Trends Identified
Development of technologies that empower consumers and communities
2016
Geostrategic risks on the rise
McKinsey
Development of multipolarity and The growing interdependence on unprecedented scale
Over the past decades, the world has moved from a bipolar to a multipolar and multi-actor world order with various power centres and a less certain global security situation. There is no reason to believe that multi-polarisation will not continue. Multipolarity means that there are fewer super states and more middle powers in world affairs due to the rapid economic growth of emerging economies, their increasing role on global markets and the share in foreign investments. Brazil, Russia, India and China together with South Korea, Turkey, Iran, Mexico and Nigeria are the emerging powers of today and tomorrow that make their voices heard on the global geopolitical scene.
2014
Challenges at the horizon 2025
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Development and extraction of unconventional raw materials sources
The creation of equipment to develop and extract non-traditional sources of raw materials will guarantee the necessary conditions for the industrial development of new hydrocarbon sources. The application of these technologies implies a several fold increase in the volume of reserves, the geographical expansion of extraction, and the transformation of the raw hydro carbons market with an increase in the proportion of resources and alternatives to traditional oil and natural gas (gashydrates, shale gas, “heavy oil” and oil sands, coal mine methane, methane from high gasbearing coal formations, etc.).
2016
Russia 2030: science and technology foresight
Russia, Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation
Developing tomorrow’s workforce
Demographic trends are having profound implications for the workplace. The global population is expanding; it will hit 8 billion in 2025. But this growth won’t be uniform, since declining fertility rates will hit some countries much harder than others. By 2020, the median age will be 43 in Europe, 38 in China and just 20 in Africa. The working-age population is, as a result, undergoing major geographic shifts. It’s still growing rapidly in countries like India, where nearly a million workers will swell the labour force every month for the next 20 years. But it’s already peaked in China and South Korea, and has been falling for more than a decade in Germany (see Figure 7). Urbanisation is causing further upheavals, with the number of city dwellers projected to rise by 72% over the next four decades. The concentration of people and resources in a compact area is a powerful combination. Cities currently generate about 80% of global economic output. 16 But uncontrolled urbanisation can also result in overcrowding, poverty and poor schooling – conditions that neither attract nor nurture talent. And it’s talent that’s the main engine of business growth. So one of the biggest issues CEOs face, as these huge demographic changes occur, is finding and securing the workforce of tomorrow – particularly the skilled labour they need to take their organisations forward.
2014
17th Annual global CEO Survey
PWC
Developing human capital
The massive population shift from farm to factory has altered the social landscape in the fast-growing emerging economies, but social infrastructure has not kept pace. Broadening access to education and improving its quality over the coming decade will be crucial if those economies will successfully navigate the transition to a higher value-added service and technology-based economy. Likewise, building a basic healthcare delivery system and weaving a stronger social safety net will absorb a far higher proportion of investment than in the past. Estimated contribution to global GDP by 2020: $2 trillion.
2011
The great eight: Trillion-dollar growth trends to 2020
Bain and Company
Developing diverse and dynamic partnerships
Partnerships As CEOs increasingly focus on what they’re good at, they’re looking to partner with others whose capabilities could complement or enhance their own. Fifty-one percent plan to enter into new strategic alliances or joint ventures over the next year – the highest percentage since we began asking the question in 2010.
2015
18th Annual global CEO survey
PWC
Developing countries will dominate global trade
The weight of global economic activity is shifting from the G7 countries toward emerging economies. Over the next 50 years, this trend is expected to accelerate. On the most conservative projections, the economy of the G20 is expected to quadruple in size, rising from US$38 trillion in 2009 to US$160 trillion in 2060 in real dollar terms.
2011
Africa in 50 Years’ Time
African Development Bank
Destination: data
As data becomes a hotter topic in 2018, people will be radically re-appraising their attitudes and behaviour towards it.
2018
2018 trends
Mindshare
Despite their general optimism about the long-term impact of scientific advancement, many Americans are wary of some controversial changes that may be on the near-term horizon
Advancements such as teleportation or space colonization will likely require massive leaps in scientific knowledge and effort before they can become a reality, but the widespread adoption of other “futuristic” developments is potentially much nearer at hand. With the recent introduction of Google Glass and other wearable computing devices, for example, it may be only a matter of time before most people walk around being directly fed a constant stream of digital information about their surroundings. And the widespread use of personal and commercial drones may depend as heavily on regulatory decisions as on advances in engineering. Despite their general optimism about the long-term impact of technological change, Americans express significant reservations about some of these potentially short-term developments. We asked about four potential—and in many cases controversial—technological advancements that might become common in near future, and for each one a majority of Americans feel that it would be a change for the worse if those technologies become commonly used.
2014
US views of technology and the future - science in the next 50 years
Pew Research Center
Design the organization of the future
Big data and deep learning have transformed our ability to learn, and the next generation of technologies will undoubtedly bring even more possibilities. History has shown, however, that applying new technologies to existing processes and structures generally yields only incremental gains. To unlock the learning potential of new technologies, leaders need to reinvent the enterprise as a next-generation learning organization.Merely applying AI to individual process steps is not enough: To increase the ability of organizations to learn in aggregate, they must build integrated learning loops that gather information from data ecosystems, continuously derive insights using machine learning, and act on those insights autonomously, all at the speed of algorithms rather than the speed of human hierarchies. But organizations must not learn only on algorithmic timescales—they must also better understand and position themselves for the slow-moving forces, such as social and political shifts, that are increasingly transforming business. To learn on multiple timescales, leaders will need to design organizations that synergistically combine humans and machines. Algorithms should be trusted to recognize patterns in data and act on them autonomously, while humans should focus on higher-order tasks like validating algorithms, imagining new possibilities, and designing and updating the hybrid “human + machine” organization itself. This division of labor also requires rethinking human–machine interfaces so that humans can trust and productively interact with machines. Collectively, these imperatives demand a massive evolution of organizational capabilities and the creation of new “learning contracts” between employees and enterprises. Many of these principles are already being implemented in isolated domains, such as the operations of digital marketplaces. But to win the ’20s, the same principles must be applied to all parts of the organization in order to create a “self-tuning enterprise” that constantly learns and adapts to the environment. Such organizations must be designed with flexible backbone systems, evolving business models, and, above all, a new model of management—one based on biological principles such as experimentation and co-evolution, rather than traditional top-down decision making and slow cycle planning. Management needs to shift its emphasis from designing hardwired structures and procedures to orchestrating flexible and dynamic systems.
2018
Winning the ’20s: A Leadership Agenda for the Next Decade
Boston Consulting Group (BCG)