What are the big issues for next decade? The World in 2025 is the full synthesis of insights from the second Future Agenda programme undertaken in 2016. From 120 discussions with thousands of informed people in 45 cities across 35 countries, we gained over 800 insights on the next decade. From these we identified and detailed over 60 key areas of change - those are all shared feely on the future agenda website (www.futureagenda.org).
This document brings all of these insights together in a single pdf for you to use. It is a free book shared under the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 licence. We hope that you find it a useful view of how people around the world see change occurring over the next decade.
PLEASE NOTE: This book is also available at cost for local digital printing via Amazon and Create Space
https://www.amazon.co.uk/World-2025-Insights-Future-Agenda/dp/0993255426
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6. 6
Context 9
Certainties 13
Everything connected 15
Imbalanced population growth 19
Resource constraints 23
Shifting power and influence 27
Interconnected systems 31
Affordable healthcare 33
Air quality 37
Autonomous transport 41
Deeper collaboration 45
Energy storage 49
Food waste 53
Intra city collaboration 57
Open supply webs 61
Urban obesity 65
Data revolution 69
Changing nature of privacy 71
Data ownership 75
Enhanced performance 79
Ethical machines 83
Privacy regulation 87
The increasing value of data 91
Truth and illusion 95
Contents
7. Unequal access 99
Access to transport 101
Capitalism challenged 105
Caring for those left behind 109
Education revolution 113
Mass engagement 117
Off grid 121
Rising youth unemployment 125
Shrinking middle 129
Our habitat 133
Accelerated displacement 135
Basic sanitation 139
Built-in flexibility 143
Citizen-centric cities 147
Flooded cities 151
Infrastructure deficit 155
Nature’s capital 159
Plastic oceans 163
Sometimes nomads 167
Beliefs and belongings 171
Agelessness 173
Care in the community 177
Female choice dilemma 181
Human touch 185
Keeping the faith 189
Working longer 193
Power and influence 197
Africa growth 199
Companies with purpose 203
Declining government influence 207
Eco civilisation 211
Rise of nimby 215
Standards driving trade 219
Still being stupid 223
The rise of the cult of China 227
Changing business 231
Creative economy 233
Currencies of meaning 237
Digital money 241
Dynamic pricing 245
Full cost 249
Optimising the last mile 253
Organisation 3.0 257
Skills concentration 261
Speed to scale 265
The real sharing economy 269
Conclusion 273
The Future Agenda team 281
Hosts/Partners 287
Future Agenda 2020 289
Further reading 291
Copyright and creative commons 323
9. 9
Context
Taking the long view has never been easy. Rapid technological
advances, shifting political movements, changing economic
dynamics and accelerating societal change are seldom far from
the news headlines and many of us struggle to understand their
implications on day-to-day life.
Taking the long view has never been easy. Rapid
technological advances, shifting political movements,
changing economic dynamics and accelerating
societal change are seldom far from the news
headlines and many of us struggle to understand their
implications on day-to-day life. Indeed, such are the
challenges that it seems clear that the major issues
facing our planet are of such a magnitude that no
single institution or organisation can truly understand
their impact alone. As change accelerates in an
increasingly connected world, more companies are
looking further ahead to better understand emerging
opportunities and challenges.
We believe that sharing knowledge across disciplines
and across continents can add real value to this
process, particularly as much-needed innovation
often occurs at the intersection of different disciplines,
industries or challenges. This is what the Future
Agenda programme strives to achieve. Our aim is to
make it easier for all organisations, large or small, to
shape a strategy that will help them to address the
major challenges we face and identify ways in which
systems could function, consumers behave and
governments regulate over the next decade.
The first Future Agenda programme ran in 2010.
Building on expert perspectives that addressed
everything from the future of health to the future
of money, over 1500 organizations debated the
big issues and emerging challenges for the next
decade. Sponsored globally by Vodafone Group, the
programme looked out ten years to the world in 2020
and connected CEOs and mayors with academics
and students across 25 countries. Additional online
interaction connected over 50,000 people from more
than 145 countries who added their views to the mix.
The results, which were published both online and in
print, have been widely shared and have been used
around the world by individuals and organizations.
TV programmes, talks, workshops and additional
discussions have followed as people have explored
the potential implications and opportunities in their
sector or market.
World Now World Future
Current Focus Future Focus
10. 10
Future Agenda’s success stimulated several
organisations to ask that it should be repeated.
Therefore the second programme, Future Agenda
2.0, ran throughout 2015 looking at key changes
in the world by 2025. Following a broadly similar
approach, it added extra features, such as providing
more workshops in more countries to gain an even
wider input and enable regional differences to be
debated. All in all 25 topics were explored in 120
workshops hosted by 50 different organisations
across 45 locations on five continents. There was a
specific additional focus on the next generation, so
we including collaboration with schools, universities
and other educational organizations. A more refined
use of social networks to share insights and earlier
link-ups with global media organizations ensured
wider engagement on the pivotal topics. In addition,
rather than having a single global sponsor, this time
multiple hosts supported workshops on specific
topics either globally or in their regions of interest.
This book outlines the insights we gained rom all the
conversations.
We have already witnessed a number of opportunities
for positive change. These include suggestions
about how to tackle some of the challenges around
climate change, sustainable health and food supply
for example; ideas about how to use policy to best
influence our right to a private life. Our material has
also acted as a stimulus for the development of new
products, services and business models.
We are delighted and humbled that so many people
have given freely of their time and intellect to help
ensure that Future Agenda has become a reality.
Run as a not for profit project with the core team
all donating their time, it continues to be a major
collaboration involving many leading, forward-
thinking organisations around the world.
We hope you find the insights useful and thank you
for your interest.
11. 11
To do this we invited recognised experts in each
topic from across the academic, commercial and
government arenas to answer a number of common
questions on the future. These were then edited into
initial perspectives and put into a standard format to
ease navigation and to ensure a common structure.
Each was each grouped into four sections – namely
the global challenges, options and possibilities, the
way forward, and impacts and implications.
We then initiated a nine-month programme of face-
to-face workshops across the world in order to build
on the initial perspectives. Some of these were within
single organisations but many brought together
different expertise from multiple different avenues.
Some took place in corporate conference facilities,
some in hotels and restaurants – whatever worked
best. In locations around the world, including London,
New York, Singapore, Sydney, Shanghai, Frankfurt,
Beirut, Dubai, Mumbai, Lima and Mendoza informed
people from many cultures, of varied ages and with
many different perspectives shared their views.
After the workshops, the Future Agenda core
team took the output from all the workshops and
identified the major insights that we believe will
drive change. These are issues that were raised in
several discussions – either across different countries
or across different topics. As part of the overall
synthesis, they have now been have been broadened
into 1000 word summaries and published both online
and in-print form.
As with the insights gained from the first Future
Agenda programme, organisations around the world
are already using the new views to variously challenge
assumptions, refine strategic directions and identify
emerging innovation and growth opportunities. All of
the output from the Future Agenda project including all
raw insights are made freely available for organsiations
around the world to use to help challenge and build
more informed views of the next decade.
Foresight
(5 to 50 yrs)
Uncertainty
Predictability
Time
Trends
(3 to 5 yrs)
Insight
(1 to 2 yrs)
Our Approach
From the very beginning the intention was not only to get views for
each topic on what the future would be, but also to get perspectives
on which way we should go, why and with what consequences.
13. 13
Certainties
As we look forward most shifts
are seen as being possible,
probable and even plausible.
Depending whom you talk to and where different
changes on the horizon are seen as maybes with
varied chances of occurring. Some maybe 50/50
others could be higher. There is however a small
select group of future shifts on which pretty well
everyone agrees are happening. Across multiple
regions, topics and groups, these are seen as
being certain. Out of the 800 insights generated by
the future agenda programme, only four fit into this
group. We call these the certainites.
