How nanotechnology will shape our future

I always get a bit puzzled when discussing the relationship between megatrends and technology. Are technological developments megatrends in themselves, or are they just a consequence of megatrends? Take mobile communication as an example: are people getting more mobile (geographically speaking) because of mobile technology? Or was mobile technology developed as a result of people getting more mobile (and hence have an increasing need to be 'online' everywhere)? I'm inclined to think the latter is true.

However, there is one technology that clearly makes the exception to the rule. The development of Nanotechnology might create new trends in itself, such as the 'dematerialization' of production (things will grow by themselves) or living longer healthy lives (vanishing the negative consequences of the aging population).

Need to put this one on my list...

Geopolitical consequences of energy trends

Interesting interview with energy expert Daniel Yergin. According to him energy industry doesn't move quickly, so oil and coal will likely still dominate in the future

Some major geopolitical trends that are driven by energy:
- with new oil sources there will be less import in Western hemisphere (less dependence on Middle East);
- china and US have common interest in stable oil, so as long as they see oil sources from a commercial perspective (instead of strategic) there will be no friction over energy between both countries;
- tension will increase in Middle East (especially due to Iran).

The unsuspected consequences of 'gendercide'

Researching on some demographic trends, I came across this concept of 'gendercide', the fact that boys are preferred over girls (that are often killed at birth) is leading to an overpopulation of males, which in itself might lead to some worrisome trends...

OK, the video beneath is -at the end- a call to participate in a petition, but I found the statistics in the first half of the video quite intriguing...


Join the Coalition to End Gendercide from All Girls Allowed on Vimeo.

Will humans ever transcend biology? What would be the impact on the world's sustainability?

I know the whole discussion about the coming 'singularity' will sound like sci-fi crap to many of you. The very idea that technology (computing power, nanotechnology etc) is evolving exponentially is highly speculative indeed -what on earth is evolving exponentially forever? Nothing is...

Nevertheless, the question is still interesting: what if? What if technological advancement increases to such a point where computers start to think for themselves, where humans are enhanced to a point where they become semi-robotic. Sure, things like creativity and inspiration are human prerogatives, but they can take different forms and be put at better use when combined with robotics and computational power?

The problem with this whole idea of 'singularity' is that it starts from current trends and technological possibilities, but then project them in the future at an exponential growth rate. By doing so it becomes a 'scenario', not a fact. But still, it's an interesting scenario to think about, especially for its consequences on the sustainability of our world (see second video).



...for a clear explanation of the idea of singularity (and its relationship with sustainability), spend some minutes on this video:

What education should offer in order to prepare our kids for the future...

Perhaps the most crucial question in education right now is what skills we need to teach our children in order to prepare them for the (uncertain) future. Education now still focuses on hard knowledge like math and languages, but with the rise in worldwide population -and the rise of the middle class in emerging markets- this is hardly a differentiator anymore.

In his brilliant speech Ken Robinson explains how this comes and, more importantly, why we need to focus on creativity in our educational system again. Something to watch out for when choosing the school for my kids...

And no doubt the best TED speech ever given...

Why we should integrate social media in education...

OK, the video beneath might look a bit partisan, but its core message still stands: many schools are still banning social media from classes, while an increasing amount of kids are using them to learn (among other things). With such discrepancy schools risk to loose their credibility -and relevance- in the eyes of GenY. Better think of ways to integrate social media smartly in education (without making it the aim of it! it's just a tool)...

The future of learning environments

Interesting perspectives on how the school environment will need to change with the emergence of new technologies and social media (they will need to change both because the new students will require it, but also because it makes learning more efficient)

• how to adapt the learning space to focus on students to become content creators and to learn by collaborating more with each other;
• how virtualization can enrich the learning experience;
• how to integrate mobility in the learning process...

Will dig a bit deeper in the future of education in coming days... hugely interesting and vital field...

Bridging the digital divide in Africa, some examples

Doing some research on 'bridging the digital divide' for a case study on Youbridge, I stumbled across some interesting examples of initiatives in Africa.

This 78 year old woman is going from town to town with her laptop, teaching women about health and agricultural issues:



Rwanda is really making some giant leaps in digitizing education, and it shows that Nicholas Negroponte's vision of 'one laptop per child' is actually feasible:



...but this also made me think about the notion of 'reverse digital divide', where developing nations actually embrace new technologies much faster and much more enthusiastically than developed  countries.

This notion was also part of the conclusions of a recent PWC survey of global CEO's, where the reverse digital divide took a prominent place. According to this survey:

• Two-thirds of executives in emerging markets believe that mobile devices will become the standard for web applications over the next five years, compared with only one-half of execs in advanced economies. 
• Two-thirds of emerging market executives expect businesses to embrace social media and networking; just one-third of their industrial-market counterparts share this view.

The future of professional organizations...

Slides from my keynote presentation at Cisco Plus in Luxembourg, March 2012.
'The extreme future of professional organizations... what does it mean for your business?'

'The future of professional organizations' Cisco Plus keynote -Luxembourg

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The shopping experience in 2019

...according to Microsoft this is the way we'll do our shopping a couple of years from now. Certainly looks more efficient -I for one would appreciate some help to get the most efficient route through the mall in order to have all my shopping done at once.

But this is all about efficiency, surely there must be more disruptive ways our shopping experience will evolve in the near future?

Are we heading to a new 'Renaissance' ?

Not sure I fully grasp the notion of 'higher frequency' Patricia is talking about here, but her central theme -whether we are heading towards a new age of renaissance- is quite interesting. Fact is that we have no true 'new story' to live to right now. We're stuck in crises and doubts, uncertain about the near future and uncomfortable with the far future. Well, that was exactly the state of humanity before the Italian renaissance a couple of centuries ago.

The true nature of this 'new story' is impossible to assess, obviously, but according to Patricia it will have certain characteristics like 'emotional truth', higher purpose (apparently are brains are being re-wired to become more social?), compassion and 'live' experience.

Sounds wonderful, but as a skeptic I need to ask myself how much of this is wishful thinking and how much is evidence based. I probably need to dig a bit deeper into her research... (my good, another book on my list...)

Some surprising trends in health care

Looks like I'm going to work closely with some pharma and health-care companies in the near future. So it's a good time to dig deeper in some of the trends affecting this industry (see my presentation at the European Pharma CI conference for an overview of all the trends I currently see in this sector).

Let's start with some TED talks, always a good start...

• Printing a human liver -well, we're pretty close to it ('a couple of years', as said in the disclaimer)... and for those of you who are concerned about the body rejecting a printed liver: don't forget that this one is made by your own cells !

• Crowdsourcing could help with very simple things... like mapping local difilibrators. Simple enough to make it work: 

• And here's some surprising use of social networks... to predict epidemics in a very early stage:

The largest human migration in history...

Interestingly, the largest migration in human history is not between countries or regions, but within China. People living in rural areas migrate en masse to urban areas, with some good sides (income spread reduces somewhat) and some bad (families torn apart). Some provinces in China now equal the economies of Austria and Switzerland...

Interesting stuff:

Trends affecting the pharma and biotech sector, how companies can prepare for them

I had the chance to present at the European Pharma Competitive Intelligence summit in Zurich last week, in my capacity as senior investigator at competitive intelligence experts I.S.I.S. Global. Interesting group of people and highly interactive session. Here's the slides of the presentation, which had 2 major objectives:

• discuss trends affecting the pharma & biotech industry in the next 5-10 years;
• show how CI departments can use such megatrends assessments to increase their strategic relevance within their organization.

Using megatrend assessments in pharma in order to raise the relevance of the CI department within your organization

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Is economic growth the only measure of future well being?

I am not alone in thinking one of the causes of the current crises (financial, government debt and recession) is at least partially due to our focus on 'economic growth' as an indicator of how well we -as 'nations', companies and persons- will improve and be able to develop in the future.

People more intelligent than I have offered alternatives to 'GDP' (Gross Domestic Product, or the economic value created by a nation in a specific timeframe). Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz even got commissioned by French president Sarcozy to write a report on potential alternatives. With no obvious results, since we're still panicking whenever a decline in economic growth (a recession) is at our door.

In a recent report the World Economic Forum goes a bit more practical, and proposes to swap the notion of economic growth with a measurable notion of 'well being' -which it defines as a mixture of effective work, families and communities, each of these containing opportunities we might not be fully aware of.

