Verne Wheelwright Ph.D. epub Small Business Foresight: The Future of Your Business

Successful corporations have been using scenarios, strategic planning, and long term action plans to prepare for their futures for decades. Large businesses pioneered the methods of foresight for their own use, and those methods have worked very well for them. But… small business is different. The corporate methods for planning for the future didn’t fit small business. This book, Small Business Foresight is designed for small businesses. Written by a professional futurist with over 50 years’ experience in small business, the tools and methods described and detailed in this book work. They are designed specifically for small business.Whether your business consists of just you, or includes dozens or even hundreds employees, these methods work! In this book, you will learn about the stages of business growth, the forces of change that impact your business, trends that guide the forces, the importance of scenarios (stories about the future of your business and how to create them), the value of strategic thinking and planning, how to create a long term plan for your business based on the strategies you develop, and more. Much more. Read the book and build a plan for your business. Since before WW II, pilots in the military and later in airlines have been trained in simulators. A simulator trains pilots to deal with future situations, from bad weather to extremely unlikely events (wild cards). Pilots gain experience with a wide variety of experiences without risk to themselves or to expensive aircraft. Similarly, Small Business Foresight provides the opportunity to explore and rehearse future events, positive and negative, without risk to yourself or your business. In the process you will gain the value of foresight. What business-person would not benefit from this advantage? This book and the related workbook encourage you to anticipate (simulate) the future of your small business, using the same tools and methods of foresight that have been successfully practiced by large organizations for decades.