The topics covered in the following pages are:
Everything
connected
Resource
constraints
Imbalanced
population
growth
Shifting
power and
influence
14. 14
50 billion – SIM cards in use by 2025
80% – new mobile connections occurring in Africa and Asia
Everything connected
15. 15
Everything connected
Over 1 trillion sensors are connected to multiple networks:
everything that can benefit from a connection has one. We deliver
10,000x more data 100x more effectively but are concerned about
the security of the information that flows.
By 2025, there will be over 50bn SIM cards in use,
we will have digitized all of our archives, and new
information will be being created at such a rate that
some see us doubling the volume of our total data
set every month. Much of this data will come from
machines, talking to each other as well as to us -
by the end of the decade, pretty much everything
that can have a connection, will have one. IBM sees
that the Internet of Things (IoT) is bringing over 1
trillion sensors into the world, all connected to each
other and multiple networks. This digitization of the
world has the potential to provide us with previously
unknown levels of information and insight; equally it
could open the doors to unpredicted risk.
Today there are over 3.3bn of us connected to the
Internet globally and we are currently adding another
billion every three years. In 2014 China already
had over 640m Internet users, the US had 280m
and India 240m. With over 40% of the population
connected, the general view is that within the decade
pretty much all of us will have the capacity to be
online, wherever we may be. Smartphones and other
devices will be a primary driver of change; with 2.6bn
smartphones already in use, Ericsson sees that there
will be 6bn by 2020. Indeed, Ericsson and other
big mobile technology network firms such as Nokia
and Huawei are investing heavily in broadening the
reach and performance of their networks. They are
planning for a doubling of data traffic per user every
18 months to a point where each of us can access
1GB of information every day. Facebook and Google
are looking at vast fleets of balloons and drones to
bridge the digital divide and provide connectivity to
those currently without coverage. With Africa and
Asia accounting for over 80% of new connections,
total mobile subscriptions by 2020 are now expected
to number over 9 billion.
As of 2015, some countries were already very
connected. In terms of the number of devices
per capita, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands,
Switzerland and the US had already passed the 20
threshold, Denmark was over 30 and South Korea
was touching 40. Fast accelerating up the tables was
China with 6 devices per capita but India had less
than 1. Given the investments taking place looking
ahead, a global average of just over 10 devices per
capita by 2020 certainly seems credible.
While 10 per capita is a handy number, increasingly
these devices will not be owned or used by us. The
vast majority, maybe 30 to 40 billion of them, will be
embedded in machines. Cars, fridges, traffic lights,
containers, robots and even surgical equipment will
all be connected, creating, accessing and using
data. Most of the digital information will be stored
in the cloud with users expecting instant access
anywhere anytime and thus testing the physical
limits of networks. Networks will have to become
programmable to create capacity on demand,
heralding the advent of self-optimizing and cognitive
networks able to handle complex end-to-end
optimization tasks autonomously and in real time.
All of us will have the capacity to be
online, wherever we may be.
16. 16
The concept of interconnected networks of physical
objects, machines, buildings, infrastructure and
devices is a focus for many such as Cisco and IBM
as part of the vision for a Smarter Planet. Although
progress has not been as rapid as some thought,
the direction of travel is still clear. Everything that
can benefit from an Internet connection will, by
2025, probably have one, be that fridges, toasters,
driverless trucks or pallets. The large amounts of data
generated from diverse locations will be aggregated
very quickly, thereby increasing the need to better
index, store and process such data.
One critical factor is how all these newly connected
things connect to one another. Too many standalone
IoT gadgets not taking into account the wider
context, and digital ecosystems they exist within, is
a concern. Without interoperability of technologies,
products and ecosystems, these products will remain
separate islands.
There is however arguably even more data to be
generated from passive tags and sensors. Miniature
sensors that can be put anywhere – on food, in
clothing, within packaging, inside components, in
animals and pretty much anywhere we like – and
which can be activated by a multitude of different
energy waves from a reading device, can provide
location, temperature, orientation, movement or
biological information to be remotely read, hundreds
at a time. IBM sees that within the decade we could
have 1 trillion passive tags and sensors connected
to multiple networks. Nokia’s view is that by 2025
we will have 10,000x more data being provided to
us and between machines 100x more effectively. The
knock on challenge will be the need to make sense
of the information that flows.
Whether or not we choose to access and hopefully
make use of these vast amounts of data and
information will, though, be our choice and not a
consequence of location, income or education.
Certainties
A global average of just over 10
devices per capita by 2020 certainly
seems credible.
17. 17
While the benefits are lauded in terms of the
opportunities to improve efficiency, reduce waste and
find out new things that were previously unknown,
there are concerns about the risks of everything
being connected. Some argue that we are jumping
into connecting everything without thinking through
all of the consequences, especially as some of the
data protection on some devices is very low. People
point out that a connected kettle, for example, could
become the back door to your Wi-Fi network that
bypasses all passwords and so an open door to your
personal data.
When everything is connected, not just kettles and
laptops but power stations, traffic systems and
medical devices, then the concerns shifts from privacy
to security. Cyber attacks are already happening
on a regular basis targeting not just databases but
also machines and systems. Security services and
consultancies are already busy monitoring, repelling
and recovering systems from being hacked and
hijacked. As we move forward with everything being
linked online, the potential for harmful hacks rises
significantly. This is especially true of the billions
of passive tags and sensors that don’t have the
power to support high levels of encryption. So while
everything being connected has lots of upside, there
is clearly also some risk.
Everything connected
We could have 1 trillion passive tags
and sensors connected to multiple
networks. A connected kettle, for example,
could become the back door to your
Wi-Fi network.
Autonomous transport
The shift to fully autonomous transport is
an evolution via truck platoons on
highways and small urban delivery
pods. Connected cars create the network
and test the technologies for the eventual
revolutionary driverless experience.
Built-in flexibility
The path to a connected, accessible and
distributed infrastructure is fraught
with complex, costly and risky issues:
Upgrading and repurposing systems to
make them more open plus on-going
maintenance need significant resources.
Ethical machines
Automation spreads beyond trading and
managing systemic risk. As we approach
technology singularity, autonomous robots
and smarter algorithms make ethical
judgments that impact life or death.
The increasing value of data
As organisations try to retain as much
information about their customers as
possible, data becomes a currency with
a value and a price. It therefore requires
a marketplace where anything that is
information is represented.
Related insights
18. 18
11 billion – global population by 2100
1.4 billion – people aged over 60 by 2030
Imbalanced population growth
19. 19
Imbalanced population growth
A growing population adds another billion people but it is also
rapidly ageing: a child born next year will live 6 months longer than
one born today. While migration helps to rebalance, increasing
dependency ratios challenge many.
While there are a number of different views on total
population growth over the next 50 years, no one
disagrees that this growth is going to be imbalanced.
Be it ageing, fertility or geography, we are increasingly
going to have more people in the places and
demographic zones where we are least comfortable.
Dependency ratios in some countries are fast moving
into unsustainable areas; thanks to climate change we
are going to see significantly increased migration as
the system across many societies seeks to rebalance
itself. This in turn will lead to economic, political and
social stresses around the world, bringing a greater
pressure on the overall system in the next decade.
The latest medium UN projections see the current
global population of 7.4bn rising to 8.5bn by 2030,
9.7bn by 2050 and over 11bn by 2100. Overall, with
better use of food and land, this is thought possible.
However, regionally the numbers and speed of
increase vary considerably. In Europe, the natural
population is actually set to decline. Other countries
with a naturally declining population include Japan,
South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. In all, the
populations of 48 countries or areas in the world are
expected to decrease between 2015 and 2050.
