By Bill Herrfeldt
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

John Naisbitt has been predicting the future since he wrote the wildly popular book Megatrends in 1982. Megatrends was ten years in the writing and became an international phenomenon, staying on the New York Times best-seller list for more than two years, and selling more than eight million copies in 57 languages.

Understanding the future
After a seven-year writing hiatus, the 77-year-old author’s latest book, Mind Set! Reset Your Thinking and See the Future, hit the shelves in October, and already rights to it have been sold in 38 countries. “As I travel the world, people keep asking how I do what I do,” Naisbitt says. “It dawned on me that  the subject would be great fodder for a book.”

Mind Set! is a how-to book that helps people to understand the future. It represents the culmination of Naisbitt’s thoughts and insights acquired over decades of identifying and forecasting key global trends.

Seeing critical shifts
He invites readers inside his process for the first time, showing them that they can adjust their mindsets to see the critical shifts that are changing the world. “I try to explain the attitudes and skills anyone can use, in any walk of life, to understand and prepare for the future,” he says. The book identifies and explains 11 cognitive tools that empower the reader to understand these trends  that are transforming their lives and the world around them. One such tool is of great importance to anyone attempting to make sense of change in his or her world.

“One needs to understand how powerful it is not to have to be right. You need to be open to correction and not be run by a need to be right. It’s such a  negative thing,” Naisbitt says. “Of equal importance is not to be so far ahead that folks won’t know you’re in the parade. Good examples are companies whose products get out there too soon. People want to know what is right out in front of them in relation to what they already know.”