John Naisbitt (January 15, 1929 – April 8, 2021) was an American author and public speaker in the area of
futures studies
Futures studies, futures research or futurology is the systematic, interdisciplinary and holistic study of social and technological advancement, and other environmental trends, often for the purpose of exploring how people will live and wor ...
. His first book ''Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives'' was published in 1982. It was the result of almost ten years of research. It was on
''The New York Times'' Best Seller list for two years, mostly as No. 1. ''Megatrends'' was published in 57 countries and sold more than 14 million copies.
Biography
John Naisbitt grew up in
Glenwood, Utah and studied at
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...
,
Cornell and
Utah
Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...
universities. He gained business experience working for
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
and
Eastman Kodak. In the world of politics he was assistant to the Commissioner of Education under President
John F. Kennedy and served as special assistant to
HEW Secretary
John Gardner during the
Johnson administration. He left Washington in 1966 and joined
Science Research Associates. In 1968, he founded his own company, the Urban Research Corporation. Naisbitt founded the Naisbitt China Institute, a non-profit, independent research institution studying the social, cultural and economic transformation of China located at
Tianjin University. In 2009, Naisbitt published ''China's Megatrends'', a book analyzing China's rise. He has been an adviser on agricultural development to the royal government of
Thailand
Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...
, former visiting fellow at Harvard University, visiting professor at
Moscow State University
Moscow State University (MSU), officially M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University,. is a public university, public research university in Moscow, Russia. The university includes 15 research institutes, 43 faculties, more than 300 departments, a ...
, faculty member at
Nanjing University in China, distinguished International Fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies,
Malaysia
Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...
(the first non-Asian to hold this appointment), professor at
Nankai University, Tianjin University of Finance and Economics, and a member of the advisory Board of the Asia Business School, Tianjin, and has been the recipient of 15 honorary doctorates in the humanities, technology and science. John Naisbitt and his wife Doris were based in
Vienna
Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...
and
Tianjin
Tianjin is a direct-administered municipality in North China, northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the National Central City, nine national central cities, with a total population of 13,866,009 inhabitants at the time of the ...
.
Naisbitt died on April 8, 2021, at his secondary residence in
Velden am Wörther See
Velden am Wörther See (Slovenian language, Slovene: ''Vrba na Koroškem'') is a market town in Villach-Land District, in the Austrian state of Carinthia (state), Carinthia. Situated on the western shore of the Wörthersee lake, it is one of the co ...
, Austria.
Impact
On futurists
On social and political thought
Although Naisbitt has not written an explicitly political book, in 1982 his ''Megatrends'' book he expressed early enthusiasm for
radical centrist politics. The book states, in bolded type, "The political left and right are dead; all the action is being generated by a radical center."
Bibliography
* ''Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives''.
Warner Books
Grand Central Publishing is a book publishing imprint of Hachette Book Group, originally established in 1970 as Warner Books when Kinney National Company acquired the New York City-based Paperback Library. When Time Warner sold their book publis ...
, 1982
* (with Patricia Aburdene) ''Reinventing the Corporation: Transforming Your Job and Your Company for the New Information Society''. Warner Books, 1985
* (with Patricia Aburdene) ''Megatrends 2000: Ten New Directions for the 1990s''. William & Morrow Company, Inc., 1990
* ''Global Paradox: The Bigger the World Economy, the More Powerful Its Smallest Players''. William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1994
* ''Megatrends Asia: Eight Asian Megatrends That Are Reshaping Our World''. Simon & Schuster, 1996
* ''High Tech High Touch: Technology and Our Accelerated Search for Meaning''. Broadway Books, 1999
* ''Mind Set!: Reset Your Thinking and See the Future''. Collins, 2006.
* ''China's Megatrends: The 8 Pillars of a New Society''. HarperCollins, 2010.
References
See also
*
High-touch
External links
*
USA Today: "Naisbitt turns lust for life into mega book career"*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Naisbitt, John
1929 births
2021 deaths
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
American business writers
American expatriates in Austria
American expatriates in China
American technology writers
Cornell University alumni
American futurologists
Harvard University alumni
Academic staff of Moscow State University
People from Glenwood, Utah
Radical centrist writers
University of Utah alumni
Writers from Salt Lake City