By contrast, Africa is growing steadily. Africa’s share
of global population is projected to rise 25 per cent by
2050 and 39 per cent by 2100, a staggering 4.9bn.
Elsewhere, the trend is somewhere in between: In
North America the population is expected to reach
500m by the end of the century; In South America
721m. Across Asia as whole, we will see 4.9bn by
the end of the century. Overall we will be adding an
average of 60m people a year to the planet between
now and 2050. While most of the growth is evidently
coming from Africa, other expanding nations such
as India are experiencing what they see as more
manageable growth. Those countries that are seeing
population decline however face significant structural
issues for the future. If they are to maintain sustained
economic growth, one of the biggest challenges is
how to achieve this with an increasingly imbalanced
domestic population.
There are three core drivers of population growth:
ageing, fertility and migration. It is the first of these
that is most visible in most societies today. One of
the great successes of the last 50 years has come
from improved healthcare; we are all living longer.
900m people, around 12% of the world’s population,
are aged over 60 (projected to rise to 1.4 billion by
2030). While most of the overall increase will come
from health improvements achieved in bringing the
average in Africa up from 50, it will be in Asia, America
and Europe where the elderly will be most visible.
We will be adding an average of 60m
people a year to the planet between
now and 2050.
20. 20
In pretty much every country the number of babies
being born per family is on the decrease. This is widely
seen to be a good thing as it both reflects better
healthcare and puts a brake on runaway long-term
population growth. Infant mortality is decreasing and
so families no longer see the need to have so many
children to stand a chance of them making it through
to adulthood. The single biggest factor in reducing
fertility is widely seen to be female education, a major
focus for many governments worldwide for the past
50 years and a priority Millennium Development Goal;
women who are empowered through education tend
to have fewer children and have them later.
China’s One Child Policy was introduced in 1978 to
manage population growth. Although it has many
detractors, many see that it has worked but maybe
too well. During this time the population growth has
been brought under control but there have been
consequences. As a result, the policy is now for two
children. China has too many men, too many old
people, and too few young people, “a huge crushing
demographic crisis. If people don’t start having more
children, they’re going to have a vastly diminished
workforce to support a huge aging population.”
Bringing all this together, within and across countries,
demographers look at the balance of society by
calculating dependency ratios. These are a measure
showing the number of dependents (aged 0-14 and
over the age of 65) to the total population (aged 15-
64), the number of people being supported by the
system in proportion to the population available to
work and so pay taxes into the system.
Concern is raised when the total ratio increases
beyond 60% and the elderly ratio is more than half of
that, showing not only a high level of social burden,
but one skewed by an ageing population. As the
elderly dependency ratio globally is set to double by
2050, a good number of countries will be worried.
Similarly, the potential support ratio (PSR) calculates
the number of working age people per single elderly
person. By 2050, many countries are expected to
have PSRs below 2, underscoring the fiscal and
political pressures that the health care systems, as
well as the old-age and social protection systems,
of many countries are likely to face in the not-too-
distant future.
Certainties
The number of babies being born per
family is on the decrease.
21. 21
Shorter-term options for rebalancing and imbalanced
population are few and perhaps the most visible is
migration. Around one in seven people today are
migrants: net migration is projected to account for
82 per cent of population growth in the high-income
countries. Migration is an increasingly political
concern globally; although the current conflict-driven
movement of people out of Syria is ever present
on our TV screens, globally the great majority of
displaced people have been uprooted by weather-
related disasters.
As the rate of growth globally drops, thanks to
longer life spans, and we continue to move towards
a steady state of around 2bn babies on the planet,
what remains uncertain is how societies will seek to
cope with high dependency ratios and low potential
support ratios, and the role we will want to give
increased migration as the 21st Century’s primary
population balancing mechanism.
Imbalanced population growth
Net migration is projected to account
for 82 per cent of population growth
in the high-income countries.
Accelerating displacement
Climate change, conflict, resource
shortages, inequality and political elites
unable or unwilling to bring about
necessary change all trigger
unprecedented migration to the North
Over the next 50 years, as many as
1 billion people could be on the move.
Africa growth
With a land mass bigger than India, China,
the US and Europe combined, few doubt
the scale of the African continent and its
resources. However, until recently only
some have seen it as the growth market
that it is fast becoming.
Agelessness
A person’s physical age becomes less
important as society adapts to the new
demographic landscape. New
opportunities arise for creators and
consumers of all ages, though benefits are
often only for the wealthy.
Rising youth unemployment
With unemployment rates already over
50% in some nations, access to work is a
rising barrier. Especially across North
Africa, the Middle East and southern
Europe, a lost generation of 100m young
people fails to connect with or gain from
global growth.
Related insights
22. 22
1.6 – equivalent planets of resources consumed each year
70% – of all fresh water is used for agricultural purposes
Key resource constraints
23. 23
Key resource constraints
Economic,physicalandpoliticalshortagesofkeyresourcesincrease
and drive increasing tension between and within countries. As we
exceed the Earth’s natural thresholds, food and water receive as
much focus as oil and gas.
People are concerned about the environmental
impact of our continuing to consume more resources
than the earth can naturally replenish. We currently
consume the equivalent of 1.6 planets a year,
meaning ‘overshoot day’ – the day each year when
demand outstrips natural supply - is coming earlier
and earlier. Many worry about us physically running
out of important materials but others however are
more sanguine, seeing the recent drop in oil prices
as a reflection of declining demand. The true picture
is itself complex but consistent. While we are not
necessarily running out of things, access to many
important resources is increasingly constrained
- be that physically, economically, politically and
environmentally. Over the next decade, many
resources are going to become more difficult to get
hold of and may become more expensive.
When we talk about resource constraints, the usual
ones come to mind: food, oil and water. However we
should also consider metals, phosphorous, gas and
land. All are under pressure – some more extreme
than others. At current rates of consumption, there
are real physical constraints on several important
materials. We have around 8 years production left of
antimony, a key ingredient in batteries, 12 years of
iridium, important for solar panels, and only 17 years
of silver and zinc. We have around 30 years worth of
copper, 45 years of titanium. Without a downturn in
consumption or a switch to alternatives, these are
very big concerns. As we deplete these resources,
countries with supplies will seek to keep them and
their prices will increase.
Other resources are in more plentiful supply but
are under pressure politically, environmentally or
economically. We have between 40 and 80 years
supply left of coal; given its impact on carbon
emissions, it is little surprise that its use is being
restricted on environmental grounds. Gas and oil, the
other two major fossil fuels, are also under pressure
but with different emphasis.
Gas is cleaner than both coal and oil but, with the
main global supplies lying in Russia and the Middle
East, is evidently prone to political pressures. The
same is true of oil, although unlike in the past when
low demand dropped OPEC production, recently
Saudi Arabia has kept pumping into an over-supplied
market and so instigated the low current prices.
With producers such as Nigeria, Angola and even
Saudi Arabia itself suffering economically, how long
oversupply - and low prices - can continue is a source
of hot debate. However what is less contested is
that over the next decade or so, overproduction will
stop, prices will rebound and, within the context of a
greener energy mix, oil will become increasingly more
constrained by environmental issues.
At current rates of consumption,
there are real physical constraints on
several important materials.
24. 24
Certainties
Questions are also raised about peak supply for
copper, zinc, other rare metals, and phosphorous.
Essential for fertilizer, phosphate rock is only found
in a few countries (the US, China and Morocco).
Demand is directly linked to us wanting more
efficient food production; we may become more
efficient with food waste, but not reduce the need
for modern industrial farming and its dependency on
phosphorus. At current rates of consumption, we
have around 75 years of supply left, but phosphorous
cannot be replaced by something else, nor can it
be artificially manufactured. It can only be recycled
through organic methods. With peak-phosphorous
estimated around 2030, it will increasingly feature on
news bulletins over the next decade as another key
resource of concern.
