Why Most Post-Pandemic Predictions Will Be Totally Wrong
Dear Marker Reader,
There are predictions flying at us from every direction right now: E-sports will replace the NFL! Movie theaters will become extinct! Telemedicine will become the new normal!
It’s a natural impulse, particularly when national disaster strikes, to imagine how it will collectively alter everything. But in Rob Walker’s Off Brand column this week, he offers a counterpoint.
📉 READ: Why Most Post-Pandemic Predictions Will Be Totally Wrong.
Walker, who has been chronicling business for nearly 30 years, examines predictions made in prior crises, like during the Great Recession, when everyone from economists to auto execs declared the coming death of the SUV, a symbol of excess.
Of course, quite the opposite ended up happening: today, SUVs account for about half of the car market. Walker suggests not ignoring predictions altogether, but approaching them with a different mindset. “Predictions look like declarations that end the conversation,” he writes, “but it’s much more productive to think of them as exactly the opposite.”
⚡️Read: America Is About to Witness the Biggest Labor Movement It’s Seen In Decades
Check out some of our other must-reads from last week, including why a financial crisis is the best time to start a company, the brewing worker revolution about to hit Corporate America — and we’d be remiss if we didn’t offer more predictions for a post-coronavirus world. Just remember to think of them of conversation-starters.
Executive Editor, Marker // Medium
