Trends Identified
A U.S.-China cold war will first be fought on the technology front.
Despite current tensions, the U.S. and Chinese economy are too interlinked for a trade war to truly escalate in the short term, says Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer. A cold war is more likely in five or 10 years, he adds, when an economic downturn and sustained animosity have undone those ties. But for 2019, the fight is on the technology front: “There you do have a cold war. There you have the Chinese with their AI model, the Americans with our AI model. The Chinese with their internet, the Americans with our internet,” he says. He echoes former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who warned in September that our online world risked a “bifurcation” into Chinese-led and U.S.-led internets. “They're not playing nice at all,” Bremmer adds. “I do think that longer term we're heading for big trouble between the Americans and the Chinese.”
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
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
The combustion engine will get smarter before it goes away.
Going green doesn’t have to be reserved for the wealthy who can afford to switch to an electric car, says Bertrand Piccard, chairman and pilot of Solar Impulse, who flew a solar plane around the planet. For middle class people struggling to fill up the tank — we were speaking at the start of the Yellow Vest protests in France — there are solutions. He points to an anti-smog device installed on the engine for a few hundred bucks that reduces fuel consumption by 20% and particles by 80%. Built-in AI in your car can help you drive greener and cut another 20% off the bill. “Today, half the energy we use is wasted because we have inefficient systems,” Piccard says. “There will be more carbon taxes because we can’t afford to keep wasting fossil fuels. But we can put systems in place to be less wasteful, to consume less, and in the end we’ll save money.”
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
Uber and Lyft will lead a wave of IPOs.
Ride-hailing companies Lyft and Uber just filed papers on the same day to go public in early 2019. This could be a banner year for tech IPOs, with total proceeds forecast north of $100 billion. “According to the Chinese calendar, 2019 rings in the Year of the Pig...and boy is that apt for the IPO market!” says CBS News’s Jill Schlesinger. “Uber, Lyft, Palantir, Slack, Airbnb all could take the plunge in 2019. With the tech sector taking a bit of a hit recently, the C-suite execs and their bankers are trying to carefully weigh the old Wall Street mantra: ‘Bulls and bears make money; pigs get slaughtered!’” Despite a shaky market, they may still pull the trigger this year to avoid running into a downturn and an election cycle in 2020.
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
Companies will speed up diversifying their workforce — or will be made to.
Nearly five years after they started publishing diversity reports, few companies have actually made material progress in hiring and retaining a more diverse workforce. That’s because besides being more open about their shortcomings, they’ve mostly kept recruiting the same old way, says Jopwell CEO Porter Braswell. Now’s the time employers humble themselves and ask for help, he says: “They’ll be recruiting with a different mindset, not looking to check every item off a list.” That’s driven by two factors: short term, the labor market is tight and talent at a premium. Long term, “by 2040, the majority of people in the U.S. will be people of color,” Braswell reminds us. Companies that don’t change will become irrelevant to workers and customers. And they may not even have the option: in the U.K., after the success of mandatory gender pay gap disclosures that started in 2018, the government is considering forcing companies to reveal their ethnic pay gap as well — and their action plan to close it.
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
A “me first” world will be harder to steer.
Some of the institutions that since WWII have held the world together — the UN, NATO, G20 and more — are weakening, notes Stan McChrystal, CEO of the McChrystal Group and former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. What comes after is uncertain, he warns, because when you pull the key stone from the arch, things may fall apart that you did not expect. “Our challenge is we're in a ‘me first’ world now, and I mean ‘me first’ by nations, but also ‘me first’ by leaders, ‘me first’ by companies,” he explains. Leaders need to make decisions from a broader perspective and consider interdependencies, McChrystal says. If you go into a negotiation expecting to win everything and leave the other side weakened, he warns, “in many cases, what's happened is the very ecosystem we both depend upon is gone.”
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
The office will empty out.
"With cities filling up and housing prices rising, employers will have to pay more for employees to afford an urban life. Some businesses will open an office in a smaller town; more will embrace employees’ working from home. The whole point of an office weakened years ago with the disastrous open floor-plan, a warren of people wearing headphones and messaging their brains out, together in name only. More recently, the movement to give working parents more flexibility has made managers hesitant to grade on attendance. And now, Slack, Github, Jira and other tools for virtual teams are being co-opted by workers of all stripes."A gradual process will, in 2019, reach a tipping point: The office will empty out. Working from home will change the most basic rhythm of industrial life. People will have more time to work, and also to play. What we’ll lose is the water cooler, which alongside the altar and the school entrance, was a place for us to connect with new people. Offices are also one of the last spots in an increasingly secular society for all of us to get a sense of community and purpose. I’ll be sorry to see them so diminished."
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
You'll have better access to your medical data.
Apple's move to make medical records available on the iPhone is likely to be the first domino in a move to democratize access to, and control of, patients’ health data. People who live in countries where health care is decentralized know that if they change doctors, their medical records typically don't follow them. And the entities that do have access to health care data, such as hospitals and insurance companies, typically don't share it, more for competitive reasons than patient-centric ones. But a behemoth like Apple could change the stakes. "I'd like us to get to the point where data is not seen as intellectual property," said Dr. Doug Fridsma, president and CEO of the American Medical Informatics Association. "If we don't have the ability to share data, you're going to stifle innovation." It's notable, he adds, that Apple — a company that does everything on its own terms, from operating systems to headphone jacks — is using the international FHIR standards for its Health app.
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
The high street will band together.
The story is repeating itself in every country: From the famed big box stores of America to the high street chains of the U.K., physical retailers buckle as they face deep-pocketed online disruptors. “Things have never been more competitive,” says entrepreneur Naomi Simson, CEO of the Big Red Group in Australia, where Amazon launched with fanfare just a year ago. But smaller players are starting to band together to stand up to the giants, she says. “It might be through buying groups, marketplaces, associations, movements such as ‘buy local’... There will also be M&A,” she predicts. “The difference now is mindset. Business owners used to think the shop next door was competition. Now they know that there is safety in numbers.”
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
Financial options will catch up to the modern worker
“If we want to provide the opportunity for people in the future to live financially healthy lives, the industry will need to rethink financial services that were designed for individuals that work a single job for his or her lifetime,” says Dan Schulman, CEO of PayPal. “Emerging technologies as well as socio-demographic changes are going to cause a shift in financial service needs and demands.” We can already see this trickle starting in the industry. The new “UltraFICO” credit score will be rolling out early next year. “It will take into account your banking behavior: Are you able to pay all of your bills? Are you making sure that you don’t go negative in that account?” Jill Schlesinger of CBS News explains. By changing the way loan providers think about credit, it opens a door for a younger generation shying away from credit cards and debt.
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn