WORLDVIEW: Think to avoid going on an investing fool’s errand

When John Naisbitt's book Megatrends was published in 1982, it arrived with the impact of a sledgehammer. Naisbitt, a clear-thinking Mormon from Utah, reached his conclusions by applying the science of content analysis – dusting off a playbook that helped the Allies win World War II.

In the introduction to his masterpiece, Naisbitt explains that during the war, boffins in the US intelligence unit sourced and analysed Germany's local  newspapers. By looking at diverse data like factory openings and closings; train schedules; local community war casualties and the like, they were able to build an accurate picture of what was really happening in the enemy camp.

Naisbitt wrote that his book, which was published in 57 countries and sold 14m copies, was 12 years in the making. His conclusions were reached after applying the wartime approach, analysing two million articles published in hundreds of local US newspapers. His painstaking investigation helped him identify 10 Megatrends which have shaped our world for the last three decades.

___STEADY_PAYWALL___