John Naisbitt (b.1929) is an American author and public speaker in the area of “future studies.”
Born in Salt Lake City, Naisbitt graduated from the University of Utah. He worked at IBM and Eastman Kodak, and served as an education official in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
While working as a business consultant in the 1970s, Naisbitt gathered information from hundreds of daily newspapers to formulate predictions on emerging social trends, a practice he called “content analysis.” Reinventing himself as “the world’s leading futurist” and “the global philosopher among futurists,” Naisbitt wrote best-selling books such as Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives (1982) and became a coveted public speaker.
Naisbitt’s other notable works include Reinventing the Corporation: Transforming Your Job and Your Company for the New Information Society (1985,) Mind Set: Reset Your Thinking and See the Future (2006,) and China’s Megatrends: The 8 Pillars of a New Society (2010.)
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Value is what people are willing to pay for it.
—John Naisbitt
Topics: Value
The modernization of Asia will forever reshape the world as we move toward the next millennium.
—John Naisbitt
The new source of power is not money in the hands of a few, but information in the hands of many.
—John Naisbitt
Topics: Power
Globalization is a bottom-up phenomenon with all actions initiated by milions of individuals, the sum total of which is “globalization.” No one is in charge, and no one can anticipate what the sum of all the individual initiatives will be before the result manifest. A global economy can only be the result of “spontaneous order.
—John Naisbitt
In a world that is constantly changing, there is no one subject or set of subjects that will serve you for the foreseeable future, let alone for the rest of your life. The most important skill to acquire now is learning how to learn.
—John Naisbitt
Topics: Foresight, Learning
Don’t get so far in front of the parade that no one knows you’re in the parade.
—John Naisbitt
We have for the first time an economy based on a key resource Information that is not only renewable, but self-generating. Running out of it is not a problem, but drowning in it is.
—John Naisbitt
Topics: Information
The most reliable way to forecast the future is to try to understand the present.
—John Naisbitt
Topics: Future
Intuition becomes increasingly valuable in the new information society precisely because there is so much data.
—John Naisbitt
Topics: Intuition
One of the best kept secrets in America is that people are aching to make a commitment, if they only had the freedom and environment in which to do so.
—John Naisbitt
Topics: Commitment
We are shifting from a managerial society to an entrepreneurial society.
—John Naisbitt
Topics: Change
Strategic planning is worthless — unless there is first a strategic vision.
—John Naisbitt
The most reliable way to anticipate the future is by understanding the present.
—John Naisbitt
Topics: Foresight
We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.
—John Naisbitt
Topics: Knowledge, Information
Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it.
—John Naisbitt
Topics: Leadership, Leaders
We must learn to balance the material wonders of technology with the spiritual demands of our human race.
—John Naisbitt
Topics: Technology