Title:
Author: Future Agenda | https://www.futureagenda.org
Permalink:
https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/page/4/
New perspectives on the future are gained from multiple expert discussions around the world. Our ten year foresights offer rich, insightful views on some of the most important changes shifts – and challenges - that lie ahead.
Mass urbanisation, reduced activity and poor diets are accelerating the rise of obesity. Levels of obesity in most cities are growing fast and the associated healthcare burden will soon account for 5% of global GDP. The obesity epidemic has been a major concern for many developed countries for a number of years. However, with increasing urbanisation and sedentary lifestyles in other regions, it is now accelerating as a primary health issue in India, China and other fast-shifting nations across Asia and Africa. While many in some rural communities are still suffering from poor nutrition, their fellow citizens in the cities…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/urban-obesity/
The Internet has democratised knowledge and changed the nature of who we trust and why. As confidence in large organisations declines the search for trustworthy alternatives evolves. What we believe is changing how we behave. If pushed, most people would agree that we have always lived in a world of smoke and mirrors where it is difficult to separate what is true from what is not – generations of historians, journalists and politicians have forged careers out of unravelling fact from fiction and explaining it to the masses. Looking ahead, however, it seems that, despite having (almost) perfect information at…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/truth-and-illusion/
Increasing collaboration drives organisations to reconfigure based on social networks and impact. Real sharing enterprises, not driven by profits, seek to share resources, knowledge, and decision-making responsibilities. Based on online marketplaces creating transparency of demand and matching to it supply, at a competitive price, the sharing economy already encompasses a wide range of models, the likes of Airbnb, Uber and TaskRabbit, most founded on a for-profit approach. Many of them have been established around the more open and transparent sharing of information that enables more peer-to-peer business models to be developed. While many of the current successes are labelled as…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/the-real-sharing-economy/
Despite a better understanding of the long-term challenges we face, we individually and collectively continue to make decisions that may make sense in the short-term – but do not lead to better longer-term consequences. The Doomsday Clock has been maintained since 1947. It is a symbolic clock face that represents a countdown to possible global catastrophe such as nuclear war, climate change or cyber-terrorism. It is maintained by members of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists who are in turn advised by the Governing Board and Board of Sponsors including 18 Noble Laureates. In…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/still-being-stupid/
International regulation is progressively aimed at freeing up trade and making it simpler and less bureaucratic – but there are a number of agreements, standards and protocols that some are seeing as increasingly constraining. As the world seeks to optimize global trade flows, there are high and low points emerging that may well influence future regulatory direction and support. Much of the development in global trade has been led by the US, which, in the eyes of some, means that, while enabling global trade to develop significantly, the US has also gained more than others. For instance, over the past…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/standards-driving-trade/
Greater global connectivity, growing consumer wealth and broader reach all combine to accelerate the time to 1bn customers and a $10bn valuation for start-ups and new corporate ventures alike. Founded in 2004, Facebook reached 500m users within six years and had a billion by October 2012. This may be the new norm: we are in a world where we are all increasingly connected, where new ideas spread globally overnight and where there is a plentiful supply of capital available to support the best new business concepts. Looking ahead, as we move from 4.5bn to 7bn mobile phone users and reach…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/speed-to-scale/
Elective migration, cheap travel, international knowledge sharing, and increasingly transient working models create connected nomads who mix the traditions of home with the values and customs of their host location. People move around for all sorts of different reasons, good and bad. The World Bank estimates that about 250 million people live outside the country of their birth and, adding in those who have moved internally, about one in every seven of us could be defined as a migrant. Increasing numbers of people are fleeing violence but many others move for work, love and adventure. This mass movement of humanity,…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/sometimes-nomads/
The need to build and develop capabilities becomes increasingly challenging for companies and workers alike. Those who benefit from the high-skill reward opportunities remain a select group who move ahead of the urban pack. Across the world it is difficult for companies to recruit the right people for the right jobs – while many professionals find themselves either with the right skills in the wrong place or with the wrong skills to cope in an increasingly technical and interconnected world. This mismatch of skills and requirements has a knock-on impact on economies globally. The next decade will see governments, corporations…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/skills-concentrations/
While the global middle class grows, in the West increasing inequality for some drives a relative decline in middle-income populations. Coupled with the erosion of secure jobs, the US in particular sees a steadily shrinking middle. When taking a global view, one of the major demographic shifts underway is the growth of the middle class. The middle class growth during the Industrial Revolution and after the Second World War was largely in Western Europe and America, whereas today the growth is in the so-called emerging markets. Asia, Africa and Latin America are collectively set to add 3 billion more middle…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/shrinking-middle/
The centre of gravity of economic power continues shifting eastwards, back to where it was 2000 years ago. Recent superpowers seek to moderate the pace of change but the realities of population and resource locations are immoveable. Are we are witnessing the end of an era in globalization and international trade? The structures set up in the wake of the WW2 may no longer be fit for purpose. Western markets are weakening, the US appetite to act as overall arbiter and keeper of the peace diminishes and Europe faces its own constitutional challenges. Asian countries, which have in the main…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/shifting-power-and-influence/
With unemployment rates already over 50% in some nations, access to work is a rising barrier. Especially across North Africa, the Middle East and southern Europe, a lost generation of 100m young people fails to connect with or gain from global growth. There are currently about 75 million young people looking for a job around the world. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) predicts that by 2019, more than 212 million people will be unemployed. Irrespective of location, young people, especially young women, will be disproportionately affected; unemployment is expected to be around three times higher for them than for their…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/rising-youth-unemployment/
As China’s economic influence on the world increases there is a rise in the cult of China in popular imaginations elsewhere. Myths of both hope and fear will proliferate as China’s cultural influence increases. It’s a platitude to say that China is going to be important over the next decade; the more interesting question is how? To some, China is a land of promise; to others it’s an unwieldy behemoth, blighted by heavy-handed governance, out-dated ideology, and selfish insularity. The point perhaps is this: it does not so much matter where the truth of these views lies (reality will always…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/the-rise-of-the-cult-of-china/
