Global Trends Blog

Picture a world of bright green cities – not just in terms of being eco-friendly, but bright green as in color! My research for the May Global Trends Briefing on Securing Resources (register here to receive it when it comes out) threw up an interesting article about the world’s first algae powered building in Germany. It’s an apartment complex with a bright green façade thanks to its covering of biofuel-producing algae, and will be the first building in the world to fully integrate algae into the building’s construction. While it’s an exciting – as well as aesthetically pleasing – development, it will no doubt take time to spread. However, the article made me think about how our next generation of cities will be different from the ones we know today.

Cities are magnets for people with hopes for a better and more prosperous life. Around the world urbanization is rapidly increasing: today half of humanity – some 3.5 billion people – lives in cities and by 2025 that number will increase to 60%. No question that the future presents huge challenges for city planners and local governments.  It’s not just about building enough living space for the urbanizing crowd, but also about creating a functional infrastructure while reducing the environmental footprint of every single citizen. Fortunately numerous cities have already taken up the challenge of realizing the living spaces of the 21^st century. A couple of years ago climate strategist Boyd Cohen, Ph.D., LEED AP, developed what may have been the first ever global ranking of smart cities. As I found, some of the cities on the list might surprise you!

We are delighted to welcome Judith Wedel as our occasional correspondent from Brussels. She is a sociologist and journalist and she will keep us updated on the latest trends from Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Her focus is on political developments with regards to business, social and environmental issues. In her first blog she shares her insights about how monitoring EU institutions has become a growth industry for Europe

After some years abroad we’re back to Brussels – the European melting pot. The unofficial European Capital doesn’t offer an easy welcome initially. The sky above the city seems to be stuck in shades of grey, public administration often appears somewhat Kafkaesque and signposting is not a Belgian strength. It takes a lot of patience, effort and tenacity to find your way around.  Skills you also need when working in the surroundings of the European Institutions.

The winds of reform are blowing in Asia at the moment. Or so it seems when one reads the headlines. Are the loosening of the authoritarian regime in Burma (sometimes called Myanmar) and the recent protests by Chinese journalists really manifestations of openness in these countries? 

To first check out the longer term trends, your occasional correspondent turned to the internationally recognized indices relevant for political governance. It turned out to be depressing reading. In terms of press freedom, both Burma and China score in the bottom five percent of the Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index over the past decade. The Freedom House Index, measuring political rights and civil liberties, shows similar results. In terms of corruption, represented by Transparency International’s corruption perception index, China’s result is near the middle among the world’s countries, whereas Burma is consistently cited as one of the three most corrupt countries in the index since 2004.

The news from the latest Consumer Electronics Show(CES) 2013 in Las Vegas got me thinking how much life has changed since I was a kid back in the seventies and early eighties. It doesn’t feel like that long ago, but maybe it is. At least that’s what technological developments are telling me. Like many other parents I am hugely concerned about my kids and their friends spending too much time on the iPad, computer, television and every other electronic device you can name – but in reality they are just doing the same things that I do and, for that matter, the rest of the world. Born in the early 2000s they are typical of generation Z or C – the connected generation. Technology and connectedness is in their DNA and being tech-savvy is critical for our future generation, as technology changes ever faster than before.

The internet is probably the most beloved invention since the car. More than 2.4 billion or 34.3% of the world’s population is online and Facebook, the world’s biggest social network with 1 billion users, just confirms the fact that we love being online, connected and living our life in real-time.  However, the internet is not only used as tool to connect people. Increasingly it is also used to fight inefficient transport services, outdated water and waste networks, rising pollution levels and increased demands for energy and housing in our ever more urban communities. Today cities are becoming more intelligent as high technology firms, including IBM and Cisco, cross industry boundaries to take on the challenge of city management. In many different forms, they offer highly efficient, next-generation computerized planning, information and control systems. For example, IBM has worked with Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro to use technology to better handle the challenges of running the city, from managing traffic flow, or coordinating public works crews to anticipating disruptive storms. Another smart new technology making a difference to city planning is Urban OS from Living PlanIT, which works like a PC operating system, monitoring buildings, traffic and services in order to help a city to run smoothly. Test beds for the Urban OS are currently being built in Portugal as well as London’s Greenwich peninsula, while Living PlanIT was selected as one of the World Economic Forum's Technology Pioneers of 2012 for its work in developing smart cities. Another interesting Internet-led development is connectedness in manufacturing. According to the recent report “Industrial Internet: Pushing the Boundaries of Minds and Machines” from  General Electric, the Internet of Things has the potential to add US$10-15 trillion to global GDP by 2030 and reduce billions of dollars’ worth of waste across major industries such as healthcare, energy and transportation.

