A serious foresight deficit

Neither the recession nor its end should have come as a surprise

I've written earlier of a Technology foresight deficit in business and society.

The foresight deficit however is hardly confined to technology. Consider this: Most business and world leaders and even eminent economists failed to foresee correctly the recent upheavals in the global economy - the financial crisis of late 2008, the recession that followed, and the subsequent recovery.

However, neither the recession nor its end should have come as a surprise. The surprises happened because signals in plain sight were steadfastly ignored ! *

For details, read my guest column in CEO World magazine, The recession has ended and other surprises.

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* which suggests that the foresight deficit may largely be simply a common sense deficit, but that's a subject for a separate discussion !