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Viewpoint: Megatrends that will change everyone's lives

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.