• Will a future President of the United States announce a radical policy shift to bring energy efficiency in that country up by 30% or to the level of Western Europe?
• Will Ayatollah Rafsanjani succeed Ayatollah Khameini as the Supreme Leader of Iran?
• Will the Gulf States switch from treasury bills, bonds and resorts to large scale manufacturing, research and development and a united Arab social sector?
• Will India introduce internal market reforms in agriculture and find ways to sustain ecologically its industrial growth?
• Will those handling nanotechnology succeed in developing cures before those trying to steal the technology develop pathogens that destroy the mankind?
• Will the Southeast Asian countries continue to be able to protect the Strait of Malacca from capture by any international terrorist network?
• Will Europe rewrite its industrial relations laws and successfully integrate migrant workers in its society and Turkey in its political union?
• Will the US deficit be contained and will Iran, Arab countries and China switch from dollars to euros?
• Will the post-Putin Russia have harmonious relations with the West?
• Will the future of God be bleaker than it appears now?

If the answer to all or most of the questions is ‘yes’, you should be aggressive in your expansion strategy. If the answer to most of the questions is ‘no’, you can go to the stock market or maybe the commodity markets.

We live in uncertain times. The good old times are over when we merely had to worry about our competitors from the industry. Now we must watch out for new products outside the industry, new technologies and new sectors. In order to understand these unexpected challenges, we must know societal trends, geopolitical changes and environmental factors.

One 9/11 can get the aviation industry grounded. One Tsunami can deliver a blow to insurers. One successful challenge in India, China, Iran, Nigeria, and France to vested interest groups and a new world of opportunity will surface all over the globe.

How can one interpret the developments that are going to take place in the next ten or twenty years? How can one see what is unseen? How can one move factors of production, especially people, when life is uncertain?

Let’s remind ourselves of the world in 1986 before we can structure scenarios for the world in 2026. Who would have guessed then that the Berlin War would collapse and the axis of conflict would shift from ideology to religion? Who had guessed then that transportation and communication would be affordable to an average person in Asia despite high cost of energy input? Who would have guessed then that Internet and text messages would send fax machines to the museums? Who would have guessed then that China would replace Japan as the emerging super power? And who would have guessed then that centres of excellence would come up in the world that could look into the future in a scientific way that could actually make projection of uncertainties feasible?

It is now possible to use techniques such as scenario building, discontinuity analysis and others to make confident projections about the future. In 2002 and 2003, the Strategic Foresight Group projected the fall of the government in Kyrgyzstan, success of conservatives in Iran, price band of oil, replacement of Pakistan’s prime minister, among other developments in its various reports. By 2006, all of this has happened.

It is not enough merely to project future possibilities. It is also essential to use the alternative scenarios to construct strategies. At the micro level, it means an assessment of threats and opportunities to reduce costs and maximum profits, and then develop a set of options that would be viable in all possible scenarios. At the macro level, it means promoting practices and institutions that make the best scenarios most likely.

Unfortunately, the current trend is to act on the hypothesis that the world is going to be facing conflicts and risks rather than opportunities. In about one year, company after company has looked at business deals from a highly insecure perspective. When the US policy makers did not allow CNOOP to purchase Unocal, it made big news. Today when the US policy makers prohibit Dubai Port from entering into a transaction with P&O for the management of some of the American ports it is a routine affair. In Europe, Arcelor continues to fight a take-over by Mittal Steel. In the Middle East, Arla, a Danish food company with four decades of operations in the Middle East and turnover of over 400 million Euros, has almost closed down. In Bangladesh, Tatas and other Indian groups are finding it difficult to set up plants that can create a foreign direct investment flow of 10% of the countries GDP purely for ideological and political reasons.

It is tragic that the companies had not anticipated most of the incidents mentioned above. The European companies have hardly analysed the implications of the apparent conflict between Western and Islamic countries on their business prospects. The US has not analysed the transformation of its status from that of a superpower to the one of super-force and therefore increasing likelihood of its companies being subjected to the take-over. The Indian companies hardly care to assess geopolitics of difficult neighbouring economies and burn their fingers in Nepal or get blocked. What is amazing is that most CEOs still do not consider it essential to have a strong geopolitical and societal change expertise beyond merely wanting to know about physical risks to their plants and personnel.

It is even more tragic that corporate and political leaders alike are so busy with their immediate game plans that they seem to have little inclination to shape the medium term future of the world. We now have a global economy, thanks mainly to technological innovation. We do not have a global society and a global polity. In fact, the global society is getting fast polarised. The world of business does not care. But the stories of Dubai Port, CNOOP, Tatas, Mittal Steel, Arla, and innumerable others in the matter of one year tell us that the failure to shape a global society will also hurt global business and economy as well. If you are the CEO of a large company, it is your call to decide whether you want to shut your eyes to the new global reality or determine to do something about it.