Trends Identified
Gaining from connectivity without losing trust
Twenty years ago, trust wasn’t as high on the business radar as it is today. In fact, we didn’t survey CEOs about it until 2002, when the business community was reeling from accounting fraud scandals, the bursting of the dotcom bubble and the collapse of the equity markets. With hindsight, it seems hard to believe that only 12% of CEOs thought public trust in companies in their country had greatly declined, and only 29% thought the fallout from corporate misdeeds was a serious threat. Since then, the financial crisis has catapulted trust into the limelight, and the after-effects of stagnant economic growth and spiralling debt levels continue to fuel a climate of mistrust. The impact on CEOs has been significant: in 2013, 37% worried that lack of trust in business would harm their company’s growth. This year, the number has jumped to 58%. The breakdown in public trust now poses a potent risk to political, economic and social systems the world over.
2017
20th Annual global CEO survey
PWC
Nanotechnology: 'Privacy will be a quaint obsession'
Twenty years ago, Don Eigler, a scientist working for IBM in California, wrote out the logo of his employer in letters made of individual atoms. This feat was a graphic symbol of the potential of the new field of nanotechnology, which promises to rebuild matter atom by atom, molecule by molecule, and to give us unprecedented power over the material world. Some, like the futurist Ray Kurzweil, predict that nanotechnology will lead to a revolution, allowing us to make any kind of product for virtually nothing; to have computers so powerful that they will surpass human intelligence; and to lead to a new kind of medicine on a sub-cellular level that will allow us to abolish ageing and death. I don't think that Kurzweil's "technological singularity" – a dream of scientific transcendence that echoes older visions of religious apocalypse – will happen. Some stubborn physics stands between us and "the rapture of the nerds". But nanotechnology will lead to some genuinely transformative applications. New ways of making solar cells very cheaply on a very large scale offer us the best hope we have for providing low-carbon energy on a big enough scale to satisfy the needs of a growing world population aspiring to the prosperity we're used to in the developed world. We'll learn more about intervening in our biology at the sub-cellular level and this nano-medicine will give us new hope of overcoming really difficult and intractable diseases, such as Alzheimer's, that will increasingly afflict our population as it ages. The information technology that drives your mobile phone or laptop is already operating at the nanoscale. Another 25 years of development will lead us to a new world of cheap and ubiquitous computing, in which privacy will be a quaint obsession of our grandparents. Nanotechnology is a different type of science, respecting none of the conventional boundaries between disciplines and unashamedly focused on applications rather than fundamental understanding. Given the huge resources being directed towards nanotechnology in China and its neighbours, this may also be the first major technology of the modern era that is predominantly developed outside the US and Europe.
2011
20 predictions for the next 25 years
The Guardian
Mechanised Truth - Centralised routes to corporate truth-building
Truth, trust, believability – all under serious pressure in a consumer landscape developing a healthy disrespect for traditional arbiters of truth and authority, and where claim and counter-claim on any given issue mean that settled, mainstream truths are in short supply. Enter new, centralised routes to commercial truth- building that herald a future in which tangible, mechanised truths more robustly challenge emotionally-charged “alternative facts” and meet a significant need for corporate transparency.
2018
Trending 2018
Foresight Factory
Blockchain: Democratized trust - Distributed ledgers and the future of value
Trust is a foundational element of business. Yet maintaining it—particularly throughout a global economy that is becoming increasingly digital— is expensive, time-consuming, and, in many cases, inefficient. Some organizations are exploring how blockchain, the backbone behind bitcoin, might provide a viable alternative to the current procedural, organizational, and technological infrastructure required to create institutionalized trust. Though these exploratory efforts are still nascent, the payoff could be profound. Like the Internet reinvented communication, blockchain may similarly disrupt transactions, contracts, and trust—the underpinnings of business, government, and society.
2016
Tech trends 2016 - innovating in the digital era
Deloitte
Connected societies, empowered individuals?
Trends in connection, education and empowerment are interlaced in multiple ways and act as drivers, multipliers and indicators of progress towards addressing societal challenges. Overall, six major trends are identified in this report.
2013
Europe's Societal Challenges: An analysis of global societal trends to 2030 and their impact on the EU
RAND Corporation
Pace of Development
Trend analysis indicates that the most substantial technological developments are likely to be in the areas of: ICT; sensor/network technology; behavioural and cognitive science; biotechnology; materials; and the production, storage and distribution of energy. Advances in nanotechnologies will underpin many breakthroughs. Developments in individual areas are likely to be evolutionary, but where disciplines interact, such as in the combination of cognitive science and ICT to produce advanced decision-support tools, developments may be revolutionary, resulting in the greatest opportunities for a novel or breakthrough application.
2010
Global strategic trends - out to 2040
UK, Ministry of Defence
The Future of Transportation
Transportation is humanity’s greatest lever for economic growth. More than any other technology, transport is the catalyst for big leaps in culture and ideas. And transport has itself been the engine for growth on a global scale. The Great Acceleration of the Rail Age enabled the transport of produce and people in volume, which in turn enabled urbanisation and the development of the mass market. Powered by coal, constructed of iron and steel, and financed on new capital markets, the railways themselves became a primary driver of the Industrial Revolution. That was then, this is now. The great question facing global leaders is whether our current transportation options can meet the inexorable and conflicting demands of growth and environmental stewardship. At current 2.7% annual rates of growth, mobility demand in the developed world will double in 25 years and rise sixteen- fold in a century. Existing modes have served us well, but offer only incremental improvements when a step- change in performance and energy efficiency is required.
2016
Shaping the future
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Transportation could be very different in the future than it is today.
Transportation could be very different in the future than it is today. Autonomous vehicles, electric cars, high-speed trains, drones and even space travel have the potential to revolutionize the movement of people and products. Understanding these shifts is critical to choosing investments tied to the transportation sector.
2018
Eight long-term trends for growth investors
Morgan Stanley
Smart and transparent land use management
Transparency of real-time land use practices enabled by 4IR technologies including IoT sensors, cloud and big data, drones and advanced satellites, will be a game changer for implementing climate smart land use practices, and driving accountability in agriculture and forestry value chains.
2017
Innovation for the Earth - Harnessing technological breakthroughs for people and the planet
PWC
Transnational Extremism
Transnational armed criminal, terrorist or insurgent groups, experienced in conflicts around the world will be part of the strategic landscape. Many extreme political groups will have a transnational following, and may increasingly employ sophisticated methods of coercion, including cyber attack and Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). They will remain highly unpredictable and a continued cause of tension and instability especially in regions that have underlying governance and economic problems, such as in sub-Saharan Africa and possibly Latin America. Most will demonstrate features associated with organised criminality, terrorism, disorder and insurgency, fuelled by perceived or actual grievances. There is likely to be an increased sponsorship of irregular activity by states, seeking to utilise and exploit, through proxies, gaps in the international system, either to assert themselves or to secure advantage without exposing themselves to state-on-state risks. Acts of extreme violence, including mass casualty attacks, will continue to be used by groups with sophisticated networks and the ability to exploit the media in order to maximise the impact of the ‘theatre of violence’.
2010
Global strategic trends - out to 2040
UK, Ministry of Defence