The future of almost eve.., p.34
The Future of Almost Everything, page 34
When I first started presenting the Six Faces of the Future, I spoke to a group of CEOs and chairmen of some of the world’s most powerful corporations at the World Economic Forum, Davos.
I showed them what we saw in the introduction: how the usual way for CEOs of companies to view the cube is from the top. They tend to focus on just three Faces of the Future: Fast, Urban and Universal. In other words, all about the speed of change, urbanisation, demographics, health care, fashions and fads, technology and globalisation, and so on. It’s the typical world view of banks, IT companies, global manufacturing and e-commerce.
But as we have seen, most of the pressures for radical change are likely to come from a very different view of the same future. Turn the cube 180 degrees and we are confronted with Tribal, Radical and Ethical. This is a future driven by the forces of nationalism, sectarianism, social media, activism, personal motivation, aspiration, ambition, sustainability, politics, religion and terrorist movements.
I asked these CEOs a question: in their own experience, how many people would it take to totally change their strategy?
What proportion of their shareholders, or customers, or staff, or readers of social media, would it take to turn the direction of the company upside down, if they were very radical in thinking, very ethically driven and very tribal, or well organised. The answer is always the same: less than 2%. They think that just one person in 50, in society or among their customers, would be enough – if they were sufficiently passionate, radical, tightly organised and focused.
I asked another question. How many shareholders do you need to keep the chairman of a publicly listed company awake at night before an annual general meeting? The answer is always the same. Only one person is needed, with one share, costing a few dollars, asking the right ‘ethical’ question about a very controversial and ‘radical’ issue, to unleash uncontrollable forces in the ‘tribal’ media, forcing major policy changes.
If this is all true, then consider its implications for your own life. If a single shareholder can shape the future direction of an entire global corporation; if a small group of activists in a company or a community can influence a 5-year strategy …
How many people do you know or influence? You almost certainly have far more power to change things than you realise, inside the organisation you work for, or with people you know.
Look what can be done by the owner of a single share, and consider the potential impact of your own life over the next 10 years to influence people around you for the better, in many small but significant ways, at work or at home. And the greatest influence is always example.
How to stay ‘Futurewise’
People often ask me how they should stay informed. A key part of the answer is to read quality publications like the Financial Times or The Economist, and anything else you can lay your hands on, to broaden your perspectives.
Travel as much as you can to unfamiliar places, talk to everyone you can about unfamiliar things. Seek out and celebrate unfamiliar experiences, cultures, places and forums. Early-warning signs of change are all around you. For instance, always talk to your taxi driver, as they are often the first to notice a change in the city or nation where they live. They see early upturns or downturns in business. They overhear conversations.
Get involved. Join organisations outside your business, and meet new people from very different walks of life. For me, being part of a cosmopolitan church in London is helpful from that point of view. And the AIDS charity ACET, which started in our own family home in 1988, and is now in twenty nations, has been a tremendous learning experience, taking me deep into the most remote parts of some of the poorest nations on earth.
Watch people. When you visit a city, stop for a while and linger – whether in a café or a park or a museum or bus depot or street market. What do you see? What do you smell? What conversations do you hear? All of the future is streaming by.
Visit people in their homes in other nations, if you can. You will learn more in an hour or two about their way of life, family relationships and culture than in 30 years of working in the same virtual team.
Above all, stay intensely curious and interested in other people’s stories. Expect to change your own opinions and your own future. You have choices every day. Do what you believe in and feel most passionate about.
Footnote
* Order one from: http://www.globalchange.com/cube
About the author
PATRICK DIXON is the founder and chairman of Global Change Ltd, a growth strategy and forecasting company. He is the author of sixteen books (over 600,000 in print in over 40 languages), and a physician. Previous books include Futurewise, SustainAgility, The Genetic Revolution and Building a Better Business. He has been ranked as one of the twenty most influential business thinkers alive today.* He has spoken to audiences in over fifty nations and is one of the world’s most sought-after keynote speakers at corporate events.
He advises boards and senior teams on a wide range of strategic issues. Clients include Google, Microsoft, IBM, KLM/Air France, BP, ExxonMobil, World Bank, Siemens, Prudential, Aviva, UBS, Credit Suisse, PwC, Hewlett Packard, Gillette, GSK, Forbes, Fortune, BT, BBC, Fedex and DHL. He has also taught on a wide variety of executive education programmes at the London Business School since 1999.
Patrick has worked as group strategy director for Acromas Ltd, which owned the AA and Saga, before its flotation. He has been a non-executive director of Allied Health Care Ltd, which delivers over 40 million home care visits a year across the UK. He was also chairman of the cancer biotech company Virttu Biologics Ltd from 2012 to 2015.
He has appeared on many TV stations, including CNN, CNBC, Fox News, Sky News and ITV, with features in the Financial Times, Telegraph and Time magazine. His website has been used by more than 16 million different people with 6 million video views and over 43,000 followers on Twitter.
He trained as a physician at Kings College, Cambridge and Imperial College, London, during which he launched a health-care IT startup, called Medicom. In 1988, after working as a cancer physician, caring for those dying of cancer, he started the international AIDS agency ACET, which today has programmes in eighteen nations, mainly in the poorest parts of the world. ACET began as a result of his first book, The Truth about AIDS. He continued to write many other books, which led to broadcasting, lecturing on trends, and to advisory roles with many companies.
Patrick is in his late 50s and married to Sheila. Both are still heavily involved in supporting ACET around the world, in places like India and Uganda. They have four married children and two grandchildren, and live in London, where they are active in a local church. Patrick’s hobbies include long-distance sailing, painting and writing.
http://www.globalchange.com
http://www.youtube.com/pjvdixon
http://twitter.com/patrickdixon
patrickdixon@globalchange.com
+44 7768 511390
Footnote
* 17th in the world in Thinkers 50 2005; 47th in the world in 2003.
Acknowledgements
AS ANY LEADER OR WRITER KNOWS, any attempt to anticipate future trends can be a humbling and somewhat daunting process. Whatever success I may have had in this endeavour over the last 27 years has only been due to the combined foresight of a very large number of people.
I am deeply grateful to the many hundreds of senior business, government and NGO leaders from every industry and sector, as well as several hundred more innovators and specialists from over 100 nations, who have generously shared personal insights and reflections with me over the last few years about where they think their own industries and regions may be heading. These conversations have typically happened when working together, or over dinner, at corporate events where I am speaking, in board strategy sessions, or in workshops and seminars, as we have grappled together with what all of our futures might be like.
I am particularly grateful to Prabhu Guptara, who while at UBS Wolfsberg encouraged me to develop the original FUTURE construct, and for his faithful critique and mentoring over many years. Special thanks also (in no particular order) to Brian Souter, Sinclair Beecham, Peter Vardy, Andrew Goodsell, Tim Pethick, Lynda Greenshields, David Unsworth, Paul Reading, Martin Lindström, Johan Gorecki, Doug Balfour, Doug Birdsell, Toni Schönenberger, Don Sull and Tony Eccles. Thanks to the wonderful team at Leigh Bureau – Bill Leigh, Wes Neff, Karen O’Donnell, Rachel Moran, Doireann Maguire, Jonathan Pearce, Roisin Wickham, Anne Pennefather and Louise Dunne – for helping make so many of these events happen over the last 16 years, and for many helpful trend perspectives along the way.
I am also grateful to those working with some of poorest and most marginalised communities in emerging nations and those supporting them, who have taught me so much about rapid social changes, opportunities and challenges in their own countries, in connection with their inspiring work as part of the international AIDS agency ACET. People like David Kabiswa, Alan Ellard, Marek Slansky, Yvonne Kavuo, Milan Presburger, Sam Udanyi, Sujai and Lavanya Suneetha, Alex Zhibrik, Richard and Wendy Phillips, Richard Carson and Peter Fabian. Also thanks to many Faculty at London Business School that I have had the privilege to work with on Executive Education programmes during the last 16 years, including Dominic Houlder, Julian Birkinshaw, Lynda Gratton, Costas Markides, Nigel Nicholson, Andrew Scott, Linda Yueh and Jules Goddard – all of whom have helped sharpen my own thinking, as they have graciously allowed me to sit in on their sessions from time to time.
