Trends Identified

The Internet will grow ever more fragmented.
Besides the U.S.-China division, internet fragmentation is also happening in less obvious places, Oxford cybersecurity expert Emily Taylor explains. Europe’s global data protection regulation (GDPR) has led some companies to overreact and block their sites to European visitors. Other jurisdictions are following suit and considering data localization laws. “You're going to end up with cross-cutting national and regional laws that are reaching over their borders, making it very difficult for companies to comply,” Taylor warns. “People will just choose to be very limited in what they do and the audiences that they try to reach.”
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
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Don’t even try to guess the price of oil.
"Here’s a prediction for 2019: Energy markets are going to remain wildly unpredictable. One realization I came to when I worked on my last book was that most everyone who makes predictions about the future of oil prices is alike in one remarkable respect: They are wrong. "Remember M King Hubbert’s famous prediction of peak oil back in the 1970s? He looked roughly right — until the shale revolution changed everything. Now, the shale revolution is supposed to ensure a mammoth and growing supply of U.S. oil for the foreseeable future. 'Lower for longer,' meaning oil prices in the $50 range, has become something of a mantra on Wall Street. But skeptics suspect there may be fewer wells that are profitable at $50 oil than executives would have you believe. If so, and if the dearth of long-term projects over the past decade results in less supply than expected, there may be price spikes in the future. Or not. I think this is the ultimate truth about the oil market: It defies people’s attempts at predicting it, much less controlling it."
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
Chief ethics officer will be the hot new C-suite title.
As technology advances ever faster and the law struggles to keep up, how personal data is handled or how AI is built often comes down solely to corporate decisions. How do they make the right ones? Companies are waking up to that responsibility and making ethics a core function, which is growing out of legal like diversity grew out of HR. “What I think we're seeing now is a recognition that it's important to go beyond looking at the rules,” says Katie Lawler, chief ethics officer at U.S. Bank since 2017. “Having a strong set of core values, having a environment in which employees know that their voices will be heard when they have a concern, really goes beyond the ‘Can we?’ of compliance to the ‘Should we?’ of ethics.”
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
Africa and China will tie their fates.
China’s growing investment and presence in Africa over the last several years is undeniable; Xi Jinping just committed another $60 billion to African investment only three years after a similar pledge. “African countries are now fully aware of the huge infrastructure gap they have,” in the $70 billion to $120 billion a year range, and have welcomed Chinese money, says Stephen Yeboah, founder of Commodity Monitor. Meanwhile, China needs arable land to feed its population and raw materials — cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, copper from Zambia, bauxite from Ghana — to feed its industry. In 2019, public opinion will look at those deals closely, demanding fair terms and quality infrastructure, Yeboah says. Zambia’s loans were so mismanaged it can’t even tell how much it owes, he points out, while countries like Rwanda or Ghana have been able to drive a harder bargain. “Ultimately, each country is sovereign,” he says. “It’s up to African leaders to decide whether they let the Chinese call the shots.”
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
We will reach peak outrage.
In the last couple of years, public opinion has been driven by "polarized tribes," says Willow Bay, dean of the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism: “Outrage has been modified, optimized, personalized and, of course, monetized.” Outrage, like fear, is helpful in the short term but unsustainable in the long term, she says. “Many do not want to live in a state of semi-permanent outrage, they're simply tired of it,” she adds. “And I believe increasingly, people are going to want to reclaim consensus, collaboration and shared values rather than polarizing ones.” While Bay is referring to the United States, any country where people discuss politics on social media will recognize a version of this. She points to a study by More In Common which showed that 67% of Americans did not conform to partisan ideology or had disengaged from politics. They’ve been dubbed the “exhausted majority.”
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
Companies will shift to an ecosystem mindset — and hire for it.
“We’ve gone from a traditional linear type of thinking where everything is predictive to an ecosystem mindset,” says Sanyin Siang, a professor at Duke University and executive director of the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics. “So people need to rely less on just first-order effects but also think about second- and third- and fourth-order effects.” This will shift how companies hire as they look for skills that will boost company wellbeing in subtle but often unmeasurable ways, including people who are great mentors, skeptical thinkers or team builders. “When these roles happen serendipitously in an organization, it enables organizational survival and continuity,” says Siang.
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
You’ll eat that bug in your salad.
Retailers are warming up to the idea, which means you’re next: Sainsbury’s in the U.K., Provigo in Canada or Carrefour in Spain have all put bugs on their shelves in the past year. Insects have more protein than any other meat and are lauded as an environment-friendly way to feed a growing population. To combat the eek-factor, they can be ground into a protein-packed flour or used for animal feed. “If I had half a billion dollars to invest right now, mark my words, a large portion would be allocated to this emerging field,” says futurist QuHarrison Terry. “Currently, over 2 billion people worldwide consume insects on a regular basis for a source of protein. Yet, the industry is only estimated at $406 million. We’re one hit product away from seeing it become a multi-billion-dollar industry.”
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
Immigration to the West will get harder, and refugee crises will hit poorer nations.
As richer nations grow increasingly hostile to the idea of welcoming refugees, migrants pour into developing countries with more porous borders, who already host 85% of the world’s refugees. “Countries that are weak, don't have the money, or don't have the ability to police, are the ones that are usually right on the borders of a lot of these refugee crises to begin with,” Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, says. Millions of Venezuelans have already left their country and ended up in Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador or Peru — a crisis on par with Syria’s — while 3% of Uganda’s population is made up of refugees from South Sudan or the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
Learning isn’t enough; professionals will focus on doing.
After the explosion of the online learning sector, our heads are full of all those classes we’ve been taking. But what we are doing with this newfound knowledge? Whitney Johnson, author of "Build and A Team" and "Disrupt Yourself," says the next trend is to focus on improving our behavior, not just our expertise, in order to apply these lessons to our work and personal lives. She points to the success of books like "Atomic Habits" by James Clear and "Willpower Doesn’t Work" by Benjamin Hardy, along with perennial bestseller "The Power of Habits" by Charles Duhigg. “Perhaps because of the political environment, people want to take action, take control,” Johnson says. “And the only thing you can control is what you do.”
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
Order comes to the Wild West of data collection.
After a year of scandals, the implementation of Europe’s GDPR and upcoming copycat legislation from other jurisdictions, the advertising business will move away from the wholesale collection of personal data and the extreme personalization of advertising, predicts Mihael Mikek, the founder and CEO of digital advertising platform Celtra. “The question will come down to, Is the data being used in a way that benefits the consumer or not?” he explains. “In the last five years, it’s been such a crazy race to collect as much as possible.” Advertisers will follow consumers, who will demand more ethical and consent-based use of their data. After The New York Times' investigation of location-tracking appspublished yesterday, location data is likely to be the next battlefront.
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn