Trends Identified

City Limits

The world’s political geography is being transformed by surging migration from rural to urban areas, straining the web of connections between the two. Divergences are widening on numerous dimensions, such as values, age, education, power and prosperity. What if a tipping point is reached at which the urban-rural divide becomes so sharp that the unity of states begins to erode? Domestically, divergent values between urban and rural areas are already fuelling polarization and electoral volatility in many countries. Greater bitterness and rivalry could lead to localized nativism and even violent clashes. Separatist movements might break through in wealthy city-regions that resent diverting revenues to poorer rural areas with which they feel diminishing affinity. Leading cities might look to bypass national structures and play an international role directly. Economically, accelerating urban migration could lead to rural depopulation and the decline of local economies, with potential food security implications in some countries. Better long-term planning—for both expanding cities and rural areas at risk of decline—might help to mitigate these dangers. Stronger transport and communications links could help to soften the urban-rural divide. Resources will be needed, which might require more fiscal creativity, such as finding ways to decentralize revenue-raising powers or more widely redistribute the productivity gains that urbanization generates.

2019

The Global Risks Report 2019 14th Edition

World Economic Forum (WEF)

Ageing nations

The world’s population is getting older, with the population over 60 growing fastest.

2013

Now for the long term - The Report of the Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations

Oxford Martin School

Climate change is causing more extreme weather events and escalating losses

The world’s top ten hottest years on record have occurred since 1998, and the top five since 2010125. Since pre-industrial times, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have increased by 40%; the Arctic sea ice extent shrunk on average between 3.5 and 4.1% per decade in the 1979–2002 period; sea level rose at an average annual rate of 3.2 mm/year from 1993 to 2010, and since 1961 the average annual temperature of oceans has been increasing and the warming effect has reached a depth of at least 3000m.

2017

Surfing the digital tsunami

Australia, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)

Asymmetric demographic change.

The worldwide ageing populations will cause major challenges for some economies and government budgets. Gender inequality will further destabilize demographic change. However, the population in countries with a high fertility rate will remain relatively young, as seen in Africa, thus creating a youth bulge and potential for migration.

2017

Strategic foresight analysis

NATO

Confidence disrupted

The year 2012 unfolds with wide disparities in potential outcomes in many economies, and little prospect of a coordinated turnaround. Just 15% of CEOs believe that the global economy will improve this year (see Figure 2). Incremental improvements in business optimism seen in the PwC 15th Annual Global CEO Survey over the past two years are reversing. In a sign of converging economic fortunes, confidence declined in parallel among CEOs across all regions, except for the Middle East and Africa.

2012

15th Annual global CEO Survey

PWC

The talent challenge

Theoretically, finding a good candidate to fill a position should now be a very straightforward exercise. There have never been as many educated people in the world, nor has it ever been as simple for employers to tap this vast pool online. Highly skilled talent is also highly mobile; but just in case, networking advances also mean that many more tasks can be handled remotely or outsourced.

2012

15th Annual global CEO Survey

PWC

Beyond BRIC

There are other countries besides BRIC that are capturing the world's interest because of their promising economic future, specifically the Next Eleven1) and the ASEAN Five2). We also look at the most economically attractive countries in Africa and South America in this section

2011

Trend compendium 2030

Roland Berger Strategy Consultants

ICASA: The force of billion-person markets

There are three geographic entities—India, China, and Africa—in which urbanization is empowering populations that exceed one billion people, and a fourth, Southeast Asia, with more than half a billion. Together, these enormous “ICASA” (India, China, Africa, and Southeast Asia) markets hold the potential for significant continued expansion . They also pose some of the biggest risks to global growth as they confront internal obstacles.

2017

The global forces inspiring a new narrative of progress

McKinsey

Partnership Models

There has been an increase in partnerships of all forms, between public and private sectors, consumers and producers, and even competitors in order to combine capabilities in new and innovative ways.

2017

Beyond the Noise- The Megatrends of Tomorrow’s World

Deloitte

Algorithms and software for knowledge engineering

There has been some development of algorithms and software for knowledge engineering at the juncture of learning system and cognitive psychology theories and research on artificial intelligence. Knowledge engineering extends concepts that were previously – in research on artificial intelligence – only applicable to computers (machine learning) to any learning system (where learning is understood to mean the acquisition and transformation of knowledge with a view to its application). New models for working with large amounts of memory (including semantic databases) are becoming increasingly abundant.

2016

Russia 2030: science and technology foresight

Russia, Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation