Trends Identified

Social Change

According to the World Bank Group, two thirds of all jobs could be susceptible to automation in developing countries in the coming decade. The role and responsibilities of people in this new operating landscape will increasingly shift to knowledge work, process control and decision making. As such, the ability to learn, unlearn, relearn and co-learn reinforced through reskilling and upskilling would be increasingly important as emerging technologies lead the way to greater automation. The democratisation of knowledge also gives rise to a society where ideas and knowledge can be easily accessed by many and no longer limited to an elite group. The digital revolution enables knowledge to be freely acquired, shared and developed thereby empowering people to make informed decisions.

2017

Science & Technology Foresight Malaysia

Malaysia, Academy of Sciences Malaysia

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

Resources (un)limited?

The world’s natural-resource equation is changing as technology boosts resource productivity, new bottlenecks emerge, and fresh questions arise about “resources (un)limited?”.

2017

The global forces inspiring a new narrative of progress

McKinsey

Combinatorial-technology explosion

Digitization, machine learning, and the life sciences are advancing and combining with one another to redefine what companies do and where industry boundaries lie. We’re not just being invaded by a few technologies, in other words, but rather are experiencing a combinatorial technology explosion.

2017

The global forces inspiring a new narrative of progress

McKinsey

C2B: Customer in the driver’s seat

Customers are reaping some of the rewards, and our notions of value delivery are changing. In the words of Alibaba’s Jack Ma, B2C is becoming “C2B,” as customers enjoy “free” goods and services, personalization, and variety.

2017

The global forces inspiring a new narrative of progress

McKinsey

Ecosystem revolution

The terms of competition are changing: as interconnected networks of partners, platforms, customers, and suppliers become more important, we are experiencing a business ecosystem revolution.

2017

The global forces inspiring a new narrative of progress

McKinsey

The dark side

Progress thrives on openness, and openness almost by definition means exposure. The Internet, for example, has brought critical dangers even as it has unleashed a business and social miracle. Everyday acts, such as connecting your phone to your car via Bluetooth, create vulnerabilities most of us do not yet consciously consider. The costs of fighting cyberthreats are rising into the trillions. Meanwhile, rogue states continue to frustrate the global community, and the strains from combating terrorism are reverberating worldwide. The number of terrorist incidents and casualties remains relatively small but has been rising; global terrorism death levels by the end of 2015 were more than five times higher than they were in 2001.

2017

The global forces inspiring a new narrative of progress

McKinsey

Middle-class progress

The rising tide of progress has not lifted all boats equally. Globalization and automation are polarizing the labor market, with more on the way as expanding machine-learning capabilities increase the automatability of a wide range of tasks in developed and emerging markets alike (Exhibit 8). As middle-wage workers are displaced, many are forced to “trade down,” reducing their income and putting pressure on existing lower wage workers. There is also widening earnings disparity. Workers with advanced degrees have generally seen their earnings rise, while wages for those with only high-school diplomas have stagnated, and wages for those who do not hold a high-school diploma have declined. Youth unemployment has reached 50 percent or more in several major developed economies

2017

The global forces inspiring a new narrative of progress

McKinsey

Economic experiments

Many growth policy tools have reached their limits. Central banks and governments in the developed world responded to the financial crisis by slashing interest rates , creating innovative facilities to try to keep the credit of lowing, and in some cases bailing out financial and nonfinancial players. Different mixes of austerity and structural reforms also were tried. When these proved insufficient to restart growth, leaders around the world turned to new, sometimes overlapping policy experiments, in search of a more effective solution.

2017

The global forces inspiring a new narrative of progress

McKinsey

Automation, employment and productivity

Automation is an idea that has inspired science fiction writers and futurologists for more than a century. Today it is no longer fiction, as companies increasingly use robots on production lines or algorithms to optimize their logistics, manage inventory, and carry out other core business functions. Technological advances are creating a new automation age in which ever-smarter and more flexible machines will be deployed on an ever-larger scale in the workplace. In reality, the process of automating tasks done by humans has been under way for centuries. What has perhaps changed is the pace and scope of what can be automated. It is a prospect that raises more questions than it answers. How will automation transform the workplace? What will be the implications for employment? And what is likely to be its impact both on productivity in the global economy and on employment?

2017

A future that works

McKinsey