Beyond phosphorus, anxiety on food supply and
demand continues to grow. Globally we face more of
a problem in net food distribution than food supply,
at both local and regional levels. With more people
increasingly in places where food is not plentiful,
getting good quality food to people at affordable
levels is already a challenge for many. Add in future
population growth, more uncertain weather patterns
(hence less predictable harvests), and food as a
resource will become subject to more political as
well as economic interest. Although there is clearly
volatility in prices from year to year as weather
impacts supply, the recent general trends for wheat,
rice and soy are all upward, and expected to continue
in that way. Over the next decade, maintaining global
food security will become much more difficult as the
population increases. Solutions include changing
our diets - eating less meat, wasting less, improving
yields and the wider adoption of GMO. Some of
these may work in some cultures, but not all. The
challenge therefore is how to manage an increasingly
constrained food supply at the same time as we add
another billion mouths to feed into the system.
Food as a resource will become
subject to more political as well as
economic interest.
25. 25
Linked to food production for more people, but also
driven by mass urbanization, is the quantity of arable
land available. The amount of arable land per capita on
the planet has already dropped from 0.45ha in 1960
to 0.25ha today – and is set to decline further. More
efficient farming has helped manage this transition
over the past 50 years, but there are concerns about
the next 50. If 2010 was the year of peak farmland,
we are going to need to produce more food from less
land. As such we must double food production over
the next decade - in a sustainable manner.
Lastly, water – a resource that is neither running out,
nor becoming more plentiful, but increasingly under
pressure. We have the same amount of water today
as we did 10,000 years ago, the challenge is how we
use it. Globally, around 70% of all fresh water is used
for agricultural purposes – while, depending where
you live, the other 30% is split between domestic
purposes, manufacturing and waste in the system.
Given increasing demands on food supply, how
we provide more water, or manage with less, is a
significant test. More people stress the system, while,
as many become wealthier, and so consume
more energy, food and hence water, managing 10bn
with the same amount of water as worked for 1bn
is no easy task. Today few regions value fresh water
and have little idea of its true cost. Going forward we
can expect the challenge of water supply to be more
widely recognized.
It is clear that we face major supply / demand
challenges. Some of these will result in higher
prices, some in national hoarding, some in greater
competition and some in more transparency.
Whatever the resource the manifestations of change
will vary. However what will be consistent as we look
forward is that more resources will be seen to be
increasingly constrained. Managing this is one of our
major challenges for the next decade.
Key resource constraints
Managing 10bn with the same
amount of water as worked for 1bn is
no easy task.
Energy storage
Storage, and particularly electricity
storage, is the missing piece in the
renewables jigsaw. If solved, it can enable
truly distributed solar energy as well as
accelerate the electrification of the
transport industry.
Food waste
30-50% of our food is wasted either in
the supply chain or in consumption and
could feed another 3 billion. Optimising
distribution and storage in developing
countries and enabling better consumer
information in others could solve this.
Full cost
Increasing transparency of society’s
reliance on nature, intensify requirements
for business to pay the true cost of
the resources provided by ‘natural capital’
and so compensate for their negative
impact on society.
Imbalanced population growth
A growing population adds another billion
people but it is also rapidly ageing: a child
born next year will live 6 months longer
than one born today. While migration
helps to rebalance, increasing
dependency ratios challenge many.
Related insights
26. 26
25% – share of GDP growth accounted for by China
140 km/h – speed at which world’s centre of economic gravity is moving east
Shifting power and influence
27. 27
Shifting power and influence
The centre of gravity of economic power continues shifting
eastwards, back to where it was 200 years ago. Recent
superpowers seek to moderate the pace of change but the
realities of population and resource locations are immoveable.
Are we are witnessing the end of an era in
globalization and international trade? The structures
set up in the wake of the WW2 may no longer be
fit for purpose. Western markets are weakening,
the US appetite to act as overall arbiter and keeper
of the peace diminishes and Europe faces its own
constitutional challenges. Asian countries, which
have in the main benefitted from a youthful workforce
and rising middle class, are beginning not only to
influence world trade but also to play a greater role
on the diplomatic stage. Africa and South America
have yet to make a significant impact, but with a
wealth of natural resources at their disposal, the next
ten years should begin to change this.
Whether or not this is the Asian century as some
foresee, the next decade will see the post-war routes
gradually being eclipsed by the power of the Indian
Ocean region. South-south trade doubled in the
decade from 2000 to 2010, and is likely to account
for over a third of global trade by 2025.
After centuries of growth, Europe’s days in the
economic sunshine are, many think, in relative
decline. The Euro experiment has had its day and
the Europeans will have to spend the next decade
dealing with the repercussions of this failure. Some
believe that the region will muddle through while
others see three possible options: that the Euro will
be split in two, probably on a North and South divide;
second, a couple of major former currencies such as
the Deutschmark and the Lira will be reintroduced,
or third, there will be a complete re-fragmentation of
the euro zone into individual national currencies and
hence economic interests. Germany will remain the
primary power within the EU over the next ten years,
but overall Europe’s influence will be eroded by its
internal problems, such as the UK’s threat of ‘Brexit’.
Bridging Europe and Asia, but a long way from
being an economic superpower, lies Turkey. Since
the establishment of a Customs Union with the EU
in 1996, Turkey’s EU exports have grown and in
2014 accounted for nearly $70 billion, or 43.5% of
its total. Whether the former description of Turkey
as ‘the world’s most progressive Muslim state’ will
still hold in 2025, its influence on the regional and
global economy seems set to grow as does, given its
geopolitical location, its sway on global trade.
Things, though, are not looking good in Russia. A
declining population, access to secure water and
food supplies previously supplied by former Soviet
Union neighbours lost, its economy corrupt and
dominated by quasi-state firms whose revenues
depend on political contacts rather than economic
efficiency. GDP growth averaged a paltry 2.4% from
2011 to 2014 despite high oil prices and renewed
access to credit markets. Most economists see
that Russia will have a less rosy future – with less
focus on increasing its global financial interaction.
This won’t deter Putin, keen to bolster his status
at home, from maintaining a presence on the
world stage. Its current military postulating around
the Middle East in order to regain influence in key
locations is perhaps understandable.
The Euro experiment has had its day.
28. 28
Wherever you go in the Middle East there are some
elements of commonality but also many areas of
difference – especially concerning competition and
conflict between Sunni and Shia, the financing
of ISIS, the changes afoot in Saudi and the future
ambitions of Iran to create a new Persian Empire.
The US’s influence is declining, for economic and
political reasons. Many OPEC economies need to
increase diversification; not only is there the climate
change challenge, but the potential to act as a
growing, pivotal gateway for China and India, not just
to the Middle East but significantly (in the long-term)
to Africa.
Few doubt the scale of the African continent (a land
mass greater than India, China, the US and Europe
combined, its workforce the world’s largest by 2040)
and its resources. With a collective GDP of $2.6 trillion
by 2020 and $1.4 trillion of consumer spending,
many anticipate the impact of around 500m new
middle class consumers. The question here is one of
timescale; will there be significant change in the next
decade or, like India, a longer period of transition?
India’s perfect population pyramid, a massive
domestic market, a growing middle class, more
successful home-based multinational private
companies, little interest in military expansion to
secure resources, and world class expertise in IT and
process innovation, all add up to the potential for
India to be a top 3 economy. With a highly connected
Indian diaspora and a number of very progressive
business leaders, many see India as a certain long-
term bet; but, for others, India is still a tricky place
to do business, with a sagging infrastructure and
endemic corruption presenting huge obstacles. The
government aims to double India’s exports of goods
to $900 billion a year by 2020 and improve India’s
share of global trade from 2% to 3.5% by 2020. The
World Bank, EIU, IMF and UN all expect between
6 and 7% GDP growth for the next decade. But
progress on reform has been slow.
