How do you prepare for extreme trends?

This interview ranges beyond our usual topics, but it's worth a read. From Managing Information Systems – Asia: Ross O. Storey talks to futurist, author, business and White House adviser James Canton PhD, who is CEO and chairman of the Institute for Global Futures, a leading think tank that advises businesses and governments on future trends.

What are the 'extreme trends' for business and technology that senior IT executives today need to prepare for?

The top extreme future trends, that will change the competitive marketplace, are the coming global innovation economy, integrated supply chains, real-time dynamic information, deep collaboration over global architectures, and many non-IT trends such as geopolitics, climate change, energy and security. IT executives need to be able to navigate the future that will be more complex, challenging and fast.

…What mistakes will people, 10 to 20 years hence, believe society made in the first decade of the 21st century?

The big mistakes we can see today-being slow to innovate, failing to understand globalisation, the lack of investment in alternative energy, our inability to plan for the future, climate change's impact on business, agile IT that enables customers we don't have, or even think we could have, in 2010....

Photo of accident warning sign by Paul Downey from Berkhamsted, UK, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License