Looking into the future is always a challenge

Strategy is about defining your current state, future position and direction.  Understanding your environment – both current and future – is an important part of the job. Anyone having worked with strategy also knows that any prediction of the future is a real challenge, and that several scenarios may need to be taken into account.

Just as an exercise, let’s say that we would go 20 years into the future. Where are we then?

A few predictions:

• The digital society connects both people and objects, digitizes goods and services, enriches everything with information and automates human labor.

• The world’s population is older, in average. A proportionally smaller workforce supports more seniors, who are more active and engaged as workers and consumers.

• More and more of us have moved into cities, mainly in the developing world. Cities become mega-sized, innovation labs and catalyze growth.

• Everything grows – populations, economies, and wealth. The developing world is the key growth engine as the global middle class grows, particularly in Asia.

• The consequences of climate change and unsustainable resource depletion hits home. Corporate sustainability is an urgent need – and a competitive advantage.

Why do I say this? Well, a large number of global institutes, institutions and organizations have actually already tried to crack this nut, and the number of research reports on the topic is vast. There are even conferences on the topic for those who are interested. In focus is identifying and understanding mega trends impacting the world. A Mega Trend is a global, sustained and macro economic force of development that impacts business, economy, society, cultures and personal lives, and thereby defining the world of our future.

As a very earthly exercise, a colleague and I decided to go through 50 global trend reports with over 5000 pages, published over the last five years period. We selected Five Global Mega Trends that we have put together in a Slide Share presentation to help spread the insights. And suddenly the Inquentia Trend Report 2015 was born.

Why bother? Well, tomorrow is actually built today, and understanding unfolding global mega trends can be a very helpful tool on the way. Also, some mega trends may actually need your attention already now, since they are already here and will only grow in importance and impact over time.

Elisabet Lagerstedt

Elisabet Lagerstedt is the founder and director of Future Navigators. As a trusted advisor, consultant, and Executive Coach, she helps business leaders navigate beyond business as usual to build Better Business and co-create a better future - through insight, strategy, innovation, and transformation. Elisabet is also the author of Better Business, Better Future (2022) and Navigera in i Framtiden (2018).