I am also indebted to a host of great thinkers, debaters, speakers and writers whose insights have influenced my evolving view of the world. I was first inspired to explore the future by the work of people like Nicholas Negroponte, Charles Handy, John Naisbitt, Peter Cochrane, Patrick Johnstone and Fons Trompenaars. And then I also owe thanks to the countless thousands of web writers, to the community of future trends bloggers, and to all those who make comments on my website, post responses to my videos and so on – often bringing vital perspectives.
Thanks to all the wonderful Profile Books team: to Stephen Brough, co-founder and senior editor, for inspiring me to travel once more into the future as a writer – he is an absolute pleasure to write for, and made a huge number of suggestions and comments; Paul Forty for making it all happen within a very tight deadline; Fiona Screen for copy editing and sorting out issues with such care; and Anna-Marie Fitzgerald for managing publicity. Thanks too to Patricia O’Sullivan at Global Change Ltd for re-checking the text. Thanks to Richard Herkes, formerly senior editor at Kingsway, for suggesting my first book – leading to 15 more over the years. I am also grateful to many other people like Glyn MacAulay, Steve Clifford, Gerald Coates, Lyndon Bowring, Lawrence Singlehurst, Andrew Owen, Mark Melluish, George Verwer, Phil Wall, Norman Barnes, David Smith, Peter Brierley, Gary and Max Hamilton, Steven Powell, Ravi Dua, Sam Jones, Linda and Richard Ward and Simon Blanchflower, who have all helped me make better sense at various times over the years of how the wider world is evolving.
And of course thanks to Sheila, my wife and best friend for more than 38 years, for her endless encouragement and feedback on the text, and to our four children and their spouses for helping me identify early trend signals.
Statistics and other important facts are from published government and other sources, as well as from those working at the cutting edge of change and innovation, who are at the forefront of changing tomorrow’s world.
Index
A
Abkhazia 127
abortion 96, 170, 177, 228, 298, 303–4
absentee landlords 269
accounting 214
ACET (AIDS Care Education and Training) 85, 149, 284, 290, 317
acquisition 37, 190
activism 5, 12, 216, 219, 224–5, 315
addiction 19, 125, 147, 159
digital 17
genetic markers for 17
to smartphones 17
adoption 96, 148
advertising 48, 62, 83, 97, 138, 140, 145, 150, 294
agencies 137
cigarettes 97
online 46
personalised 48
aerodynamics 202–3
aerospace industry 202, 244
Afghanistan 9, 19, 128, 131, 157–8, 220
Africa 85, 86, 127, 145, 161, 163–4, 175, 217, 252, 253, 259, 280, 285, 296, 303
Chinese investment in 72, 259
cities in 71
hydroelectricity in 253
internal migration 67
investment in 72
migration from 75
mobile banking in 30
mobile payments in 192
rail transport in 201
religion in 303, 308
AfriKids 284
age of consent 151
ageing population 7
care of 84
ageing process 104–5
agriculture 235, 250, 251, 258; see also farming
AgustaWestland 202
AIDS 12, 72, 85–6, 87, 92, 147, 149, 284, 290, 317
air freight 162
air transportation 43, 162
air travel 77, 201; see also aviation