Your occasional correspondent is tuktuking south on Chamkardoung boulevard on a steamy hot October day. Red dust and nauseating diesel fumes fill my lungs and eyes as we approach the infamous Khmer Rouge killing field outside Phnom Penh. The nausea is exacerbated by seeing the physical remnants and listening to vivid accounts of a horrendous time in Cambodia’s history in what is nowadays an open air museum.  Historical images of forced labor and starvation in the rice paddies, torture and execution in the killing fields fill my head. Later, returning northwards, zigzagging through the sprawling urban landscape, history fades and today’s reality grabs my attention and fills me with a glimmer of hope. The small independent businesses along the road are seemingly thriving: bakeries, furniture-, hardware- and appliance-stores, delivery companies, the larger beer breweries and garment industries. Only a few decades after Pol Pot and his regime were forced out of power in 1979, Phnom Penh has gone from ghost-town to this dynamic hustle and bustle. 

Note to self: Stay here! Singapore is buzzing. There is no other way to describe the activity and creativity visible in every corner of this miniscule adopted home country of mine. And it is buzzing in a sort of planned and structured way that makes you feel as if everything is moving onwards and upwards. Therefore, the fact that Singapore scores among the top third in this year’s Global Innovation Index and at the top of the Global Innovation Policy Index comes as no surprise.

Here's another quick preview from The Global Trends Report 2013, due out in just 2 days on November 14th. Look out for it soon.

Social needs, mobility, communities, societal impact and connectedness are at the heart of the business environment of the future. In this world the consumer can no longer be regarded solely as an individual, self-determining entity. They are connected, for better or worse, and that means the impact of the business-consumer relationship extends beyond the “target” of the relationship, i.e. the consumer, out to the extended networks and communities of which that individual is a part. This is a world where word of mouth and, increasingly, word of mouse dominate. There is nothing new about using our friends as source of best advice. What is relatively new is the way more and more people do it. We are moving away from “wisdom of crowds” to the “wisdom of friends.” Trust is the currency of the connected world.

In The Global Trends Report 2013, one accelerating challenge is the Fight for Control & Access to Resources.  As the world scrambles to deal with increasing natural resource scarcity and the explosion of digital resources, competition is increasing at both a corporate and national level to build the capabilities that will drive long-term success.  For some this means concentrating power over resources, for others it means new business models and approaches which allow greater control over resources at regional and community levels.  As control & access to resources becomes more distributed, one of the implications for organizations that we highlight in this year's report is the need to shift mindsets from control and ownership of resources to shaping the network that needs the resources.

Changes in resource availability and the competitive landscape mean not only that competition will come from new directions, but also that companies will require a mix of collaborative as well as competitive strategies and tactics to succeed in future. Traditional business patterns are being disrupted by the explosion of social media and other digital platforms, with organizations increasingly turning to open source and collaborative networks that allow them to find, create, and leverage resources and knowledge faster, more effectively and at lower cost than in old “closed loop” models controlled within a company. Firms are moving from being the central players in a physical value chain, to being nodes in open networks of value creation that span the physical and digital worlds. In this connected world, no single organization can ever hope to meet all of its customers’ needs alone. Partnerships will also be required to deliver on the increasing demands of customers for solutions and experiences as well as to deal with commoditization.