Also in the region, Singapore will continue to be a
major global trade hub, and be the Asian leader
in GDP per capita; Indonesia will grow steadily via
more progressive government polices and a strong
base of raw material exports. But it is China that
dominates. IMF figures show over the past decade it
has averaged over 25% of the world’s GDP growth.
Some are questioning the long-term sustainability
of the Chinese economy, especially with the burden
of unbalanced demographics stemming from the
impact of the One Child policy. If China uses more
of its economic might and soft diplomacy to reshape
the world order, and if the Remnimbi maybe one day
usurps the dollar as the world’s reserve currency,
then China could dominate world trade.
Certainties
Many see India as a certain
long-term bet.
29. 29
The fortunes of the other BRIC nation, Brazil, reflect
China’s curtailment of the commodity boom; future
growth for the next decade is projected to be under
3%. Other Latin America countries, Chile, Peru and
Mexico, will benefit from being in the TPP. By contrast
the more ‘inward looking’ Argentina is generally seen
to be stumbling from one crisis to another.
North lies the United States. Whereas China has 20%
of the world’s population and generates around one
seventh of global GDP, the US has 6% of the world’s
population but still produces up to 25% of its GDP.
Increasingly self-supporting both in trade and energy,
will the US remain as the world’s naval policeman
and ‘guarantee’ to keep global trade routes open? It
may be several decades before there is a significant
decline in US foreign policy and economic influence.
The world’s centre of economic gravity has changed
over past centuries. Since the mid-1980s, the pace
of that shift, from the West toward Asia, has been
increasing dramatically, at a speed of 140 kilometres
a year - faster than ever before in human history.
Having spent the first 1,000 years in Iraq and then
gradually reached its westernmost point just off
the Newfoundland coast in the 1950s, a McKinsey
model sees that by 2025, with the growing impact of
India and Africa, it will be near to the Russian border
with China and Mongolia. Changes are on the cards.
Shifting power and influence
Will the US remain as the world’s
naval policeman.
Africa growth
With a land mass bigger than India, China,
the US and Europe combined, few doubt
the scale of the African continent and its
resources. However, until recently only
some have seen it as the growth market
that it is fast becoming.
Currencies of meaning
New trusted currencies of exchange and
meaning emerge to better facilitate
transactions, trade, authentication and
validation. Money is complemented by
new systems to which we attach
greater significance.
Declining government influence
National governments’ ability to lead
change comes under greater pressure
from both above and below - multinational
organisations increasingly set the rules
while citizens trust and support local and
network based actions.
Standards driving trade
International regulation is progressively
aimed at freeing up trade and making it
simpler and less bureaucratic – but there
are a number of agreements, standards|
and protocols that some are seeing as
increasingly constraining.
Related insights
31. 31
Interconnected systems
A few changes taking place in the
world are occurring completely
independently of others.
Far more have a mutual dependency and are
increasingly interlinked. Especially when concerned
with complex issues that are impacted by several
underlying driving forces, these are seen as being
increasingly interconnected systems. While an
individual trend may be simple to grasp, the causal
relationships can be deep and complex. Whether
driven by an overlap of resource demands and
competing behaviours, these issues are proving
difficult to fully address.
The topics covered in the following pages are:
Affordable
healthcare
Air quality
Intra city
collaboration
Open
supply
webs
Deeper
collaboration
Energy
storage
Autonomous
transport
Urban
obesity
Food waste
32. 32
70% – of global population without access to decent healthcare
80% – of healthcare costs spent on last 2 years of life
Affordable healthcare
33. 33
Affordable healthcare
The escalating cost of healthcare is further stressed by the need to
support the old and the chronically ill. Spending 20% of GDP on
healthcare is seen as unsustainable so hard decisions are taken
around budgets and priorities.
As nations develop and their economies grow, so
does spending on healthcare. Improved health is a
priority issue and the challenge for governments is
how to provide an efficient, cost effective system.
This is no easy task and many are buckling under
the pressure of rising costs, ageing populations and
increased public expectations; across the world the
whole healthcare system seems to be imploding.
Fear of failure is not quite at a point that will instigate
change, many agree that something has to be done,
but fewer know quite what this should be.
30% of the global population has access to decent
healthcare; most developed countries use upwards
of 9% of their GDP on health care – in the US, it’s over
17%. In India, spending is now over 4%, in China it’s
approaching 6% and in Indonesia over 3%. Costs are
escalating not only because of the general desire to
reach more people but also because of the growth in
preventative healthcare, health monitoring solutions
and the increasing variety of medicines to treat the
sick. Unlike other areas of high consumption, such as
energy, where eventually demand plateaus, spending
on healthcare is showing no sign of levelling off and
there seems little hope in the current circumstances
that it will do so. With healthcare the numbers just
keep going up. What is paid for drugs in the US
generally sets the standard in other markets. In most
developed countries funding for this is picked up
either by the state or the insurance system so the
patient rarely has to come to terms with the real cost
of care. But the money has to come from somewhere.
The beginning of life can be expensive. Many
countries are lowering the threshold at which they
are able to support premature births from 26 weeks
down to 22, but this costs: around £250,000 for a
birth at 23 weeks, thirty times the cost for a full term
baby. Meanwhile, global life expectancy increases
on average by six months every year, largely due
to better healthcare provision. Although each of us
needs more overall medical attention because of this,
our main requirements are associated with the last
2 years of life where more frequent admittance to
hospital will account for around 80% of our healthcare
costs. Better end of life provision is therefore a big
issue – and one where the balance between hospital
and palliative care is key.
We cannot, though, blame the elderly for all the
escalating cost of care. Our sedentary lifestyles and
appetite for alcohol and cigarettes also lead to a huge
rise in chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart
conditions, emphysema and cirrhosis, all expensive
to treat. Most seem to agree that we need an
alternative solution, one that focuses on preventative
healthcare measures rather than treatment. We
also need technology that delivers improvements at
scale and at low cost. India has become a standard
bearer for redesigning processes delivering high
quality healthcare at a fraction of the usual cost.
$50 per patent cataract surgery from Aravind,
or $2000 cardiac surgery from Narayana Health,
innovation that drives the delivery of world class
surgery at 1/50th of the cost of the same care in the
Better end of life provision is
therefore a big issue – and one where
the balance between hospital and
palliative care is key.
34. 34
US. High-tech, personalised treatments tailored to
an individual’s genetic make-up rather than generic
profiles is another fast-developing area. Significant
investments have already been made by the biotech
industry and will impact soon, particularly in the
provision of bespoke drugs that can dramatically
increase efficacy. The cost of such treatment is
however currently prohibitively high because it
requires the development of specific drugs for small
populations and in all probability the additional
provision of customised support systems. While
some are sceptical of large-scale impact by 2025,
because of the expense, all agree that personalised
healthcare is a great opportunity for those who can
afford to pay.
Perhaps it all comes down to the business model.
For the pharmaceutical industry, the system is based
on the expectation of a $1bn revenue windfall from
an occasional blockbuster, but as R&D budgets can
only to be justified on the promise of a major drug
discovery, this takes time and is extremely expensive
to deliver – which explains the high average costs
of patented drugs. There is a general acceptance
of high failure rates in product development, and
the reality is that very few of the drugs currently
coming out of the system deliver reasonable returns
either from a financial perspective or a health care
perspective. Some see sequencing technologies
helping to improve the efficiency of drug development,
while others hope that Big Data will reduce or even
eliminate costly clinical trails. While share prices are
based on high drug prices, few believe that any of the
big pharmaceutical players will seriously consider a
different approach. And, while the current system in
many countries is tilted towards rewarding sick-care
rather than prevention, high development costs and
high healthcare costs naturally follow.
