Uncharted

June 1, 2020
The future is unpredictable, but wrestling productively with that unpredictability can help one grow and learn, argues entrepreneur Heffernan (Beyond Measure) in a wide-ranging outing with relevance both for businesspeople and general readers. Overreliance on apps, she proposes, has trained people to see the future as being knowable—and to get frustrated when it inevitably isn’t. However, this thinking has deeper roots, as Heffernan illustrates by recounting various failed attempts at prognostication throughout history, such as by “exuberant forecasters” of the stock markets, from the field’s beginnings in the late 19th century to contemporary gurus like Jim Cramer. She also discusses how people can more productively deal with uncertainty, with examples from both business and other spheres of life. Heffernan looks at how Nokia rebounded from its disastrous loss of the smartphone market to Apple by “constructing and testing out a variety of scenarios,” rather than trying to formulate a “single, perfect plan.” Elsewhere, she describes how, over a century, the citizenry of Barcelona has sustained construction on architect Antoni Gaudí’s extravagant, controversial, and still-unfinished cathedral, Sagrada Familia. The cumulative result of Heffernan’s smartly assembled case studies and insights is a thought-provoking look at how readers can face down a sometimes frightening future with courage and grace.