Interesting document:

Bytheway, here is a summary of Stiglitz' recommendations for a new way of measuring growth:

Facts and Trends in Healthcare

Some interesting stats and insights in this Barco clip (ok, it is a commercial, but a soft one ;-)

Especially the health care spending stats are quite stunning, 30% of it being wasted???

Some surprising things built by a 3D printer

Reflecting on the impact of 3D printing on manufacturing, I went looking at what exactly these machines can produce currently. I was quite surprised to find 3D printed bikes, planes and even bikinis!

Just imagine a world where each home would own a 3D printer...

Will aging population resolve youth unemployment? not just yet...

Okay, I've been struggling with understanding the relationship between aging population and youth unemployment for a while now, so bare with me for a moment.

We're all acquainted with the aging graphics is pyramid form:

the distinction this type of charts makes between male and female is not always helpful -especially not for the point I try to make. Instead, let's take them together and see what happens if we group them together, and follow the total population at working age (16-65).

In the charts beneath I took Spain as an example for its dramatically high youth unemployment (40%). The green bars reflect the population at working age, grey at retiring age and the blue bars reflect age groups under 15 years. The first chart is the population by age in 2000, but for the color coding I reflected the situation in 2010 (so the age group 5-9 in 2000 are at working age 15-19 by 2010). The red bars roughly indicate the % unemployed within the age category.

Being a positive guy, I immediately see two reasons to be optimistic about the future of Spain:

• while the ratio of working people vs. retired people (green vs grey) will indeed rise dramatically, the ratio of working people vs. people who need care (green vs grey+blue) will hardly change (from 1.75 to 1.21). This is stretching it a bit, of course, since retired people cost much more to society than very young people -who are being taken care of by the parents. But then, we might expect that the pension system such as we know it will collapse somehow and that children will partially need to take care of their retired parents in the future (not that I like the thought !);
• Secondly, if you look at the amount of available jobs in 2010 (the green bars) and compare this to the number of people at working age in 2050, you see an almost exact match. There would be 21.7 million jobs, for 22.57 million people -a projected 3% unemployment notwithstanding, which in economic theory equals full employment.

So does this mean youth unemployment will 'naturally' dissolve as the population ages? Not so quickly...

• Plenty of jobs in 2010 are in fact government jobs (either directly -as public servants- or indirectly -subsidized jobs). There's no good reason to believe countries will be able to keep the same amount of such jobs in the decades to come;
• This doesn't take into account efficiency gains, which in fact will reduce the number of employees needed to provide the same output (however, a completely new economic dynamic can compensate for these job losses... but no clue about what this dynamic might look like);
• With youth unemployment at such levels (40%) for -possibly- the coming decades, one might wonder whether these structurally unemployed will ever fit in the job market to take over the roles of elderly.

In short, aging population will partially resolve youth unemployment, but it remains uncertain to what extent it will do so.  

Biomimicry in architecture... a great leap towards sustainable buildings

There's plenty we can learn from nature in how to build a more sustainable world. I've provided some examples of this in a previous post, but here's some ideas on how to imitate nature's intelligence in architecture -through a 'closed loop' of waste management- and as a way to provide solutions to societal problems like desertification.

Quite inspiring:

How future-proof is the mission statement of your company?

Your mission statement is the cornerstone of your exposure to stakeholders. A mission statement -if consequently acted upon- is an instrument for your company to start and build a unique relationship with investors, future employees and loyal customers.

But does your mission statement reflect the changing requirements people have from businesses?

To check this, we've investigated the mission statement of 20 companies in 5 industries, and assessed them on 4 metrics:

• GenY attractiveness: does the mission statement express values and purpose, drive and change, collaboration and solution-driven?
• does the mission statement reflect a social responsibility and shared value?
• does it express a purpose and a solution to one of the challenges linked to megatrends?
• does it show a future direction or at least an understanding of the long-term business environment? 

The results for these 20 companies are in the presentation hereunder -please keep in mind this is a personal opinion, there's absolutely nothing scientific about it ;-) So if you disagree with me feel free to leave a note beneath!

How futureproof is your mission statement

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