The principle of preventative healthcare is lauded,
especially when tied into improving overall public
health, but the system is not set up to align with
this and there are few economies that are prepared
to fund it at the scale required. Improved public
education is an integral part of the process. Little
things matter; in India between 4 -16% of pregnant
women are anaemic, and better education around
diet could have a dramatic impact on child survival
rates at birth. However such is the scale of change
required that few see a dramatic shift in public
awareness any time soon particularly as the financial
cost saving benefit does not come for 20 to 50 years
down the line.The current system in many countries
is tilted towards rewarding sick care
rather than prevention, high
development costs and high
healthcare costs naturally follow.
Interconnected systems
35. 35
Paying for healthcare is a balance between state
intervention and personal responsibility; shifting from a
national system towards private healthcare insurance
is supported and rejected in equal measure. Some
support the notion of each citizen having a personal
healthcare budget, where there is a limit of spending
beyond which the state either stops providing
support or reclaims it via tax or benefits. Generally
speaking, there are increasing expectations of ‘co-
pay’ where sick patients will directly or indirectly pay
for an element of their treatment, whether drug or
hospital costs.
In emerging economies, where private healthcare
is already in place, the big challenge is to develop
appropriate systems for everyone else. While most
support the concept of the UK’s National Health
System, many believe that it is simply not sustainable
in the long term. Potential alternatives being explored
in India and South America are focused around micro
health insurance, where people pay a small amount
a month extra on their mobile phone bill, used to
fund a workable healthcare insurance system for the
majority. Outstanding questions remain: what level of
support can be provided, and how much additional
government financing is also required? India is never
going to spend as much on health care as the US,
but will a combination of more innovation, effective
use of data, new pricing systems for drugs, micro-
insurance initiatives, more public-private partnerships
and a slight rise in government funding provide an
equivalent service?
Certainly scalable, sustainable solutions are needed if
we are to see affordable healthcare for all. Most likely
we will see few global answers but more probably
there will be a host of regional and local shifts, all
aimed at a more cost efficient, more effective and
more equitable healthcare system for a growing,
aging but still, on average, healthier population. As
one US health economist put it, ideally ‘we want to
die quickly as late as possible’. Achieving that for all
in the next decade really would be a success.
As one US health economist put it,
ideally ‘we want to die quickly as late
as possible’.
Affordable healthcare
Care in the community
The desire to ‘age-in-place’ meets
a healthcare reform agenda that promotes
decentralization. A new care model is
customer-centric, caregiver-focused and
enhances coordination across care settings.
Caring for those left behind
Although significant progress has been
made positive change has limited reach.
Millions of people continue to be left
behind from main-stream progress
-especially the young, the poor and those
who are disadvantaged.
Imbalanced population growth
A growing population adds another billion
people but it is also rapidly ageing: a child
born next year will live 6 months longer
than one born today. While migration
helps to rebalance, increasing
dependency ratios challenge many.
Urban obesity
Mass urbanisation, reduced activity and
poor diets are accelerating the rise of
obesity. Levels of obesity in most cities are
growing fast and the associated
healthcare burden will soon account for
5% of global GDP.
Related insights
36. 36
15x – Delhi’s air more polluted than the WHO safe maximum
4000 – people killed every day in China due to air pollution
Air quality
37. 37
Air quality
Rising air pollution in many cities is killing people and becomes a
visible catalyst for changing mind-sets and policies across health,
energy, transportation and urban design.
Delhi, Patna, Gwailor and Raipur: the four most
polluted cities in the world, and all of them in India.
In fact 13 of the top 20 most polluted cities are in
India. True, Beijing has a worse reputation because
of the visible smog, formed mostly from 10 micron
particulates but it is the air in Delhi that is more
damaging as it holds many more of the smaller sub
2.5 micron particulates that kills as they go deeper
into the lungs. Delhi’s air is 15 times more polluted
that the WHO safe maximum.
Whether from vehicle emissions, industrial
smokestacks or paraffin stoves in the slums, this
pollution is manifested across many Indian cities in
escalating asthma rates, higher cancer incidence
and more heart attacks and strokes. About 620,000
people are dying every year from pollution-related
diseases, but they are not alone. Lives in many
Chinese cities are over 5 years shorter than the
national average because of air pollution - 80 percent
of the population are exposed to pollution above
safe levels and the air in Beijing is so polluted that
breathing it does as much damage to the lungs as
smoking 40 cigarettes a day. The omnipresent paper
masks of recent years are being replaced by heavy-
duty facemasks; parents are even delaying having
children because of the poor quality air. Air pollution
in China kills about 4,000 people every day - about
17 percent of all deaths. But, according to the World
Bank, when measured across whole nations, the
most toxic air today is found not in India or China but
in the UAE.
Globally, in 2012, 7m people died because of
the impacts of poor air quality and, as increased
industrialization, wider car ownership and climate
change all add to the problem, things are going to get
a lot, lot worse. The OECD believes that pollution will
soon become the biggest cause of premature death.
A pivotal issue about poor air quality is that it has
multiple causal factors and impacts multiple areas.
From industrial strategy and energy policy, to vehicle
emissions to city design and transportation choices,
the forces driving increased pollution intertwine.
Equally the health consequences of rising asthma,
heart attacks, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
and cancer combine with poor visibility and grey
skies to make many of the world’s cities increasingly
unattractive places to live. The lists of the world’s
unhealthy cities are increasingly much longer than
the healthy ones.
In some Western cities some progress in improving
air quality has been made over recent years. The
Mayor of London has launched public awareness
campaigns aimed at helping Londoners make
small changes to reduce their exposure to pollution
and help improve air quality. Alongside tightening
standards with the city’s Low Emission Zone, retiring
old taxis, cleaning up the bus fleet and retrofitting
400,000 buildings with clean air facilities, a primary
activity to meet 2020 targets is rethinking traffic
management. Meanwhile the EU is taking legal action
against 17 States with a consistent record of poor air
quality. Bulgaria, Latvia and Slovenia are being asked
to urgently address an on-going issue that kills more
of their citizens than road traffic accidents every year.
It has multiple causal factors and
impacts multiple areas.
38. 38
In the US, outdoor air quality has improved since the
1990s, but, according to the CDC, many challenges
remain in protecting Americans from air quality
problems. Ground-level ozone, the main part of
smog, and particle pollution are just two of the many
threats to air quality and public health in the United
States and, based on current projections, pollution in
the US is set to increase not decrease by 2025.
With public attention rising and concerns over poor
health influencing political agendas, now India and
China are ramping up their activities. The Chinese
government has set up a nationwide network of
sensors, and regularly publishes data online. A
comparative index has recently been launched in
India to monitor air quality, while three industrialised
states—Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu—are
about to launch the world’s first market for trading
permits in emissions of particulate matter. In the
town of Surat, in Gujarat, 300 textile plants, which
typically burn coal to produce steam, are likely to be
the first to trade such permits. Monitoring equipment
has already gathered emissions data from these and
other plants.
Beyond monitoring and permits, others are trying
more radical measures. In the western Chinese city
of Lanzhou, officially deemed by the WHO to have
the worst air in China, officials have proposed digging
great gullies into the surrounding mountains in the
hope of trapping polluted air in a gigantic landscape
gutter. But Lanzhou’s poor air quality is caused less
by burning coal and car fumes than by the local
penchant for blowing up mountains. More than 700
peaks are being leveled to provide swathes of flat
land for development and blowing out a huge gulley
would only add to the problem.
New approaches to city design are being called for
that will gain by encouraging healthier urban dwellers
- reduced healthcare costs, increased productivity,
more community resilience, improved life expectancy
and fewer demands on health services. Given that
most people in India, even in cities, still commute by
foot, bus or bicycle—and that only 5% of households
own cars—India still has time to set up systems for
mass public transport before the car becomes king.
