Creating the future

Wendell Bell has had a crucial contribution to the development of the network of futures scholars consisting of diversified talents and network of diversified talents and active organizations in the greater Chinese region. Furthermore, Bell's books and articles in English and Chinese have challenged and transformed people's stereotypes of the crystal-ball futurism into an academic discipline emphasizing images of the future and alternatives developed on the basis of empirical and theoretical knowledge and imagination.     

Marketers expressing the future: Scenario planning for marketing action

Thomas Friedman exhorts us to imagine the future [1] - we urge marketers to invent the future, to learn the future faster, and to deliver the future earlier. Marketers are asked to develop scenarios about emerging technologies such as broadband wireless but more often than not have no education or training in scenario planning. Also marketers are often stuck in a strategic planning mindset based on successful replication of past marketing strategies. Strategic management and marketing learning has ventured into futures and foresight methodologies, but with strong focus on conventional macroscopic high-level scenario planning methods.This paper positions scenario planning as a method to express the future vision, both tacit and explicit, of business, products and services in a clear succinct story form, to underpin all elements of a marketing strategy (goals, position and execution). The scenario planning for marketing action (SPMA) model is introduced and discussed incorporating eight principles: moderation and time compression; storytelling led new product and service development; customer orientation; iterative dynamic scenarios; complexity science to foster non-linear thinking; risk weighted scenarios; participant hosted scenario workshops; springboard consolidation.The SPMA method was proven and evolved within postgraduate Executive education courses in Sydney and Bangkok from 2003 to 2007. This approach is fundamental for marketers to gain competences in “learning the future faster”, thus possessing capabilities to imagine and invent the future and deliver the future earlier.     

Scenario Simulation: Theory and methodology

This paper presents a new simulation methodology for quantitative risk analysis of large multi-currency portfolios. The model discretizes the multivariate distribution of market variables into a limited number of scenarios. This results in a high degree of computational efficiency when there are many sources of risk and numerical accuracy dictates a large Monte Carlo sample. Both market and credit risk are incorporated. The model has broad applications in financial risk management, including value at risk. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate some of its practical applications.     

FRA: Teaching Financial Accounting with a Goal-Based Scenario

This paper reports on the development of FRA (Financial Report Analyst), an intelligent, multimedia educational software system which is designed to teach financial statement analysis to business students and professional trainees. FRA is based on a new kind of teaching architecture called a goal-based scenario, a “learning by doing” environment in which the student acts in a realistic role and obtains helpful coaching while performing assigned tasks. In FRA, the student plays the role of a lending analyst at a bank who must make important commercial lending decisions. Usability tests of FRA have been conducted with students in the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. The paper discusses: theoretical advantages of goal-based scenarios; the architecture of FRA; and ongoing and future research.     

Scenario types and techniques: Towards a user's guide

Various scenario typologies have been suggested in attempts to make the field of futures studies easier to overview. Our typology is based on the scenario user's need to know what will happen, what can happen, and/or how a predefined target can be achieved. We discuss the applicability of various generating, integrating and consistency techniques for developing scenarios that provide the required knowledge. The paper is intended as a step towards a guide as to how scenarios can be developed and used.     

Gylany: the balanced future

Futurist projections indicate that androcracy is rapidly taking us to an evolutionary dead-end. But the two projected androcratic futures—a totalitarian future or no future at all—are not our only alternatives. There is the third alternative, the humanistic future to which the concept of gylany, both the balanced core and the logical requirement of our cultural evolution, provides the key.     

Creating the living brand

It's easy to conclude from the literature and the lore that top-notch customer service is the province of a few luxury companies and that any retailer outside that rarefied atmosphere is condemned to offer mediocre service at best. But even companies that position themselves for the mass market can provide outstanding customer-employee interactions and profit from them, if they train employees to reflect the brand's core values. The authors studied the convenience store industry in depth and focused on two that have developed a devoted following: QuikTrip (QT) and Wawa. Turnover rates at QT and Wawa are 14% and 22% respectively, much lower than the typical rate in retail. The authors found six principles that both firms embrace to create a strong culture of customer service. Know what you're looking for: A focus on candidates' intrinsic traits allows the companies to hire people who will naturally bring the right qualities to the job. Make the most of talent: In mass-market retail, talent is generally viewed as a commodity, but that outlook becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Create pride in the brand: Service quality depends directly on employees' attachment to the brand. Build community: Wawa and QT have made concerted efforts to build customer loyalty through a sense of community. Share the business context: Employees need a clear understanding of how their company operates and how it defines success. Satisfy the soul: To win an employee's passionate engagement, a company must meet his or her needs for security, esteem, and justice.     

