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BIOGRAPHY OF ALVIN AND HEIDI TOFFLER
BUSINESS
As Early as 1962 a young Alvin Toffler was writing a study of the "social and organizational implications of the computer" for IBM, lunching with the late John Diebold, known at the time as "Mr. Automation," and meeting the world's first artificial intelligencers.
In subsequent writing and lecturing about management and business, the Tofflers forecast the shift from mass manufacturing to services and knowledge work, the digital revolution, the increasing importance of communication, the success of cable television, nano - and bio-technology, customized production, outsourcing, franchising, temporary organizational forms, networks and the waves of corporate restructuring - all literally
Decades before they became everyday news and any one had heard of Bill Gates or Silicon Valley.
These business-relevant insights help explain why the Tofflers' books are so widely read by CEOs and senior financial leaders, many of whom credit them as important catalysts in their own lives, careers and the global industries they have built. Thus Ted Turner has frequently and fulsomely credited the Toffler works with inspiring him to start CNN in 1980. According to Steve Case, the Third Wave struck like "a lightning bolt," led to his obsession with cyberspace and, ultimately, to his co-founding AOL. J.D. Power cites the Tofflers as his "mentors". Today, Alvin Toffler is routinely ranked among the world's top advisors to management.
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