Is it possible to predict what's coming?

I'm reading the Black Swan. Can't give a resume' because I'm just in a first chapters. The idea is that big changes have never been seen or guessed in advance. With traditionally science we can only learn about what has already happen. True.

This morning I read in Ny Teknik that there is a new book written by people from Ericsson that shows why Ericsson managed to come back every time when there had been a large unpredictable change. The reason was that the engineers has done some "skunk work", that management didn't know about. One of the reason for the success according to Ny teknik is that Ericsson has always had the culture where different opinions could be present at the same time.

Considering the two different views above...
I believe that things can be predicted on the market. If there is a big need, and there is technology that can solve the need, the change comes. My theory is that one reason for engineers to know what's about to come earlier than management, could be not only that they know the new technology (because all good engineers always keep them selves updated on such things), they might also be clear on the limitation on the current one ... besides, the vendors have been driven by engineers having the same background and sharing the same ideas.

How do the vendors look today? Have they sacked their old staff?