The last two weeks have seen unprecedented social unrest around the world – the democratization of everything is spreading but frankly it’s not a pretty sight.  Just think back on the headlines:

• China and Japan facing off over disputed ownership of islands in the East China Sea – with demonstrations and violence against Japanese businesses in China as nationalist sentiment rises, compounded by the anniversary of a politically sensitive incident.
• Demonstrations, violence and deaths across the world from North Africa and the Middle East to Indonesia and Pakistan as Muslims protest over a cheap and nasty film ridiculing Islam, clearly produced by less than a handful of bigots to incite religious turmoil.
• Ongoing strikes and renewed violence as South African miners demand higher wages and clash with security forces, even as some returned to work.
• Massive demonstrations in Portugal and Spain against austerity measures as standards of living fall and unemployment soars – plus renewed demonstrations by Catalan separatists.
• In India, tens of thousands protest against government plans to open the retail trade to foreign investors, as well as rising fuel prices.
• Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, re-elected this year, targeted by up to 50,000 demonstrators in Moscow, calling for an end to his rule.
• In Argentina, President Cristina Kirchner’s government facing the largest pot-banging protest ("cacerolazos") since taking office as people protested over corruption scandals, crime and management of the economy.
• Occupy Wall Street protesters back to mark the anniversary of the movement, although with fewer feet on the street and continued tensions with police.
• Continuing protests over natural resources in Peru, particularly directed at the mining sector, leaving one more person dead this week.
• Ongoing protests over the July election of President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico, amid accusations of vote-rigging and media collusion, including a cyber-attack this week on government, political and media websites.
• The threat of renewed protests in the Chinese village of Wukan, as elections have not brought the desired changes in government control nor the return of land sold illegally.  

The list could go on – frustration and anger is boiling in societies around the world over: their own government’s management of economy and society; perceived threats to livelihoods; inequality; religious insults and intolerance; crime and corruption; and natural resource ownership.  It’s a potent cocktail of grievances. The cost to societies in terms of driving divisions and damaging livelihoods and economies is massive. What’s causing the unrest? And what can we do about it?

Ashley Halligan, of Software Advice, recently published an article outlining how organizations are undertaking zero-waste initiatives – specifically, diverting all of their waste from landfills through a series of efforts ultimately tackling their waste stream.

Natasha Deonarain, MD, MBA is a board-certified family practice and urgent care physician with 20 years of experience in both Canada and the United States. In her upcoming book, The 7 Principles of Health: Your Call to Health Consciousness, she talks about a new paradigm for optimal health that’s based on a different paradigm than that used in Western medicine. Natasha kindly shares her thoughts on how the US healthcare system needs to – and can become – more patient-centric.

To see where America’s healthcare future lies, we should take a few lessons from the book and music industries.

Ashley Halligan, of Software Advice, recently reported on innovative sustainability efforts across the globe – in some surprising places.  But perhaps we should not be so surprised. Making the best of our environment and the resources we have available is a critical need everywhere – and even more so for communities facing challenges such as health hazards from waste and violence.  Ashley kindly shares a summary of four innovative efforts in this guest blog, in Medellin (Colombia), Naples (Italy), Songdo (South Korea), and Philadelphia.

Medellin, historically-labeled as a violent, drug-ridden mecca, has made incredible progress in developing public transport systems, including the installation of an innovative series of escalators connecting its poorest neighborhood to the city center, which has been credited with helping to reduce crime in the area.

Is the potential of distributed energy on your radar yet?  If it isn’t, it probably should be.  Energy transforms economies and lives, so it should demand the attention of politicians, thought leaders, industry and, hopefully, the consumer.  And it does, but not necessarily with an eye to the future.  The potential of distributed energy hasn’t really been recognized yet.  The question is why?

Distributed energy (also known as distributed generation) is electricity generated from small-scale power generation technologies, which when combined with load management and energy storage improve the amount, quality and reliability of electricity supplies.  Typically, such technologies focus on renewable sources. Most importantly, however, because distributed generation projects are small in scale and more numerous, they move supply closer to the consumer thereby lowering environmental impacts and improving security of supply.  It also avoids the enormous cost of energy wastage which – if we could figure out how – could cut your bills in half!  For example, in 2009 about 58% of energy generated was wasted. (Source: Good Infographics)

In my last blog post, I talked about the phenomenal rise and opportunities in Vietnam, but there are also challenges ahead.  Some thoughts from discussions while there…

