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.

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

SCENARIO: SHOCK TREATMENT

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

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

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

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.