Happy New Year to you, and: Welcome back to “Creativity Un-Ltd.” in the year 2009! Currently, we might all be suffering from a big hangover that is more severe than the dizziness on the morning of New Year’s Day: the global economic crisis that was caused by the uncontrolled excesses in the financial industries during the past few years. Is the headache going to last all year? Maybe — and maybe not, depending on the choices that we make in 2009.

In their excellent book “Future Think,” the two futurists Edie Weiner and Arnold Brown share a powerful thinking perspective that can help us to make or break our fortune in the coming months: The choice between a self-fulfilling and a self-defeating prophecy.

A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true. In other words, a prediction about the future is treated as truth when it actually may be false, but it influences people through fear or logical confusion, so that their reactions ultimately fulfill the once unproven prophecy.

With compelling images of a desirable possible future state, many visionary leaders positively influenced the imaginations of their followers — just think of teenaged Bill Gates’ vision of “a PC in every home and on every desk” in the mid-seventies, or JFK’s vision to “Put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade” in 1961. These powerful visions inspired the actions and efforts of an industry and a whole nation for years, thus turning very unlikely visions into positive self-fulfilling prophecies. Here, however, remember that self-fulfilling prophecies are neutral and work in both directions — both positive and negative.

The complementary opposite of a self-fulfilling prophecy is a self-defeating prophecy: a prediction that is often so scary that it prevents what it predicts from happening. Examples of a self-defeating prophecy are the Y2K bug at the turn of the new millennium nine years ago, or the nuclear-war prophecy during the Cold War. The scares of these prophecies led to intense efforts to do everything possible to prevent disaster from striking, thus turning these horror scenarios into self-defeating prophecies.

Let’s return to the economic and business outlook for the coming year. No doubt about it, 2009 is going to be a challenging year. Growth rates will be lower than in other years for most countries, industries and companies — but in 2009, the business world is not going to end. In fact, notice that growth fluctuations are a normal aspect of the cyclical nature of business — just like in nature, temperature varies with the season. During a downturn, some companies go out of business, and new, more innovative ones soon take their place. Similarly, job cuts are an unpleasant but normal part of a downturn, and usually they are only temporary. The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter dubbed the temporary negative phenomena associated with the cyclical nature of business “creative destruction,” and he soberly regarded an economic downturn as “a good cold shower for the economic system.”

Now let’s talk straight: While some companies and people fight to survive the downturn, most don’t. While some industries are heavily affected by the crisis, many are only somewhat affected, and others not at all. However the case may be: In 2009, there are choices to be made.

• Politicians have to choose how they can most effectively stimulate the economy and support individuals who lose their jobs.

• Business leaders have to decide if they really have to let go of employees and to rigorously cut costs — or whether it’s better to now selectively invest in future growth.

• Union leaders and organized employees need to choose if they just focus on their self-interests or make concessions that will keep their company a going concern.

• Bankers have to decide if they continue to just sit on their assets or if they start lending again to infuse sufficient credit into a stressed economic system.

• Investors have to choose if they favor no or extremely low interest rates, or if the coming months are the right time to go hunting for investment bargains (like stocks of blue-chip companies in crisis-resilient industries with a low P/E ratio).

• The media have to choose if they focus only on economic doom and gloom news or if they also share positive business stories.

• Consumers need to choose if they withhold all non-existential spending or if they also make selective investments and purchases.

Whatever we do: The biggest risk for all of us might be just sitting there and doing nothing, being paralyzed out of fear of making a mistake.

Conclusion: Lord Buddha said: “What we think, we become.” With our collective choices, we all will decide if the bleak business outlook for 2009 will become a self-fulfilling or a self-defeating prophecy. Choose wisely.

© Dr. Detlef Reis 2009. This article was published in parallel in the Bangkok Post under the same title on 8 January 2009.