Trends Identified
Few companies can maintain pricing power these days.
Few companies can maintain pricing power these days. Technology has allowed for easy comparison shopping, increasingly efficient production and shifts in certain business models that can erode pricing power. However, companies that can maintain pricing power through technological barriers, unique products and brand recognition should be able to maintain an advantage.
2018
Eight long-term trends for growth investors
Morgan Stanley
Fewer fancy phones, more fulfilment
The world many of us live in is changing at an exciting pace. Innovations are generating new gadgets, more convenient services and greater opportunities. But many of these changes target a small percentage of the globe’s population. In the villages I’ve worked in, nobody has seen an iPhone or can download an app. However, there is tremendous room for entrepreneurs to adapt innovations intended for the wealthy to serve the world’s poor. Solar panels and LED lights, designed for sale in rich nations, are stimulating growth in commercial off-grid electrification in India and Africa. Mobile telecommunication is being used to facilitate financial inclusion in developing countries across the world. Once-expensive medical procedures can be done amazingly cheaply. Even the financial sector is innovating in order to reach the world’s poor; as well as investors looking for opportunities that not only help them increase their net worth but also improve the world. Better financing opportunities are opening up for social entrepreneurs who build businesses to serve the poor profitably. I see a slight but significant shift in innovation, that instead of producing fancier phones, we will create more fulfilling lives for people who have been mostly ignored to date.
2014
14 tech predictions for our world in 2020
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Fewer, but more productive, workers
Artificial intelligence (AI), sensors, data analytics and robots will drive significant change in many workplaces in Canada and around the world.
These technologies will transform many jobs where a routine physical or mental task is repeated;
AI will increasingly handle the routine, while workers will be free to focus on the exceptions that AI cannot handle. AI and data analytics will also increase productivity and the demand for non-routine and professional skills by reframing the way we design, coordinate, manage, deliver and assess products and services. Sensors will provide workers with a much broader picture of the processes they manage, improving efficiency and client satisfaction. Cheaper, mass-produced robots and autonomous delivery vehicles will change the flow, timing and flexibility of work. Working conditions and on-the-job safety will greatly improve for dangerous professions, largely through the use of sensors, drones and robots in fields such as mining, policing and rescue missions.
2013
Metascan 3 emerging technologies
Canada, Policy Horizons Canada
Fight or Flight
Rapidly growing cities are making more people vulnerable to rising sea levels. Two-thirds of the global population is expected to live in cities by 2050. Already an estimated 800 million people in more than 570 coastal cities are vulnerable to a sea-level rise of 0.5 metres by 2050.1 In a vicious circle, urbanization not only concentrates people and property in areas of potential damage and disruption, but it also exacerbates those risks—for example, by destroying natural sources of resilience such as coastal mangroves and increasing the strain on groundwater reserves. The risks of rising sea levels are often compounded by storm surges and increased rainfall intensity.
2019
The Global Risks Report 2019 14th Edition
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Filters and catalysts for water purification
2006
Global Technology Revolution 2020
RAND Corporation
Financial Markets and New Economics
We are on the cusp of a new industrial revolution; one that addresses the triple challenge of global economic recovery, energy security and climate change. We stand, perhaps somewhat portentously, at a turning point in the history of humanity. What is missing, however, is an economic vision or financial game plan that can bring the myriad issues and foremost priorities together with the common goal of creating a new political economy and monetary infrastructure fit for the 21st century.
2011
Just imagine - RICS strategic foresight 2030
Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS)
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
Finding different ways of thinking and working
Views about diversity and inclusiveness seem to have reached a tipping point. No longer are they seen as ‘soft’ issues, but rather as crucial competitive capabilities. Of the 64% of CEOs whose companies have a formal diversity and inclusiveness strategy, 85% think it’s improved the bottom line. And they also see such strategies as benefiting innovation, collaboration, customer satisfaction, emerging customer needs and the ability to harness technology – all vital capabilities for success in the new competitive environment.
2015
18th Annual global CEO survey
PWC
Finding the Face of Your Data
Hidden patterns in big data can trigger breakthrough insights – if you have the data scientists to guide discovery In December 2012, an Internet search for “big data” returned more than 100 million results. A 2012 report from the Wikibon community pegged the big-data marketplace at $10 billion in 2012, growing to $48 billion in 20151. In the past year, over $1 billion has been invested into private companies that focus on big data solutions2. The majority of big-data market growth can be attributed to business’s increasing interest in related analytics capabilities to drive improved decisions through improved insight. Not surprisingly, some business executives feel big data is over-hyped. Others claim its value is under-realized.
2013
Tech Trends 2013 Elements of postdigital
Deloitte