serkanceylan

I have been taking a course on Trendspotting and Future Thinking lately and realized that it provides a good insight on what is about to happen or what can happen in the future. That actually should be our concern since we are living in a running world: If you walk, you lose! You have to run but at the same time you should have some time to see what kind of track you are running on. Otherwise; you lose again!

After a little glance through what is about to happen, I have written some trends that could change the world in the future. However, later I will share a detailed “fortune map” for those of you who are interested in this subject :)

As the world becomes smaller and living conditions gets tougher or at least more costly for the mass public, people already started trying to reduce their costs but at the same time, they always try to increase their quality of living.

On the other hand, from hunger to terrorism, education to health, there is a need for continuous and social and interdisciplinary innovations together with creative and efficient thinking, in order to solve the global problems.

→ Cooperative Consumption: Fractional ownership is moving beyond the shared planes of the jet-setting elite. The masses are already sharing everything from art to cars to designer handbags, and as technology for pooling demand and resources becomes increasingly sophisticated, this model will be applied to an even wider range of categories. (Zdrodowski & Schwartz, 2007) An example to it could be Zipcar where people can rent a car for really short periods with the same thinking of renting city bikes. One car for one person era is coming to an end maybe. People can be using consuming and using things together. As a trend, it meets scarcity, newness, future values. It is also a strange combination for today, an unexpected happening for the individualized current world but it is more efficient.

→ The ease of reaching information and difficulty of managing information will lead to a complexity that will open up some business fields in the short future. The digitalization of our lives and the increasing amount of information providers and internet makes it easy for us to reach the information from many devices and ways, wherever and whenever we want. However, on the other hand, this will make it difficult to manage the information. The amount of information is constantly increasing. Information production is growing and this ocean will create a risk for both individuals and companies where they will need to specialize on information processing. This is a great need for all to meet the expectations of everyday life in the future. When seen the channels of information today, it can sound strange that we do not need specialized functions in order to find information but the direction shows that we will need.

→ Adult Care: As the population in many countries get older, there will be a need for the elderly people to be taken care of. Especially in the developed countries, these segments of the population is already having a big slice on the wealth and since the young generations do not seem to cover up the space, the target segment of almost all companies will grow up as well. The biggest consumer group will be elder people and the market will be filled with products and services addressing them. “From 2010, in Western Europe, the ‘age dependency’ of the population (the number of non-workers expressed as a percentage of the working population) will rise from 50% to a peak of 70% around 2035” (Scase, 2006)

→ The Importance of Energy: Exhaustion of the world resources, changes in the climate, criticalpolitical and social situations and the predicted obvious energy shortage in the near future will lead us to green energies. Already, the major players in the energy industry have started directing their investments in future energy solutions. Renewable energies, less harmful resource creation and the aim for a better environment will take the lead. Even it may sound strange; people can start producing their own energy by having various energy facilities in their homes.

→ The Century of the Women: It seems that the women will have control on many fields and/or they will have a lot more control in management than before. According to Tom Peters, in the last five years, every two of three job vacancies are filled by females. The technology, regardless of it is developed my males or females, eases the physical force that is used. So far, physical works have usually been done by men, however these physical works, long working hours, stress and whatever the need of physically strong people takes, is getting reduced. So, women, with a different perspective then men’s perspective (which is the model that the world is used to) can gain the management positions easily because of their lateral thinking.

→ Rise of the Global Culture: The borders are fading off in between countries and new agreements provide people one of their basic rights: travelling wherever they want. There is of course a base for this that the countries where the people want to go and stay, are in need of immigration as well. Themore the people travel around and learn from each other (of course the help of technology cannot be neglected) they marry each other, they work in multicultural and multinational companies. Thus there comes a common culture of being international. The communication will need to b shaped in order to address this increasing segment of the population. The companies and the governments will need to adapt the values and needs of these internationals. Therefore the concept of being a world citizen with the blend of the cultures will come up.

→ GRIN Technologies: Genetics, Robotics, Internet and Nano Technology advances so fast that in the near future we can see more complex outcomes of these technologies. As it is foreseen widely, the medical operations can be done by the robots, internet or a more advanced derivation of it enters all parts of our lives. It can be quite scary that in the first, if not in the second half of the 21^st century it can be expected that robots like human beings are serving humans or doing their jobs.

→ A world without economic borders: Global companies have already started being a world citizen and they produce, sell, market, manage everywhere. Communication and finance started having no difficulty at reaching all around the world, at all. John Nasibitt states that there is an undoubted direction the world goes to a single-market world economy. When there is free trade among all countries, the “single world currency” idea can come alive as well. The economical cooperation of USA and China could lead us to this direction since it is obvious that it will sign the world’s future in 21^st century.

→ Oligopoly in major industries will play a bigger role and companies will merge together that will make great industry giants which are bigger than many countries. Therefore, integrated with the global culture changes in the world, more than being a citizen of a country, being a citizen of a company or a culture will play a more important role.