While the streets of Hanoi and Saigon (as locals still call Ho Chi Minh City) are vibrant, they also testify to the growing pains of this rapidly emerging nation, which only started international reintegration in 1986 after prolonged military engagement.  In 1975, when the country reunified under a communist government, it was isolated and devastated from military action. Even today, younger generations of Vietnamese entrepreneurs talk from personal experience about how they and their families suffered during this period and the disastrous post-war collectivization of farms and factories which led to massive inflation and economic collapse. The shift in leadership and policies in 1985 heralded a new start for the nation, with free market reforms – known as Đổi Mới (Renovation) – starting the transition from a planned economy towards a socialist-oriented market economy.  Private ownership, economic deregulation, foreign investment and newly resumed trade links with the world restarted the engine of growth.

The headlines have been full of numbers recently, particularly as we have just passed a milestone where the 7 billionth person has now joined the world’s population (give or take a few million and a few months either way).  So let’s start there in terms of looking at some important numbers that will impact the world in the next decades.

1.  7 billion: The world’s (estimated) population at the end of 2011

Information and communications technologies are advancing rapidly, reshaping all aspects of our work and lives, from telecommuting to how we find information to how we interact with others.  The implications for providers of commercial goods and services are enormous, from how they manage their increasingly tech-literate workforce to how they interact with consumers and customers over time.  For the public and non-profit sectors, the changes are equally significant with new ways of connecting with constituencies, gathering tax returns or polling information to new ways of engaging communities in social activities and philanthropy.

With the data deluge increasing, there is an “attention arms race” going on – organizations are competing not only within their industry but across all industries and forms of information to gain – and keep – the attention of their consumers and customers.  It can’t be done alone.  Organizations need to manage a growing array of channels and intermediaries through which their information is filtered, aggregated and relayed to target audiences, including search engines, social networks, news sources, mobile communications providers and purchasing portals such as apps stores.  

Knowledge and information is being created and shared globally at a faster rate than ever before. In world of real-time news, consumer-ceased content and everything online we are even exceeding our ability to store the data we have created. With more brains and more computing power the speed of innovation is increasing - along with our ability to copy those innovations rapidly. We are all increasingly becoming knowledge workers, finding, harnessing and nurturing ideas, whether new, borrowed, adapted or occasionally radical breakthroughs. Be faster, be smarter, be more creative, are recurring mantras across the world in all aspects of life and work.

So where do we look for inspiration? Where do we find a stream of ideas that we can build from? An interesting book from Andy Boynton and Bill Fischer, with William Bole, offers some important insights into the realm of idea hunting - perhaps even an emerging profession in its own right? The Idea Hunter is subtitled "How to find the best ideas and make them happen." The most important word in the entire title is "find." The key myth that this book exposes is that ideas are seldom breakthrough, new discoveries of momentous importance that spring from the brains of the gifted creative or super-intelligent scientist toiling in splendid isolation in a lab. Rather, ideas are everywhere and even the normal among us can find them, shape them and create value from them - if we take the time to look.

Large parts of the world are this week operating on a wing and a prayer: With high levels of damage, low levels of preparation and many unknown factors, desperate people are relying mainly on hope to avert potential disaster.  Japan is racing to avert a nuclear catastrophe in the aftermath of the massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami, which killed thousands, made almost half a million homeless and has significantly damaged the economy.  The Libyan war has started, as UN-backed forces begin their mission to drive regime change in support of the Libyan rebel forces.  Egypt is at a critical point in its transition, as people embrace their freedom in voting on constitutional reforms which will shape the country’s future.   These events will reshape our world in ways we do not yet know: Our thoughts and hopes should be with those in the front line.

