Peter Schwartz (futurist)
Encyclopedia
Global Business Network
Global Business Network, or GBN, is a strategy consulting firm and member of Monitor Group, that helps businesses, NGOs, and governments use scenario planning to plan for multiple possible futures....
(GBN), an elite corporate strategy firm, specializing in future-think and scenario planning. As of October 2011, he now serves as Senior Vice President for Global Relations and Strategic Planning for Salesforce.com
Salesforce.com
Salesforce.com is an enterprise cloud computing company headquartered in San Francisco that distributes business software on a subscription basis. Salesforce.com hosts the applications off-site...
.
Personal history
Schwartz was born in 1946 to Klara and Benjamin Schwartz, Hungarian Jews who had been in concentration camps and were living in a displaced persons camp in Stuttgart, Germany. The family soon moved to Norway, where they lived until he was five. At this point, they emigrated to America, and found a new home in Camden, New JerseyCamden, New Jersey
The city of Camden is the county seat of Camden County, New Jersey. It is located across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city had a total population of 77,344...
. Schwartz grew up and attended school there. He won a National Merit scholarship, and was able to attend Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Stephen Van Rensselaer established the Rensselaer School on November 5, 1824 with a letter to the Rev. Dr. Samuel Blatchford, in which van Rensselaer asked Blatchford to serve as the first president. Within the letter he set down several orders of business. He appointed Amos Eaton as the school's...
(RPI) on full scholarship. He served as RPI's May commencement speaker for the class of 2009.
According to Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation...
, Schwartz was a member of Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization)
Students for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...
. After graduating in 1968 with a B.S. in aeronautical engineering, Schwartz taught high school in Philadelphia and worked in the innovative student housing program at UC Davis. In 1972 he became an employee at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), where he began to develop his unique method of scenario planning, and rose to director of the Strategic Environment Center. In 1982, he moved to London to work for Royal Dutch Shell
Royal Dutch Shell
Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...
as head of scenario planning. In 1985, while giving a speech at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory of UC Berkeley, he met his future wife, Cathleen Gross. He moved to live with her in Berkeley, California in 1987. They married and had one son, Benjamin, born in 1990.
Writings
Schwartz has written several books, on a variety of future-oriented topics. His first book, The Art of the Long View (Doubleday, 1991) is considered by many to be the seminal publication on scenario planning, and is used as a textbook by many business schools. Inevitable Surprises (Gotham, 2003) is a look at the forces at play in today's world, and how they will continue to affect the world. He also wrote The Long Boom (Perseus, 1999) with co-authors Peter Leyden and Joel Hyatt, which is a book about the future of the global economy. His book When Good Companies Do Bad Things (Wiley, 1999), is an argument for corporate responsibility in an age of corruption. China's Futures (Jossey-Bass, 2001), is a vision of several different potential futures for China. He also co-authored the PentagonThe Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
's An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security.
He has also worked as a consultant on several movies, including Minority Report
Minority Report (film)
Minority Report is a 2002 American neo-noir science fiction film directed by Steven Spielberg and loosely based on the short story "The Minority Report" by Philip K. Dick. It is set primarily in Washington, D.C...
, Deep Impact
Deep Impact (film)
Deep Impact is a 1998 science-fiction disaster-drama film released by Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks in the United States on May 8, 1998. The film was directed by Mimi Leder and stars Robert Duvall, Elijah Wood, Téa Leoni, and Morgan Freeman...
, Sneakers
Sneakers (film)
Sneakers is a 1992 caper film directed by Phil Alden Robinson, written by Robinson, Walter F. Parkes, and Lawrence Lasker and starring Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, Ben Kingsley, Mary McDonnell, River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier and David Strathairn...
, and WarGames
WarGames
WarGames is a 1983 American Cold War suspense/science-fiction film written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes and directed by John Badham. The film stars Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy....
. He serves on the board of directors for the Long Now Foundation
Long Now Foundation
The Long Now Foundation, established in 1996, is a private organization that seeks to become the seed of a very long-term cultural institution. It aims to provide a counterpoint to what it views as today's "faster/cheaper" mindset and to promote "slower/better" thinking...
. In 2007, Schwartz moderated a forum titled "The Impact of Web 2.0 and Emerging Social Network Models" as part of the World Economic Forum in Davos
Davos
Davos is a municipality in the district of Prättigau/Davos in the canton of Graubünden, Switzerland. It has a permanent population of 11,248 . Davos is located on the Landwasser River, in the Swiss Alps, between the Plessur and Albula Range...
.
Global Business Network
Schwartz founded the Global Business NetworkGlobal Business Network
Global Business Network, or GBN, is a strategy consulting firm and member of Monitor Group, that helps businesses, NGOs, and governments use scenario planning to plan for multiple possible futures....
(GBN) in 1988 in his Berkeley basement with several close friends including Napier Collyns
Napier Collyns
Napier Collyns is a co-founder and member of the Global Business Network. He is a former senior associate of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and the New York Mercantile Exchange....
, Jay Ogilvy and Brand
Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation...
. Schwartz called GBN an “information hunting and gathering company”, and describes it as a high level networking and corporate research agency. In 2001, it was bought by premier strategy consulting firm the Monitor Group
Monitor Group
Monitor Group is a global management consulting firm headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States and with 27 offices in 26 major cities around the world. It provides strategy consultation services to the senior management of organizations and governments...
, although it continues to operate as a distinct entity.
He left the company in October 2011, to work at Salesforce.com
Salesforce.com
Salesforce.com is an enterprise cloud computing company headquartered in San Francisco that distributes business software on a subscription basis. Salesforce.com hosts the applications off-site...
as Senior Vice President for Global Relations and Strategic Planning.