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, futurism 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 l ...
. 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.
[John Naisbitt biography]
at personal website.
Biography
John Naisbitt grew up in
Glenwood, Utah
Glenwood is a town in Sevier County, Utah, United States. The population was 464 at the 2010 census.
History
Glenwood was established in 1863 by Mormon pioneers. It was named for an early pioneer, Robert Wilson Glenn. The settlement's origin ...
and studied at
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
,
Cornell
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
and
Utah
Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its ...
universities. He gained business experience working for
IBM and
Eastman Kodak
The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...
. 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 th
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 ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...
, former visiting fellow at Harvard University, visiting professor at
Moscow State University
M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...
, faculty member at
Nanjing University
Nanjing University (NJU; ) is a national public research university in Nanjing, Jiangsu. It is a member of C9 League and a Class A Double First Class University designated by the Chinese central government. NJU has two main campuses: the Xian ...
in China, distinguished International Fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies,
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federal constitutional monarchy consists of thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo's East Mal ...
(the first non-Asian to hold this appointment), professor at
Nankai University
Nankai University (NKU or Nankai; ) is a national public research university located in Tianjin, China. It is a prestigious Chinese state Class A Double First Class University approved by the central government of China, and a member of the f ...
, 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
en, Viennese
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, postal_code_type = Postal code
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, timezone = CET
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, timezone_DST ...
and
Tianjin
Tianjin (; ; Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Tientsin (), is a municipality and a coastal metropolis in Northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the nine national central cities in Mainland China, with a total popu ...
.
[
Naisbitt died on April 8, 2021, at his secondary residence in Velden am Wörther See, Austria.
]
Impact
On futurists
Naisbitt has had a profound influence on leading modern-day futurists, such as David Houle and others.
On social and political thought
Although Naisbitt has not written an explicitly political book, ''Megatrends'' expressed early enthusiasm for radical centrist
Radical centrism (also called the radical center, the radical centre or the radical middle) is a concept that arose in Western nations in the late 20th century.
The '' radical'' in the term refers to a willingness on the part of most radical ce ...
politics. The book states, in bolded type, "The political left and right are dead; all the action is being generated by a radical center."[Naisbitt, John (1982). ''Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives''. Warner Books / Warner Communications Company, p. 178. .]
Bibliography
* ''Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives''. Warner Books, 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
External links
official website
Naisbitt China Institute
*
{{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
Futurologists
Harvard University alumni
Moscow State University faculty
People from Glenwood, Utah
Radical centrist writers
University of Utah alumni
Writers from Salt Lake City