Trends Identified
More than 170 million people are unemployed despitethe continued decrease in the global unemployment rate
An estimated 172 million people worldwide were unemployed in 2018, which corresponds to an un-employment rate of 5.0 per cent. It is remarkable that, whereas it took only one year for the global un-employment rate to jump from 5.0 per cent in 2008 to 5.6 per cent in 2009, the recovery to the levels that prevailed before the global financial crisis has taken a full nine years. The current outlook is un-certain. Assuming stable economic conditions, the unemployment rate in many countries is projected to decline further. However, macroeconomic risks have increased and are already having a negative impact on the labour market in a number of countries. On balance, the global unemployment rate should remain at roughly the same level during 2019 and 2020. The number of people unemployed is projected to increase by 1 million per year to reach 174 million by 2020 as a result of the expanding labour force.
2019
World Employment and Social Outlook
International Labour Organization (ILO)
Smart Toys Educating the Masses
An emerging focus on coding provides mass market opportunities. Big toy makers moving to offer coding on all smart toys as a USP.
2018
Top Tech trends 2018
Juniper Research
The internet of wings
An ambitious project will start in 2017 designed to track from space the movement and behaviour of animals, large and small, anywhere they travel around the world. In June a Russian rocket will carry an array of sensitive dish antennae up to the International Space Station. Orbiting low over Earth, the antennae will be able to decode faint radio signals from tiny solar-powered tracking tags, light enough for migrating songbirds to carry safely. If all goes well, within two years as many as 20,000 animals may be tagged—and further into the future hundreds of thousands more, as the tags become light enough to be carried even by large flying insects such as locusts.
2016
World in 2017
The Economist
The Platform (R)evolution: Defining ecosystems, redefining industries
Among the Global 2000, digital industry platforms and ecosystems are fueling the next wave of breakthrough innovation and disruptive growth. Increasingly, platformbased companies are capturing more of the digital economy’s opportunities for strong growth and profitability. Rapid advances in cloud and mobility not only are eliminating the technology and cost barriers associated with such platforms, but also are opening up this new playing field to enterprises across industries and geographies. In short: platform-based ecosystems are the new plane of competition.
2015
Accenture Technology Vision 2015
Accenture
The Future of Universities and Evidence-Based Research
Among the European Union’s best assets are its highly- educated population, its universities, and its research capacity. Europe’s universities have, through the course of their rich history contributed hugely to modern thought and to modern science. They have helped shape the world that we know today. Past glories will not sustain us forever. Universities need to change in order to serve the needs of tomorrow’s economy and society. This is not in debate. There is a need for more skills - and more research- in science and technology, for example. Universities will continue to have a central role in the drive for technological innovation.
2016
Shaping the future
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Software-defined everything - Breaking virtualization’s final frontier
Amid the fervor surrounding digital, analytics, and cloud, it is easy to overlook advances currently being made in infrastructure and operations. The entire operating environment—server, storage, and network—can now be virtualized and automated. The data center of the future represents the potential for not only lowering costs, but also dramatically improving speeds and reducing the complexity of provisioning, deploying, and maintaining technology footprints. Software-defined everything can elevate infrastructure investments, from costly plumbing to competitive differentiators.
2015
Tech trends 2015 - The fusion of business and IT
Deloitte
No Rights Left
Amid a new phase of strong-state politics and deepening domestic polarization, it becomes easier for governments to sacrifice individual protections to collective stability. This already happens widely: lip service is paid to human rights that are breached at home or abroad when it suits states’ interests. What if even lip service goes by the wayside, and human rights are dismissed as anachronisms that weaken the state at a time of growing threats? In authoritarian countries with weak human rights records, the impact of such a tipping point might be one of degree—more rights breached. In some democratic countries, qualitative change would be more likely—a jolt towards an illiberalism in which power-holders determine whose rights get protected, and in which individuals on the losing side of elections risk censorship, detention or violence as “enemies of the people”. Battles are already under way among major powers at the UN over the future of the human rights system. In a multipolar world of divergent fundamental values, building far-reaching consensus in this area may be close to impossible. “Universal” rights are likely to be interpreted locally, and those interpretations then fought over globally. Even superficial changes might be of modest help, such as new language that is less politicized than “human rights”.
2019
The Global Risks Report 2019 14th Edition
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Predictions for the future: eight in ten Americans think that custom organ transplants will be a reality in the next 50 years, but just one in five think that humans will control the weather
Americans envision a range of probable
outcomes when asked for their own predictions
about whether or not some “futuristic”
inventions might become reality in the next half-century. Eight in ten believe that people needing
organ transplants will have new organs custom-built for them in a laboratory, but an equal number believe that control of the weather will remain outside the reach of science. And on other issues for example, the ability of computers to create art rivaling that produced by humans—the public is much more evenly split.
2014
US views of technology and the future - science in the next 50 years
Pew Research Center
The future of work
Americans believe automation will likely disrupt a number of professions, but fewer foresee their own jobs being at risk.
2017
Key trends shaping technology in 2017
Pew Research Center
The Amazon Awakening
Amazon will be the most important emerging platform for digital advertising in 2018. This is not about product pages. It’s about thinking of Amazon as a useful platform for advertising in every part of the sales funnel. And they’ve got the product suite to match.
2018
Key digital trends for 2018
Ogilvy