Count a man fortunate to be associated with a big idea. Peter Schwartz is linked with two: scenario planning and the concept of the "long boom."

Scenario planning is the methodology originally developed by thinkers at Royal Dutch/Shell (Schwartz among them) in which various alternative futures are postulated in an attempt to stretch people's thinking about things to come. The long boom refers to Schwartz's belief that a 40-year cycle of prosperity began in 1983.

Both of these big ideas form a backdrop for Schwartz's latest book, Inevitable Surprises: Thinking Ahead in a Time of Turbulence, in which he looks at the future of the world in terms of such issues as global warming, the population explosion, disease, revolution, migration patterns, and even the possibility of what he calls "the final calamity"—our planet being hit by an asteroid. It is no overstatement to say that Peter Schwartz thinks big.