Our annual survey of ideas and trends that will make an impact on business: Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Tyagi believe consumer credit should be made as safe as any other product. Paul Collier and Jean-Louis Warnholz reveal an increasingly investment-friendly climate in sub-Saharan Africa. Amy J.C. Cuddy asserts that warmth and competence are not mutually exclusive. John Sviokla predicts a surge of peer-to-peer lending in the wake of the financial crisis. Noah J. Goldstein explains the impact of social pressure on customers' behavior. Raymond Fisman urges the creation of a global forensic economics lab modeled on Interpol. Paul Saffo warns of a brain drain out of the U.S. Gurdeep Singh Pall and Rita Gunther McGrath contemplate the ramifications of immortalizing business meetings in searchable, high-quality digital video. Janine M. Benyus and Gunter A.M. Pauli illustrate the advantages of innovation copied from nature. Michael I. Norton observes that an investment of effort can lead to unduly glorifying its results. Peter Schwartz dispels the illusion that global temperatures are actually falling. Nicholas A. Christakis shows that personal influence wanes beyond three degrees of separation. Marcelo Suarez-Orozco sees the migrant millions as untapped brand emissaries to their relatives back home. Ian Bremmer and Juan Pujadas chart the growing influence of state capitalism in four industry sectors. Steve Jurvetson shares a fun way to stimulate the growth of new brain cells. Lew McCreary spotlights the interior designs of two adventurous architects who aim to counteract the degenerative effects of physical comfort. Tom Ilube explains the semantic web - a quiet revolution in technology that will radically change the internet. Alex Pentland weighs the benefits of combining two distinct kinds of social networking. Thomas H. Davenport and Bala Iyer look at the offshore outsourcing of decision making. R. Stanley Williams envisions a central nervous system for the earth.

The primary goal of forecasting is to identify the full range of possibilities facing a company, society, or the world at large. In this article, Saffo demythologizes the forecasting process to help executives become sophisticated and participative consumers of forecasts, rather than passive absorbers. He illustrates how to use forecasts to at once broaden understanding of possibilities and narrow the decision space within which one must exercise intuition. The events of 9/11, for example, were a much bigger surprise than they should have been. After all, airliners flown into monuments were the stuff of Tom Clancy novels in the 1990s, and everyone knew that terrorists had a very personal antipathy toward the World Trade Center. So why was 9/11 such a surprise? What can executives do to avoid being blindsided by other such wild cards, be they radical shifts in markets or the seemingly sudden emergence of disruptive technologies? In describing what forecasters are trying to achieve, Saffo outlines six simple, commonsense rules that smart managers should observe as they embark on a voyage of discovery with professional forecasters: Map a cone of uncertainty, look for the S curve, embrace the things that don't fit, hold strong opinions weakly, look back twice as far as you look forward, and know when not to make a forecast.

On its 75th anniversary, HBR asked five of the business world's most insightful thinkers to comment on the challenges taking shape for executives as they move into the next century. 1) In "The Future That Has Already Happened," Peter Drucker examines the effects of the increasing underpopulation of the world's developed countries. 2) Esther Dyson's article "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall" reveals the mind shift executives will need to make in a networked world, where companies will be known for what they do rather than for what they say. 3) The old language of property and ownership no longer serves executives, writes Charles Handy in "The Citizen Corporation." 4) Technology has given executives more information than today's machines can help them understand, explains Paul Saffo in "Are You Machine Wise?" 5) Peter Senge's article "Communities of Leaders and Learners" urges executives to reject the myth of leaders as isolated heroes and instead to build a community of leaders.