The Signals Are Talking

Why Today's Fringe Is Tomorrow's Mainstream

Contributors

By Amy Webb

Formats and Prices

On Sale
Mar 6, 2018
Page Count
336 pages
Publisher
PublicAffairs
ISBN-13
9781541788237

Price

$19.99

Price

$25.99 CAD

Format:

  1. Trade Paperback $19.99 $25.99 CAD
  2. ebook $11.99 $15.99 CAD
  3. Audiobook Download (Unabridged)

Fast Company Best Book of the Year

An expert in trend forecasting shows how to anticipate what’s next and prepare your business, your market, and your products for the future


“Amy Webb, with insight and a big dose of pragmatism, shows how to clearly see the next big disruption and then take action before it strikes.” ―Ram Charan, coauthor of the #1 New York Times bestseller Execution

How do you tell a real trend from the merely trendy? How, for example, will a technology—like artificial intelligence, machine learning, self-driving cars, biohacking, bots, and the Internet of Things—affect us, our businesses, and workplaces? How will it eventually change the way we live, work, play, and think—and how should we prepare for it now?
 
In The Signals Are Talking, noted futurist Amy Webb shows us how to analyze the “true signals”—those patterns that will coalesce into a trend with the potential to change everything—and land on the right side of disruption. The future, Webb shows, isn’t something that happens to us passively. Using a proven, tested methodology, she enables us to see ahead and forecast what’s to come—challenging us to create our own preferred futures.

  • Washington Post Bestseller
  • Fast Company Best Book of the Year
  • Winner of an Axiom Business Book Award in Business Technology
  • “Webb teaches us to listen… [She] combines well‑researched, reader‑friendly insights on Google, drones and artificial intelligence with a system of questions you can bring to your next strategy meeting.” 
    Chicago Tribune
  • “[The Signals Are Talking] provides several brain‑bending future possibilities… Webb’s stellar reputation in this red‑hot field should generate demand.” 
    Booklist
  • “The clear, insightful, and humorous Amy Webb has crafted a rare treasure: a substantive guide written in a narrative that’s a delight to read. While most futurologists want guru status through a few Nostradamus-like visions that never materialize, Webb modestly reports with depth and discipline, and creates a system and tools we can all use to better navigate the future. Through her deep research, specific anecdotes, and brilliant insights, she has performed the selfless but hugely valuable act of teaching us all to fish at the fringe.” 
    Christopher J. Graves, chairman, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide
  • “Amy Webb, with insight and a big dose of pragmatism, shows how to clearly see the next big disruption and then take action before it strikes.” 
    Ram Charan, coauthor of the #1 New York Times bestseller Execution
  • “Forecasting the future is a challenging-and absolutely necessary-part of every leader’s job. In this ambitious and timely book, Amy Webb shows not only how to identify actual trends and surprises emerging from the fringes but-even more important-how to do something about them so you can thrive in the face of the unexpected.” 
    Craig Newmark, founder, Craigslist
  • “Technology promises to continue its disruptive march through our societies and economies. What will cabbies do when cars are self‑driving, and what will warehouse workers do when robots can pick, pack, and ship without lunch breaks and health care benefits? Forget NAFTA; the shift is toward Silicon Valley. But where to start? The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream is a good place. Sitting somewhere between Nate Silver and The Tipping Point, Amy Webb’s book provides a practical guide for leaders—at any level—in the age of Big Data, offering tools for picking out the ‘true signal, a pattern that will coalesce into a trend with the potential to change everything’—and land on the right side of disruption.” 
    Jon Foro, The Amazon Book Review (An Amazon Best Book of the Year)
  • “The best leaders will know how to listen for the future. Amy Webb’s book tells you the signals to listen for‑as well as the noise you should ignore. The signals are talking and leaders should listen.” 
    Bob Johansen, author of Leaders Make the Future
  • “The renowned futurist Amy Webb zeroes in—with clarity, specificity and verve—on the indispensable skill for people in every industry: how to recognize and interpret the clues that reveal the next big thing.” 
    Vivian Schiller, former president and CEO, National Public Radio
  • “Will undoubtedly help leaders contemplate what lies ahead. Webb provides a logical way to sift through today’s onslaught of events and information to spot coming changes in your corner of the world.” 
    Kirkus Reviews

Amy Webb

About the Author

Amy Webb is the founder of the Future Today Institute, a leading foresight and strategy firm that advises CEOs of the world’s most-admired companies, three-star admirals and generals, and the senior leadership of central banks and intergovernmental organizations. She is a professor of strategic foresight at New York University’s Stern School of Business and a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University’s Säid School of Business. She was elected a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is a member of the Bretton Woods Committee and serves as a Steward and Steering Committee member of the World Economic Forum. Amy was named by Forbes as “one of the five women changing the world” and was honored as one of the BBC’s 100 Women of 2020. Amy is author of The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity and The Signals are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe is Tomorrow’s Mainstream. She resides in Baltimore, MD.

Andrew Hessel, a pioneer and an expert in the field of synthetic biology, is the president of Humane Genomics, an early-stage company developing synthetic viruses for canine and human oncology. He is also the co-founder and chairman of the Center of Excellence for Engineering Biology and the Genome Project, the international scientific effort to engineer large genomes, including the human genome. He is a former distinguished research scientist at Autodesk Life Sciences.

Learn more about this author