Future of Humanity

Given today’s extraordinary pace of change, any examination of the long-term future quickly brings us to considering the future of humanity.

This big-picture view should not just be of interest to us all personally, it is also extremely relevant to organizations of all kinds as they consider their future.

Map of the Decade

Our Map of the Decade framework provides a high-level overview of major themes shaping our world today.

Map of the Decade

Click on the image to see full-size pdf

Scenario framework for 2030

For one of our clients in the global infrastructure industry that wished to look a couple of decades into the future we used scenario planning methodologies to create a framework to support their strategic thinking.

Below is a highly simplified framework derived from that project.

SCENARIO FRAMEWORK FOR THE WORLD IN 2030

A traditional scenario process identifies two dimensions to uncertainty, that when combined produce a matrix of four scenarios. Once the framework is created, the full richness of trends and uncertainties uncovered in the research process are integrated into the scenarios. Here the two dimensions selected are:

RESOURCES AVAILABILITY: Resource Poverty TO Resource Affluence

Availability and real cost of key resources including energy, food, water, and environmental stability.

COHESION: Cohesion TO Fragmentation

Cohesion of society, government, nations, and institutions.

Together these dimensions yield:

SCENARIO FRAMEWORK FOR THE WORLD IN 2030

World2030_frame

SCENARIO: SHOCK TREATMENT

World2030_ST

  • Economic divergence: developed world stagnation
  • Protectionism rises and markets localise
  • Little global action on climate amid massive impact of global warming
  • China and India fragment
  • High-impact terrorism: bio, nuclear, radiation
  • Infrastructure becomes primarily private
  • Inexpensive and highly mobile labour
  • Immigration tensions and rioting
  • Urbanization accelerates, often in squalor

SCENARIO: NEW HORIZONS

World2020_NH

  • Economic shift to East
  • Billions become middle class
  • New energy sources/ planetary engineering
  • Innovation yields food and health to the poorest
  • Artificial intelligence applied to real-world issues
  • Robotics attenuates impact of aging workforce
  • Life extension for the wealthy, retirement age rises
  • Remote work leads to more distributed living
  • Affluence drives tourism and travel

SCENARIO: HUMANITY MATURING

World2030_HM

  • Climate becomes extreme and volatile
  • Food and water shortages, famine and pandemics
  • Global coordinated action on climate
  • Trade liberalisation accelerates, EU extends
  • Corporate activity driven by triple bottom line
  • Social entrepreneurs invest $100 billion and seed a billion enterprises
  • Cities become compact and resource efficient
  • Rise of public/ shared transport

SCENARIO: AGENT ECONOMY

World2030_AE

  • Fluid global economy
  • International outsourcing of most functions
  • Mega-corporations become lean and micro-business rises
  • Market solutions for environment
  • Governments lose control and ability to tax
  • Agents seek best price for everything/ customer loyalty is zero/ commoditisation of everything
  • Distributed energy and manufacturing
  • New capital markets, volatile financial markets

Explore the Future of Humanity

Please get in touch if you’d like to discuss how we can help your organization succeed by gaining insights into the future of humanity.

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