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2013-02-11 05:17:18
By Sarwant Singh Author and consultant
Imagine a future where concerns about sustainability and the environment have
given way to worries about individual health and wellbeing.
Investors would shy away from "green" solution to instead focus on so-called
"smart" products and technologies, such as digital assistants - ranging from
portable screens to vehicles or robots - that help individuals in their
everyday lives.
These "smart" technologies can help business too, of course, as they help
cement a community of four or five billion people who will be connected to each
other via the internet, each and every one of them a potential customer.
As such, a technological revolution is under way, where gadgets, large and
small, are changing society. And this stuff is not make-believe any more. In a
decade or so, much of this will have become reality.
But how will we get there? How will society change along the way, whether at
the local or the global level?
Many companies are still trying to work out how they should respond to global
trends, such as the dramatic rise of China's economic and political power, or
even to the need for strategic takes on issues such as e-commerce or the rise
of social media.
Organisations are also responding to the emergence of a reverse brain drain
that is increasingly forcing educated Westerners to look for skilled work in
Asia, or with Asian companies in their home countries.
But while some react, others are taking the lead. To name but a few:
Facebook has emerged to both shape and take advantage of online social
networking trends
IBM has transformed its computer hardware business to become a solution
provider
Amazon has carved out a dominant position in online retailing, then moved into
hardware with its Kindle and into services with its cloud data-storage
solutions
All three, and many others with them, have one thing in common. They have all
been among the first to spot and adapt to major societal and transformative
forces, or so-called megatrends, such as these:
Health and wellbeing
A doctor examines his patient
Public health is becoming unaffordable. In the Western world, healthcare costs
are set to account for a fifth of total government spending by 2020. In the US,
it already does so - almost.
Consequently, the age-old model of treating symptoms will give way to more
holistic solutions that involve early diagnosis of disease, methods that can
predict future ailments, efforts to prevent disease in the first place and
ongoing monitoring of patients to ensure medical intervention takes place at an
early stage when it is generally cheaper to do so.
Private health insurance schemes will change to reward individuals who stay
healthy, and the private sector will increasingly sell gadgets, drugs and
services that help them do so.
Smart is the new green
A person poses using a smartphone to hire a chauffered car
If "green" was the last decade's megatrend, the latest buzzword is "smart", a
suitably vague term that starts in the home.
The idea is that technology will transform your ordinary home into a "smart
home", where entry will be controlled by retina scanners, digital assistants
will greet occupants, detect their mood and respond intelligently by
controlling the ambiance with mood lighting, scents, sound and vision.
Meals will be planned with options displayed on the touch-screen kitchen table
top and mirrors will offer fashion advice. The phone or tablet will become a
caretaker that monitors energy usage during peak and off-peak periods.
The fridge will obviously restock itself, placing automatic orders for jam and
ketchup whenever it is running low.
Outside the home "smart cars" will offer hands-free driving as they move
autonomously through modern cities. "Smart initiatives" are set to emerge
throughout modern society, reshaping the way we interact with homes and cities,
buildings and cars, as well as with factories and utility companies. Big data
will create new corporate ecosystems.
Innovating to zero
Email inbox
Another buzzword is "zero", which centres around the idea that with the help of
innovation, we can remove what we do not want - that we can create foolproof
systems that ensures there are "zero breaches of security", products with "zero
defects", cars that result in "zero accidents", or clever models that result in
"zero fatalities" in, say, construction or mineral exploration industries.
Concepts such as "zero emails" will gain popularity in our workplace as there
will be a shift towards more informal collaboration and as increasingly
versatile social media tools replace the inbox.
And then, of course, there are the so-called "zero emission cars".
Electric mobility
BMW i3
By 2020, more than 45 million electric bicycles, cars, buses and trucks are
expected to be sold annually.
True, sales of such vehicles remain weak and will probably remain so for a
couple of years longer, but during the second half of the decade we will see
sales take off, creating new markets for batteries, charging stations and
wireless charging solutions, as well as electric motors for cars.
It will pave the way for new business models, such as pay-by-the-mile motoring.
Cities as customers
New York
Across the world, the pace of urbanisation is picking up. Core city centres are
seamlessly merging with suburbs and "daughter" cities. City limits are
expanding and so-called "mega-cities" are emerging, along with "mega-regions"
and "mega-corridors".
Each of these "mega-districts" - which will often be deemed "smart" or
sustainable - will be so large that companies are beginning to consider them as
autonomous hubs of customers, investment, wealth creation and economic growth.
As such, many of the companies will increasingly reorganise to focus their
sales and marketing efforts and other business strategies on individual cities,
as opposed to on countries or states as most of them currently do.
From planes to trains
Bullet trains in Japan
Some 200 years after the railway was invented, we are about to see dramatic
change. The next decade or two will see the creation of a global high speed
rail network that will connect not only cities, states or countries, but even
continents.
Some of the world's largest infrastructure projects will come together to make
seamless rail travel between the United Kingdom and China, say, or between
Moscow and the Middle East possible in the next 15 to 20 years.
Even the rail laggard USA will get in on the act as rail increasingly becomes a
driver of economic growth.
Value for many
Metro newspaper in New York
The emergence of a global middle class, which is interconnected via the
internet and set to number some five billion people by 2020, is resulting in
the creation of new "value for many" (VFM) business models that will help drive
economic growth in the coming decade.
Examples that exist already include Groupon's collaborative business model,
which uses the internet to connect buyers and buys goodsen masse to get the
discounts. Car sharing schemes or the free Metro newspaper are also "value for
many" business models, which by definition can only make money if they have a
large number of members.
The most interesting feature of the VFM business model is that it drives
innovation across a whole spectrum of industries, from low-cost flights to
low-cost affordable healthcare products for the masses.
Connectivity and convergence
Woman using screens during a presentation at the World Economic Forum in Davos
By 2020, the world will see 80 billion connected devices, nine billion mobile
phones and five billion internet users, 50% of whom connect through handheld
devices.
This creates an invisible network that amounts to a world without borders,
where tasks can be completed at the blink of an eye and the touch of a finger,
and where online video, social media and digital imagery create an era of
connectivity and convergence that will change future human interaction in every
aspect of life.
New battlefields
Cyber War image
Cyber-wars fought by cyber-soldiers might sound like science fiction, but
military forces around the world have come to accept it as a fifth battle
front, alongside sea, air, land and space.
Much of it will centre around the control of information, and in turn around
the control of the more than 1,200 satellites that are expected to be launched
into space in the next decade, alongside myriad rockets carrying space
tourists.
Population and internet growth will result in a twentyfold increase in the
number of hackers around the world, each of them trying to wrestle control from
companies or governments in order to make money or cause disruption.
Social trends
Young Indian women learn self defence
Age and sex matters. Our private lives will change as a direct consequence of
the population make-up in our home country. Or perhaps in our home mega-city.
In India, some 60% of the population will soon be aged below 34. Consequently,
a new generation of political leaders below the age of 45 is waiting in the
wings.
China has already seen a political generational change and the "younger"
Chinese government is expected to bring new social changes such as the
abolition or relaxation of the hukou system, which restricts people migrating
within the country, and the single-child policy.
The abolition of the single-child policy will reduce China's dependence on the
relatively few "little emperors" supporting their parents and grandparents. It
will also increase the women-to-men ratio.
Increasingly, female empowerment, which will see women play an increasingly
active role in the world of politics and business, will result in fewer
children being born, often later in their mothers' lives.
Sarwant Singh is the author of New Mega Trends and a partner with the
consultants Frost & Sullivan.