Scenario thinking: A practice-based approach for the identification of opportunities for innovation

Drawing on the social theory of practice, this paper ‘unpacks’ scenario thinking in the form of strategizing in product innovation teams to explore when and how the practice may lead to the identification of opportunities for innovation. Adopting a case-based approach, three software companies engaged in four new product development projects served as our empirical research sites. We found creative emergence and open-endedness of the practice in innovation teams serving as quintessentially embedded modalities and contingencies that supports the identification of opportunities for innovation as a potential outcome of scenario thinking. We also suggest a framework that specifies how specific team practices supporting scenario thinking (strategic conversation and human-material interactions, and reflexivity-in-practice) may operate in combination or serially, and which may lead in turn to the identification of opportunities for innovation.     

税务:创造价值还是控制风险?

为了提高公司财务管理的透明度,多数跨国公司都在财务部门内设置了首席税务主管,专门致力于控制风险,公司税务管理正朝这一方向倾斜。5月23日,普华永道会计事务所在上海发布了一项反映亚太地区跨国企业税务主管人士(大多数为公司财务总监)意见的调查报告。该调查涵盖了12条有关税务挑战、风险、税务策略以及执行程序等方面的主要问题,结果说明税务管理应该在遵循税法、控制风险的前提下,帮助企业创造价值,这也是亚太地区企业尤其是跨国公司的主要观点。虽然此次调查主要针对的是大型跨国企业,但鉴于目前越来越多的中国企业也开始成为跨国公司,税务是财务管理中非常重要的一环,因此,我们中国企业提前选修“税务管理”这一课才是明智之举     

Beyond postnormal times: The future of creativity and the creativity of the future

Creativity and imagination are the most important ingredients for coping with post-normal times, according to Sardar. This paper looks at the way creativity itself is being transformed in the West, from the individualistic/atomistic view of Modernity towards a more contextual, collaborative, complex approach. It explores the potential and possibilities for this more participatory creativity to help go beyond the “crisis of the future,” and argues that the centrality of creativity must go beyond the mythology of genius and inspiration to inform philosophy, ethics, and action. Philosophical reflection and the imagination of desirable futures can emerge from a creative ethic that stresses the value of generative interactions and contexts that support creativity.     

Scenario workshops: A participatory approach to sustainable urban living?

Cities have increasingly become a focus for environmental action, and many governments are in the process of devising strategies for sustainable development in urban areas. However, dissatisfaaction with traditional approaches to environmental policy making has led to the rise of interest in involving the public in the process of plan and policy formulation. This paper provides a brief review of the rationale for increasing public participation in policy making, and focuses on one attempt to do this through the use of scenaario workshops. The experience of the UK town of Preston is used to look at the effectiveness of this approach both in bringing about sustainable urban living, and as a truly participatory approach to policy making.     

比较优势创造:比较优势的完善和细分

基于18世纪和19世纪的现实经济和经济学理论的发展水平而建立的传统的国际贸易理论,不能全面或很好地解释今天的实践也是情理之中的。但这并不意味着传统贸易理论的基本思想已不再适用了。相反,比较优势作为传统贸易理论的思想内核,如果经过科学的完善和发展,在今天乃至未来的较长时间内都仍将是整个贸易理论中最富解释力和说服力,因而也是最精彩、最富魅力的理论核心。     

Wendell Bell and the sociology of the future: Challenges past, present and future

As a sociologist dealing with futures studies, Wendell Bell encountered considerable obstacles because his topic - the future, imagined, projected and shaped - poses significant problems for contemporary sociology. The paper discusses Bell's engagement with these disciplinary difficulties and his search for conceptual and methodological solutions. The paper anchors Bell's achievements in a wider historical context, identifies some of the new challenges facing sociology and considers some openings for change in our knowledge practice.     

中国企业"走出去"的现状与前景

在过去的3年中,中国日益增长的对外直接投资引起了广泛的关注.但是,中资企业在对外投资的过程中还面临着诸多的困难和挑战.这里面有些问题来自于国内和国外政府的相关政策,还有些问题是棘手的商业挑战,如商业策略、融资渠道、品牌发展、信息管理和人力资源等.前不久在IFC和商务部投资促进局共同举办的"中国对外投资研讨会"上,来自政府、金融机构以及企业界的代表就上述问题进行了深入地探讨,其中不乏真知灼见.