Eight Trends Shaping Your Future
As we look ahead to the year 2020, we ask ourselves: how do we get from here to there? "The Badlands” is a metaphor that invites us to embark on a journey of discovery. It is the context in which the complex story of globalization is unfolding. These eight trends will shape this future and understanding them will help you make the right choices to take a successful journey.
Rapidly Increasing Numbers of Healthy Older People
The most uncelebrated success of the 20th century is the dramatic increase in longevity and the globally growing numbers of healthy people over 80 years of age. But people won’t be “old” for 40 years; they will be productive adults for 25 more.
The Changing Identity of Women
Since 1950, women around the world have gone to work, achieved high levels of education and made lifestyle choices that are re-defining who they are, what a household is and what is an acceptable work-life balance. The full impact of this trend is at the tipping point and these demographics are “queen” when they hit!
The Rise of Toxic Leaders
History reminds us that toxic leaders rise in the Badlands as those with power become more corrupt under the illusion of escaping the diminishment of their roles amidst the tectonic shifts of a new age. The Badlands’ uncertainty and terror of the unknown among common people creates a fear that drives them to keep toxic leaders in power with their promises of safety. New leaders must arise to break this conundrum and allow us to continue to the far foothills of the future.
China Grows, and China Grows and China Slows
Today the world’s manufacturing floor; tomorrow the largest economy on the planet. But how does China get from here to there? In its dramatic harvest of the low hanging fruit to achieve fast economic growth, it can no longer postpone the creation of a sea change in its social and political institutions as well as a more robust economic infrastructure.
The Global Growth of the Networked Economy
The digitization, virtualization and automation of just about everything everywherehave unleashed a persistent growth of productivity around the world with its myriad of both intended and unintended consequences. The world is “flat” for those who know how to access and leverage this new platform for business, social and political innovation—especially small- and mid-sized companies, whose numbers are dramatically increasing.
Increasing Demand for Advanced Education
Even the $2 trillion global marketplace for advanced education can’t meet what‘s needed. In many ways, both content and delivery remain mismatched to issues and needs that matter for learning. The churn-and-burn of strategy and jobs drives the need for new skills and knowledge. Both companies and individuals have no choice but to figure out how to spawn the hybrid models that will dominate the future.
Activist Consumers Accelerate the Transformation of the Supply Chain
Throughout the next decade, decision-making power about what gets produced, and how much is produced, will continue to shift downstream to customers and consumers throughout the global marketplace, creating a multitude of new value webs that will transform all relationships. Emerging first in the U. S., they are now prevalent around the globe. They demand a lot while not being very loyal.
Sustainability Grows In Importance
Environmental problems are much more visible today, and the scale and diversity of attention to them are creating a driving force for growth. Green data acquisition and accounting is easy to achieve, accelerating both environmental interventions and prevention with sophisticated cost-benefit analyses.
And finally and of utmost importance...
The Wealth Gap Grows Larger
The gap between the rich and the poor grows wider, driven by the polarizing and marginalizing impacts of the knowledge economy. You have to have the right skills to play which, under current conditions, 3 billion people have little hope of achieving, leaving them caught in a “black hole.” Given that we have both the monetary and knowledge resources to reverse this trend, will this be part of the new era?