HBR bloggers wake up; find themselves in 1950s Japan

Managing Resources in an Uncertain World

From a blog called "The Big Shift".

We're moving from a world of push to a world of pull. Push programs operate on one key assumption - that it is possible to forecast future demand. When demand can be forecast, we can efficiently push resources to where they will be needed when they will be needed. But what happens when our forecasting ability diminishes--as it surely has in these big shifting times? Push programs become bottlenecks preventing effective responses to unanticipated changes in demand. In the business world, the result is often large accumulations of inventories.

I hope this isn't new to the authors.  It's probably new to some of the readers.

We only need to look at our dismal record in forecasting business cycles, financial risk, and earnings projections of individual firms from quarter to quarter to see that forecasting is no longer working as well as it once did.

When did the forecasting work?