Already 14 cities have or are building metros.
Interconnected systems
Pollution in the US is set to increase
not decrease by 2025.
39. 39
Most of the world’s population will be subject
to degraded air quality in 2050 if human-made
emissions continue as current trends. The OECD
believes that air pollution will become a bigger global
killer than dirty water and, as such, is encouraging
faster change. The challenge in many countries
however is in balancing the public health impact with
the desire for sustained economic growth – primarily
still powered by fossil fuels. In regions where energy
access is a higher priority than clean energy, many
are increasingly seeing that it may well be air pollution,
and not carbon emission targets, that captures the
public sentiment and acts as a catalyst for change.
More children with asthma, permanently grey skies
and increased breathing difficulties for all are seen by
some as the triggers for widespread change – both
bottom up and top down – and consequently, air
quality is fast becoming a core part of the climate
change vocabulary.
Air pollution will become a bigger
global killer than dirty water.
Air quality
Deeper collaboration
Partnerships shift to become more
dynamic, long-term, democratised,
multi-party collaborations. Competitor
alliances and wider public participation
drive regulators to create new legal
frameworks for open, empathetic
collaboration.
Energy storage
Storage, and particularly electricity
storage, is the missing piece in the
renewables jigsaw. If solved, it can enable
truly distributed solar energy as well as
accelerate the electrification of the
transport industry.
Intra city collaboration
Increasing competition between
cities overrides national boundaries
and drives change. They compete
to attract the best but also
collaborate to avoid the downside
of success – over-crowding,
under-resourcing and pollution.
Mass engagement
As the public voice becomes easier to
access and harder to suppress, leaders
seek to engage to create, develop, secure
and maintain legitimacy for their initiatives
and policies – so further reducing their
hierarchical power.
Related insights
40. 40
2020 – launch date for Google’s car 2020
1.24 million – number of road deaths globally p.a.
Autonomous transport
41. 41
Autonomous transport
The shift to fully autonomous transport is an evolution via truck
platoons on highways and small urban delivery pods. Connected
cars create the network and test the technologies for the eventual
revolutionary driverless experience.
The concept of self-driving, autonomous vehicles
has been talked about for years. Whether from
the automotive sector, science fiction or big data
enthusiasts, the advent of cars, trucks and buses
that navigate and drive themselves has been a
common aspiration. The reality is however getting
increasingly closer and, over the next decade, many
expect to see some pivotal advances introduced at
scale in some parts of the world, though at different
speeds in different sectors and in different regions.
Over the past thirty years there have been
numerous proof of concept tests, such as the
European Prometheus project and the DARPA
funded Autonomous Land Vehicle project in the
US. The 1997 National Automated Highway System
Consortium project brought the idea to wider public
attention, when twenty or so self-driving vehicles
were demonstrated on Interstate Highway 15 in San
Diego. These early projects set the direction, proved
the principles and also raising many questions,
including data access, ownership and sharing as well
as network reliability.
Some car manufacturers became confident enough
to put major stakes in the ground – Volvo, in
particular, declared that by 2020, no one would be
killed in a Volvo and saw the ability of a car to take
over, when an accident was likely, as a key safety
improvement. Recent developments by the likes
of Google, Apple and Amazon have shown how
innovation from outside the automotive sector can
speed up development. The key question is whether
the next decade will be an evolution or revolution. By
2025, will we see fully autonomous vehicles at scale
or will it be a patchwork approach, where this only
happens in certain locations; and, elsewhere, will
we see more assisted driving but not the complete
autonomous experience?
The connected car is certainly a priority for many
and a forerunner to a world of autonomous vehicles.
In 2013, Nissan announced its plans to launch
several driverless cars by 2020 and has a dedicated
proving ground in Japan. BMW and Mercedes have
connected vehicles now driving along German
Autobahns where autonomous driving is working as
an evolution of adaptive cruise control and assisted
driving - which is already in production cars showing
automated lane keeping, parking, acceleration,
braking, accident avoidance and driver fatigue
detection. In 2014 Tesla introduced its AutoPilot
systems in its Model S electric cars and in 2015 a
car designed by Delphi Automotive completed a
coast-to-coast trip across the US, 99% of which was
automated driving.
The key question is whether the
next decade will be an evolution or
revolution.
42. 42
The recent acknowledgement by Apple that its
autonomous car project, ‘Titan’, is a ‘committed’
project has brought much speculation about what
is also underway in Cupertino, after tripling its
dedicated team to 1800 including many recruits from
across the automotive sector. Google are probably
furthest ahead, building over 100 vehicles and already
clocking up over 1m miles; they started working on
driverless cars as far back as 2005 when they won
the DARPA grand challenge and in the past few years
have successfully lobbied for regulatory approval for
autonomous cars and started road testing in 2012.
By June 2015, Google’s fleet had encountered
200,000 stop signs, 600,000 traffic lights, and 180
million other vehicles and had only had between 12
and 14 (depending on who you ask) minor accidents.
Launch date for Google’s car is set at 2020. The
fundamental issue here is whether or not they can
pull off driverless vehicles that work in cities, can deal
with roundabouts, avoid unpredictable actions by
pedestrians and certainly don’t crash.
Much attention is also focused on moving goods.
Already in off-road applications such as mining and
farming, many of the ingredients of autonomous
and driverless vehicles will get large-scale traction
in this area. The advent of truck platoons or trains,
lines of long distance trucks electronically coupled
to each other running along the highway, is upon
us – Daimler’s Freightliner highway pilot has been
given approval to operate in Nevada and rivals such
as Volvo and Scania are undertaking similar trials in
Sweden. However the revolution in this space is for
small urban delivery vehicles – slow-moving, driverless
electric pods delivering packages to homes, offices,
drop-off points and even traditional car boots. No
surprise that many are looking at Amazon to take the
lead here; the opportunity to simplify the last mile of
delivery in terms of both reducing human cost and
optimizing drop-off schedule is a hugely attractive
business proposition.
What remains to be determined are the all-important
issues that sit around the core platforms. Mobile
operators are already sharing data, but who owns
the shared data required to make the whole system
work and how it is accessed? This is matter of
trust, value and liability and, depending where you
are in the world, the balance between government,
tech companies and vehicle manufacturers shifts
significantly. This needs to be addressed, as most
business models require visibility of 100% of the
vehicles on the road – 99% is not good enough.
Interconnected systems
However the revolution in this space
is for small urban delivery vehicles
– slow-moving, driverless electric
pods delivering packages to homes,
offices, drop-off points and even
traditional car boots.
43. 43
And then there is the tricky issue of risk and ethics.
From an insurance perspective the advent of
autonomous vehicles should mean that cars don’t
crash and we don’t need motor insurance. But
insurance companies see the risk simply shifting from
the owner to others - the vehicle manufacturer, the
road network or the whole system. With the costs of
system failure significant, this is a big issue that few
seem to have yet resolved.
Meanwhile, on the ethical side, some are questioning
who is going to code the decision to sacrifice the
‘driver’ rather than the child who runs into the road.
While the likes of Google DeepMind, helping with
the Google car, are leaders in artificial intelligence,
ethics professors are not sure how quickly this will be
resolved. Varied perspectives from different cultures
have to be considered here.
Autonomy is not far away. The technology is being
proven, the money is being invested and the
potential for safer, less congested roads is a big
social benefit. Governments are starting to discuss
regulatory issues in both the US and EU and some
of the ingredients such as automated connections
like eCall are becoming mandatory in major markets
in the next few years. By 2025 we will certainly see
more assisted driving and autonomy on highways
for both cars and trucks, where everyone is going in
the same direction with controlled entry and exit, and
maybe full autonomy in cities for goods delivery pods.