In Japan, the earthquake was not the issue, but rather the devastating tsunami waves that utterly destroyed towns and knocked out power at the Fukushima nuclear reactor complex. Since then, the hundreds of thousands displaced by the tsunami and radiation fears have been battling freezing weather, even as food, water, power and shelter run short.  At Fukishima, desperate measures to cool the reactors have been taken all week, with hopes for stabilization by restoring power supplies today again knocked back as pressure rises in Unit 3.  Radioactive gas will once again be released into the air to relieve pressure and try to bring the unit back under control.  Radiation has already found its way into the food chain, with spinach and milk up to 120 kilometres from the plant showing iodine levels above safety limits. Tokyo, some 240 kilometres away, has seen miniscule amounts of radiation in tap water, while Taiwanese officials have reported higher than permitted levels of radiation on fava beans imported from Japan. While officials maintain that the amounts of iodine detected pose no threat to human health, the public is shunning potentially contaminated food and water – concerns are high and prices of basic necessities will rise.

Even as the revolutionary tide sweeps North Africa and the Middle East – and potentially further afield – there is a quiet revolution going on around the world. Civil society, including many forms of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), are tackling an ever-expanding portfolio of issues from the aftermath of revolution to natural disasters such as earthquakes in Haiti and most recently New Zealand to poverty and social exclusion, within and across borders. Sheer numbers, increasing funding (from both government and private sources) and multiple channels to make issues transparent to a global audience, mean NGOs have more power than ever before.  They are serious business – potentially contributing the equivalent of 5% of global GDP, about the same as France.  Yet it is a sector that is often completely overlooked in economic debates which is a mistake. Through sheer need – of the people it serves and because of limited funds – civil society is creating some of the most innovative approaches to business, society and organization today.     

It’s a sector I am excited about, not just because we published a report on NGOs today (so yes, it is top of mind), but because exciting new forms of partnership between NGOs, businesses and governments could really deliver on the aspiration of realizing mutual benefit for society and business, at the same time. Don’t forget, it feels good to help others according to science, so there are many innovative ways that NGOs/civil society are making a difference. For example, buy one, donate one: There were times where donations went into a collection box. Today there are multiple ways to help make a difference at the community level. It’s simple: You buy a product and give a product away to a less fortunate person for free, without the hassle of having to manage the giving personally. Pioneering Toms Shoes and OLPC have inspired worldwide projects like BoGolight, One World Futbol Project, Baby Teresa, and Blanket America.   For example: The small town of Bishop’s Castle in Shropshire, U.K., is home to the Wasteless Society.  By acting together they learned they could make a positive difference: Collecting and feeding a neighboring farmer’s anaerobic digester with waste helped them not only recycle but also to produce clean energy.  It’s not an NGO as such, but operates on similar principles, i.e. mutual benefit to society and the community involved. For example: Catchafire is matching nonprofit projects with professionals who can help, often with tasks like marketing, PR, design, social media, strategy and finance. At the global level, the leading NGOs are having a positive impact on issues such as the environment (e.g. WWF), treating the injured and sick from conflicts and natural disasters (e.g. Médecins Sans Frontières), and disease and education (e.g. The Gates Foundation).

The Wall Street Journal has set tech and investment banking pulses racing today with an article suggesting that Twitter may be a prime takeover target.  Although reported talks with Facebook and Google have been “low-level” and don’t seem to be going anywhere fast, the article has well and truly put Twitter on the block at an estimated valuation of US$8 to 10 billion. Round numbers are so much easier when we are talking tech-based financial excitement, don’t you think? So let’s make it easy and stay with the 10 figure.  Based on the report, that’s 222 times reported 2010 revenues of US$45 million or 100 times estimated 2011 revenues of US$100 million.   And the reason it made a loss in 2010 is that it was investing in growth, both of data centers and employees. With 175 million users worldwide (more than the WSJ and New York Time and growing) plus new advertising revenues (and growing too), it sounds like a good deal, right?

Last time I had these sorts of conversations was about ten years ago.  That’s when various friends and family were comparing notes about the Caribbean islands they were thinking about retiring to.  We don’t live on a Caribbean island today, neither do they.  So why are we back in bubble-land? (By the way since my last post on bubble or no bubble reports of secondary trading of Facebook suggest it is valued at more than Amazon now. Meanwhile the Huffington Post is being acquired by AOL for US$315 million.) There is no financial calculation that can make sense of these estimated valuations and yet venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (of Andreessen/Netscape fame) said it bought more than US$80 million of Twitter shares through exchanges for private-company stock.  They have been there and done that, so why are they along for the ride?