translate messages across departments, and envision the future impact of today's decisions and actions. Edgewalking doesn't come without its own risks and challenges; these unconventional people often clash with more traditional, rule-bound colleagues, and they are often frustrated by organizational systems that emphasize quantitative results over creative impulses. And yet in today's fast-changing, diverse, and globalized business environment, organizations must recruit and support these people in order to stay competitive. Featuring colorful interviews and practical tools to gauge and manage your own edgewalking skills, Edgewalkers explores the opportunities that are created by defying formal boundaries and fostering creativity at every level of the organization. They're the first people to volunteer to head up a new business unit, lead a cross-company initiative, or take on an overseas assignment. They're the glass half-full folks, who are constantly thinking out of the box, forging alliances with colleagues in other departments, seeking out new solutions to old problems, and anticipating challenges on the horizon. And in today's increasingly diverse workplaces, they are often people who have pursued unusual educational and career paths, traveled widely, and speak more than one language. Judi Neal has a term for these people: Edgewalkers. Literally, an edgewalker is someone who walks between two worlds. In ancient cultures, each village had a shaman or medicine man who would visit the invisible world to obtain vital information, guidance, and healing for members of the tribe. Today's corporate edgewalkers serve a similar function, interpreting trends from the marketplace, translating messages across departments, and envisioning the future impact of today's decisions and actions. Edgewalking doesn't come without its own risks and challenges; these unconventional people often clash with more traditional, rule-bound colleagues, and they are often frustrated by organizational systems that emphasize quantitative results over creative impulses. And yet in today's fast-changing, globalized business environment, organizations must recruit and support these people in order to stay competitive. Featuring colorful interviews with edgewalkers from a variety of fields and practical tools to gauge and manage your own edgewalking skills, Edgewalkers explores the opportunities that are created by defying formal boundaries and fostering creativity at every level of the organization.

In the tradition of H. G. Wells's The Shape of Things to Come, W. Warren Wagar's A Short History of the Future is a memoir of postmodern times. Cast in the form of a history book, the narrative voice of the book's powerful vision is that of a far-future historian, Peter Jensen, who leaves this account of the world from the 1990s to the opening of the twenty-third century as a gift to his granddaughter. A dazzling and imaginative combination of fiction and scholarship, Wagar's speculative history of the future alternates between descriptions of world events and intimate glimpses of his fictive historian's family through the ages. Jensen's tale traces the flow of the future from the early twenty-first-century reign of a megacorporate global economy, to its sudden collapse in 2044, when nuclear catastrophe envelops the world. In the traumatic aftermath, a socialist world commonwealth comes into being in the year 2062, followed by a lengthy transition to a decentralized order of technologically mature autonomous societies, many located in outer space. The riveting literary interludes that follow each chapter take the form of letters and documents from the history of Jensen's family, evoking the everyday lives of people in the midst of these global-historical events. Here we meet a woman in Brazil whose son is dying from a new immuno-deficiency disease, two brothers comparing life on earth with life in a space colony, and many more. Neither fiction nor nonfiction, Wagar's brilliantly creative work is not meant to forecast the future, but rather to draw attention to possibilities and alternatives for humankind and planet Earth. In doing so, it also serves as an unforgettable reminder that the future is being made now.

Traditional strategy assumes stability and predictability. Today's world is better characterised by turbulence, uncertainty, novelty and ambiguity - conditions that contribute disruptive changes and trigger the search for new ways of coping. This book aims to become the premier guide on how to do scenario planning to support strategy and public policy. Co-authored by three experts in the field, the book presents The Oxford Scenario Planning Approach (OSPA). The approach is both intellectually rigorous and practical. Methodological choices and theoretical aspects in practice are detailed in reference to the relevant literatures and grounded in 6 case studies the authors have been involved with. The book makes several contributions to the field, centred on how learning with scenario planning is supported by re-framing and re-perception; how this iterative process can be embedded in corporate or government settings, and how it helps those that it supports to do well in today's world. The book is written in an accessible style and will be a useful introductory text as well as a useful guide for the more experienced scenario planning practitioner and scholar.

How should men and women and God relate to one another? Letty Russell's answer is "partnership," understood in new ways as a relationship rooted in the life story of Jesus. Instead of concentrating on individuals as single entities, she develops the theme of the individual in partnership--both with God and with Others. She deals with the theological foundations of partnership and such practical concerns as lifestyles, human sexuality, education, church community life, and ministry. Her book speaks to the interests of churchwomen, feminists, students of theology, and the many who have studied her other books.

"In Knowing Tomorrow, well known futures researchers from around the world [e.g., Italy, the U.K., the U.S.A, the Netherlands, Taiwan, and Australia) discuss how the future is being dealt with in different sciences. They describe how scientists have incorporated the future in their theories, thereby often taking a historical perspective. The findings of this book can offer strong support to the scientific foundations of futures research and thus improve futures research as a scientific discipline."--BOOK JACKET.

"This directory covers the wide range of information resources-organizations, individuals, books, films, courses, etc.-now available in the field of futuristics, or "the study of the future"."--V.

Agile Marketing: The Incomplete Guide looks at how the rise of the Internet and digital technologies has made the worlds of marketing, PR and communications so much more complex, fast-paced and uncertain that the old ways of delivering campaigns are no longer as effective. Instead, we need to consider the approaches used for many years by software developers to deal with complex, fast-paced and uncertain environments, by adopting an agile mindset and used agile methodologies such as scrum. Covering agile from different perspectives in the fields of strategy, leadership and organisational change, as well as offering concrete changes and processes you could adopt right now in order to become more agile, this book is for anyone who feels that the old ways of delivering marketing, PR or communications activity are no longer keeping up with digital and the Internet, and who is open to considering a whole new way of approaching their professional work.

The world is changing, and businesses must change also or face extinction. Forty corporate leaders and entrepreneurs from the U.S., Latin America, Europe, and Asia offer their visions of how businesses can lead the world into an environmentally sustainable and socially equitable future. Photos.