Trends Identified
What will matter at work is your humanity.
When robots take all our jobs, what do humans have left? Precisely that — our humanity. Creativity and so-called soft skills are becoming all the more important to your career because that’s what can’t be automated. In fact, LinkedIn data shows the fastest-growing skills gaps — the difference between what employers seek and what workers bring to the table — are related to soft skills: oral communication tops the list, followed by people management, time management or leadership. Employers who want to make the most of their human employees make sure to look after them as whole people, not just task performers, says Susan Cain, author of "Quiet" and CEO of Quiet Revolution. “I'm increasingly seeing employers having a goal of facilitating the entire life of an employee,” Cain says. “I don't mean it in a Big Brother type of way, but being an aid in the entire life of an employee as opposed to just the part that shows up to make wages.”
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
New arenas of state competition
When projecting long-term trends in international affairs, it is important to consider the possibility that the major conflicts of 2035 will be centred on issues that barely register in the international arena today, or are secondary matters at best. Over the next two decades, these will likely include: the space market; new weapons systems like unmanned vehicles; policing rogue states; cyberwarfare and internet governance; and the Arctic Ocean.
2017
Global trends to 2035
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Tackling Uncertainty Head-on
When planning for any organisation’s future, decision makers are faced with an increasingly complex and dynamic external environment. For some elements of this environment, such as demographics, it is possible to identify broad trends; while others, such as the turbulent geopolitics, are more challenging to predict. In considering an uncertain future and how best to position the organisation, scenario planning is a useful tool. By creating a series of ‘different futures’, based on the most significant but uncertain forces shaping our environment, decision makers are encouraged to re-examine their own assumptions about the future. The process results in individuals stepping away from the so often reactive, incremental strategic planning – a natural response to uncertainty – in favour of a more forward looking, proactive approach.
2016
Shaping the future
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Future of work
When machines become workers, what is the human role? When EY first wrote about the future of work in our 2016 Megatrends report, the topic was just starting to attract attention. Skeptics doubted predictions about massive disruptions of labor by AI and robots. Now, we are overwhelmed with analyses of the future of work from the mainstream press, business literature and consultants. Predictions that seemed distant two years ago are entering the real world — from the live- testing of autonomous ride-sharing in key cities to the opening of the world’s first fully automated retail outlet, the Amazon Go store in Seattle.
2018
What’s after what’s next? The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2018 and beyond
EY
Transparently Immersive Experiences
When it comes to transparently immersive experiences, technology is introducing transparency between people, businesses and things. As technology evolves to be more adaptive, contextual and fluid, it will become more human-centric. Besides AR, companies should look to digital workspaces, connected homes, virtual reality and 4D printing in this realm.
2017
Top Trends in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2017
Gartner
Manufacturing may be more local and efficient
When it comes to light manufacturing, synthetic biology and 3D printing have similar characteristics: they both support the local production of a “product” from a digital file using simple low-cost equipment; they enable very low-cost replica on of a small or large quantity; and they allow the user to easily experiment and customize the product. Currently, 3D printing uses close to 30 different materials with growing complexity (e.g., Boeing prints 22 000 different airline parts). Soon this will include clothes, many consumer goods and electronic gadgets, to name a few. Synthetic biology will likely produce liquids, solids and industrial chemicals for pharmaceuticals, medicine, paper
and building supplies and other goods yet to be imagined, in small or large quantities, and may produce raw materials on-site for local manufacturing plants.
2013
Metascan 3 emerging technologies
Canada, Policy Horizons Canada
Super consumer
When humans are augmented by AI, who gains the most — consumers or brands? We expect the evolution and interplay of AI, machine learning, ever-present sensors, smart devices and new computing interfaces to take consumer empowerment to
a whole new level — giving rise to tomorrow’s super consumer. A little like the fictional superheroes of comic books, super consumers can be defined as those who embrace new technologies, such as AI, VR, wearables and robotics, to create smarter and more powerful extensions of themselves. Whether working, playing, eating, shopping, learning or pursuing healthier lifestyles, tomorrow’s super consumers will be augmented by technology (see Human augmentation) in the service of achieving more informed and rich experiences across these different categories of living.
2018
What’s after what’s next? The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2018 and beyond
EY
Food: 'Russia will become a global food superpower'
When experts talk about the coming food security crisis, the date they fixate upon is 2030. By then, our numbers will be nudging 9 billion and we will need to be producing 50% more food than we are now. By the middle of that decade, therefore, we will either all be starving, and fighting wars over resources, or our global food supply will have changed radically. The bitter reality is that it will probably be a mixture of both. Developed countries such as the UK are likely, for the most part, to have attempted to pull up the drawbridge, increasing national production and reducing our reliance on imports. In response to increasing prices, some of us may well have reduced our consumption of meat, the raising of which is a notoriously inefficient use of grain. This will probably create a food underclass, surviving on a carb- and fat-heavy diet, while those with money scarf the protein. The developing world, meanwhile, will work to bridge the food gap by embracing the promise of biotechnology which the middle classes in the developed world will have assumed that they had the luxury to reject. In truth, any of the imported grain that we do consume will come from genetically modified crops. As climate change lays waste to the productive fields of southern Europe and north Africa, more water-efficient strains of corn, wheat and barley will be pressed into service; likewise, to the north, Russia will become a global food superpower as the same climate change opens up the once frozen and massive Siberian prairie to food production. The consensus now is that the planet does have the wherewithal to feed that huge number of people. It's just that some people in the west may find the methods used to do so unappetising.
2011
20 predictions for the next 25 years
The Guardian
A majority of Americans envision a future made better by advancements in technology
When asked for their general views on technology’s long-term impact on life in the future, technological optimists outnumber pessimists by two-to-one. Six in ten Americans (59%) feel that technological advancements will lead to a future in which people’s lives are mostly better, while 30% believe that life will be mostly worse.
2014
US views of technology and the future - science in the next 50 years
Pew Research Center
By the 2030s, we'll be ready to move humans toward the Red Planet
What’s more, once we get there, we’ll probably discover evidence of alien life, writes Ellen Stofan, Chief Scientist at NASA. Big science will help us to answer big questions about life on earth, as well as opening up practical applications for space technology.
2016
Eight predictions for 2030
World Economic Forum (WEF)