Peter Schwartz offers two scenarios for the future

Abstract

In his keynote presentation “An Age of Instability?” Peter Schwartz, president of the Global Business Network and world‐renowned scenario planner, began by asking the audience how many thought their children's lives would be better than their own. A scant 10 percent raised their hands—a very different picture than would have been the case in past decades. This overwhelming pessimism is grounded in one of two disparate scenarios Schwartz outlined as likely for the year 2000. The hopeful and pessimistic signals driving these two scenarios are shown in Exhibit 1.