Airbnb 38, 209
Airbus 43, 162, 166, 201
airlines 162, 202, 209, 222
budget 202
al-Assad, Bashar 230
Albania 76
alcohol 148, 159, 306
abuse 126, 156, 157, 306
prohibition 158
Aldi 177
Alibaba 36, 37, 38, 172, 183–4
alphalipoic acid 81
Al-Qaeda 231
Alteon 711 105
alternative medicine 302
aluminium 70
Alzheimer’s disease 82, 92; see also dementia
Amazon 36, 37, 38, 46, 136, 162, 173, 183
ANC (African National Congress) 221
Andhra Pradesh 173
Andorra 252
Anglican Church 304
Antarctic 208
anti-ageing 80–81, 82
anti-American sentiment 19
antibiotics 84, 85, 296
anxious eaters 261–2
AP News Agency 198
apartheid 73
Apple 24, 37, 41–2, 59, 136, 162, 172, 193, 205
apprenticeships 265
apps 18, 30–31, 32, 33, 38, 44, 45, 47, 60, 144, 162, 173, 184, 195
Arab Spring 230
Aral Sea 251
Arctic 237
Argentina 186, 221, 303
arms industry 130, 140
arthritis 92
Arthur Andersen 214
ASEAN 161
Asia, mobile banking in 30
asthma 92, 111, 256
asylum seekers 116, 309
athletics 146
auditors 213, 214
augmented reality 40
Australia 56, 173, 215, 241, 247
Austria 151, 252, 263
autoimmune disease 106
automobile industry 120, 166, 246
aviation 291, 202, 240; see also air travel
B
baby boom 7, 75–6
Baidu 173
Baja Beach Club 44
Bangalore 174
Bangui 308
banking see banks
crisis 2, 9, 20, 23, 187, 272, 287
corporate 187, 190
mobile 72, 186, 195
online 160
retail 187, 188, 192, 195
shadow 15, 189, 195–6
third millennium 187–8
Bank of America 243, 287
Bank of England 27, 78
banks 5, 20, 30, 47, 52, 53–4, 56, 78, 79, 108, 117–18, 120, 160, 162, 164, 172, 187–8, 191, 192–3, 193–4, 200, 214, 263, 266, 272, 286, 287, 300, 305; see also
mobile banking
branches 8
collapse of 20; see also sub-prime crisis
mistrust of 187
private 190–92, 275
security costs 194–5
Barclays 287
BASF 245
Basi Schoberl 245
BBC 29, 63, 122, 152
Beijing 36, 56, 163, 170, 185
Belarus 154
Belgium 56, 191, 261, 269
benchmarking 20
Bermuda 224
Better Angels of our Nature, The (book) 159
Biafra War 72
Big Data 29, 30, 42, 45–7, 49, 52, 88, 89, 93, 100, 118, 168, 178, 180
billionaires, web-based 38
binary electronics, limitations of 42
bio-computing 102
biodigital brains 33–4
biodiversity 233, 241, 254
bio-doping 94, 146
biofuel 245–6, 247
biological clock 76, 95, 110
biomass 56, 247, 256
biometric data 29, 192
biometric sensors 29, 89
biotech companies 92, 103
biotechnology 7, 25, 26, 37, 88, 90, 91, 92, 92–3, 102–3, 105, 118, 146, 168, 171, 213, 295, 297
bird flu 86
birth rates 67, 73–4, 75–6, 96, 137
Birthday Paradox 20
Bitcoin 191
Black Rock 196
blindness 34
Boeing 162, 201
Boko Haram 72, 308–9
Bolivia 158
bonus culture 22
boom and bust 25
brain net 33
brain repair 106
brand recognition 36
Brazil 33, 70, 113, 144, 162, 164, 175, 186, 204, 247, 249, 254
Brezhnev, Leonid 124
bribery 165, 175, 272, 288
Brittany 242
Buffett, Warren 191, 291
Building a Better Business (book) 277
Bulgaria 76, 263
bullying 211, 293
Burundi 164
Buzzfeed 62
C
Calcutta 256
California 242, 253
call centres 28–9, 42, 51, 164, 174, 195, 215, 263
Cambodia 171, 221
Canada 25, 86, 237, 247
cancer 35, 44, 82, 85, 87, 88, 91, 94–5, 100, 104, 105, 111, 274
bowel 262
breast 66, 111
prostate 6, 95, 111
