Business is the Art of Predicting the Future and Getting Benefit from It (Essay Sample)

Business is the art of predicting the future and getting benefit from it. Discuss.
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Introduction
The primary objective of any self-reliant business establishment is to remain sustainable and profitable. Indeed, the necessity to achieve the aforementioned objective has become critical to the extent that managers can no longer rely on past practices in order to assess the viability of their businesses in the future. Instead, current business trends and operational practices must be amalgamated into one superfluous data pool which then forms the basis for charting the future course of the establishment. Therefore, the surest way to guarantee the survival and eventual success of businesses and executives is to master the art of not only predicting the future but also reaping benefits from it.
Business is the art of predicting the future and getting benefit from it
It is plausible to argue that technological convergence is rewriting the rules of modern business practices. Nowadays, home-based businesses, as well as multinational corporations, have direct access to enormous amounts of industry-specific data. With the right tools, businesses can tap into this data and use it to create a set of possible future outcomes with a substantial degree of business confidence. Nevertheless, the possibility of predicting the future with absolute certainty is not feasible. Consequently, in order to enhance the accuracy of business prediction, executives must apply an artistic approach in their prediction endeavors.[. Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (New York: Crown, 2015), 54.]
The question of whether or not people can be able to predict the future has been around since the beginning of civilization. However, due to the intricacies and mystique surrounding this subject, those who claim to be able to ‘see the future’ often find themselves on the receiving end of negative societal schisms. Resultantly, most people believe that that is no clear cut formula for predicting the future. Decidedly, predicting the future of a business and getting benefits as a direct result of the prediction is more of an art than science. This implies that effective business prediction is a multifaceted process involving both scientific and artistic mantras aimed at creating a business crystal ball.[. James Mangraviti and Steven Babitsky, The Street Smart MBA: 10 Proven Strategies for Driving Business Success (New York: Apress, 2012), 126.]
As an art, business prediction primarily involves the extensive and intensive analysis of current trends, economic curves, and most importantly, time. In most cases, the behavior of various product lines in the current market is a powerful indicator of the product’s probable future. The resulting consumer patterns can then be used to draw derivative and informative economic curves over a given period of time. These data can then be fed into management information systems capable of crunching up the nu...