However, at the moment, it looks like full autonomy
in cities for passenger vehicles is a few years away.
Autonomous transport
Insurance companies see the risk
simply shifting from the owner to
others - the vehicle manufacturer, the
road network or the whole system.
Ethical machines
Automation spreads beyond trading and
managing systemic risk. As we approach
technology singularity, autonomous robots
and smarter algorithms make ethical
judgments that impact life or death.
Everything connected
Over 1 trillion sensors are connected to
multiple networks: everything that can
benefit from a connection has one. We
deliver 10,000x more data 100x more
effectively but are concerned about the
security of the information that flows.
The increasing value of data
As organisations try to retain as much
information about their customers as
possible, data becomes a currency with
a value and a price. It therefore requires
a marketplace where anything that is
information is represented.
Access to transport
The widespread need for individuals
to travel short distances becomes a key
feature of urban design and regeneration.
Planners use transport infrastructure to
influence social change and lower
carbon living.
Related insights
44. 44
2.6 million – number of patent applications p.a.
7 million – number of trademark applications p.a.
Deeper collaboration
45. 45
Deeper collaboration
Partnerships shift to become more dynamic, long-term,
democratised, multi-party collaborations. Competitor alliances and
wider public participation drive regulators to create new legal
frameworks for open, empathetic collaboration.
Giventhechallengeswearefacing,manyseetheneed
for a different way of working across and between
organisations. The time when one company alone
could develop scalable solutions is fast disappearing,
and even traditional cross-industry partnerships are
unlikely to have the resources and reach required.
Addressing some of the big meaty future challenges
will rely on deeper and wider collaboration that will
no longer be driven solely by intellectual property and
value considerations; instead more dynamic, agile,
long-term, democratised and multi-party cooperation
is on the horizon.
Take rising air pollution. Tackling this will demand
partnerships across transportation operators, energy
providers, city planners, public health organisations,
governments, regulators, financiers and citizen
groups. Or, addressing the obesity challenge isn’t
just about food and drink companies changing
direction but also involving healthcare professionals,
behavioural psychologists, regulators, transport
and city planners as well as educational institutions
and the media. The type of cooperation needed to
innovate and address these and similar challenges
will require the collaborating organisations to rethink
the fundamental nature of how such partnerships
are designed, operated and rewarded. Bilateral
agreements, while easier to establish and execute
than global ones, are implicitly limiting.
The residual approach to intellectual property
creation, ownership and trading is more of a barrier
to collaboration that an enabler. While concepts
such as patent pools have worked within industries,
be that sewing machines and cars a century ago
or Bluetooth, MPEG and DVD standards in the
past 20 years, some see that they too are not
the right model for the deeper and wider levels of
collaboration envisaged for the future. The answer
could be emerging in the way we increasingly
collaborate around content production online via
layered authorship - copyright is shared as more of
us collaborate and swap ideas as thoughts are built
upon again and again. As a result, multiple authors
are recognised and shared information is not owned
by any individual. Clearly, remuneration models for
collaborative programmes need to evolve.
If we are indeed going to undertake more pragmatic
The residual approach to intellectual property
creation, ownership and trading is more of a barrier
to collaboration that an enabler. Reconciling the
need for companies to work together globally and
locally will involve making compromises, and we may
even see a fundamental shift in how we measure
success – away from GDP and income towards a
more holistic perspective of progress. Some large,
well-established incumbent organisations may argue
for short-term incremental shifts, but it’s hoped that,
in time, the big banks, energy companies and other
controllers of the status quo will shift their positions.
Pivotal in this shift is the expectation that many will
either seek or be compelled to take a longer-term
view around systemic change and that will imply
wider collaboration.
The residual approach to intellectual
property creation, ownership and
trading is more of a barrier to
collaboration that an enabler.
46. 46
Within this, the role of public-private partnerships
seems to be in ascendance. Although often
criticised in some areas in the West, across Asia
and South America the need and benefit for
closer collaboration between governments and
companies is evident. In Ecuador and elsewhere the
successful transformation of Medellin in Colombia
was highlighted as an outcome of closer public-
private partnerships in city management and facility
operation. In India, discussions on improving
healthcare, education, transport and food supply all
highlighted the potential available when more efficient
execution of government ambitions can be achieved
through collaboration with faster moving and more
flexible private companies. Citizens, part of a shift
towards more participatory government in some
regions, will increasingly be more involved in both
decision-making and execution. The state may take
a step back and instead of leading will become the
facilitator of building new relationships with people
and industry that can co-create and co-provide
solutions to problems.
Theneedforgreatercollaborationinthefuturewilldrive
many companies to re-organise themselves based
more on social networks than traditional functional
or business unit silos, so changing the structure of
collaboration as well as the platforms upon which it
operates. This could bring about a divide between
meaningful networks based on shared values and
emotions and those more superficial connections
built purely on data. Within collaboration, time may
well become a social currency, and time spent on
working on collaborative projects addressing real
societal issues could become the metric that drives
reputation and social status. Rather than putting in
cash, either from a philanthropic standpoint or as
a more active investor, we may soon see a shift to
individuals proactively seeking to give up their free
time to help solve emerging problems, ensuring that
the scale of action and impact can be far greater than
that achieved when a couple of organisations decide
to partner on a traditional joint venture.
Already, collaboration in innovation is increasingly
becoming more public and shifting from bilateral
partnerships to grand challenges such as X-prizes that
focus on problems currently seen to be unsolvable,
or that have no clear path toward a solution.
The future of interconnected systems
The role of public-private partnerships
seems to be in ascendance.
47. 47
One timely example of this is the award-winning
SunShot initiative run by the US Department of
Energy. It focuses on accelerating the point at
which solar energy becomes cost-competitive with
other forms of electricity by the end of the decade
– essentially bring the cost per Watt of solar energy
down from $3.80 to $1. Rather than funding research
within energy companies, the approach has been to
first engage the wider public population to generate
new concepts that could help achieve the ambition.
By then funding the best ideas through cooperative
research, development and deployment projects
undertaken by a combination of private companies,
universities, state and local governments, non-profit
organizations and national laboratories, the SunShot
approach is to choreograph the ideal collaboration
network for each concept. Halfway into the decade
long initiative, it has been able to use its resources
more intelligently and fund 250 projects that have
collectively already achieved 70% of the target cost
reduction.
Going forward, big problems are seen to require
completely different ways of thinking and cooperating
and deeper, wider, more meaningful collaboration is
for many an important part of the puzzle.
Collaboration in innovation is
increasingly becoming more public.
Deeper collaboration
Air quality
Rising air pollution in many cities is
killing people and becomes a visible
catalyst for changing mind-sets and
policies across health, energy,
transportation and urban design.
Flooded cities
The vast majority of our cities are not
prepared for flooding. Many districts and
households can no longer get flood
insurance and are in jeopardy. It’s going
to get worse before it gets better.
Infrastructure deficit
Infrastructure again becomes a source
of competitive advantage. Emerging
economies invest in new railroads and
highways for more effective movement of
people and goods, while developed
nations suffer from poor legacy.
Privacy regulation
The push towards global standards,
protocols and greater transparency is a
focus for many nations driving proactive
regulation, but others choose to opt-out
of international agreements and go
their own way.
Related insights
48. 48
50% – increase in energy stored in Lithium-ion batteries
$5 billion – cost of the Tesla ‘Giga Factory’
Energy storage
49. 49
Energy storage
Storage, and particularly electricity storage, is the missing piece
in the renewables jigsaw. If solved, it can enable truly distributed
solar energy as well as accelerate the electrification of the transport
industry.
After years of rising prices and increasing demand,
there is change in the air for energy supply, with
many seeking to accelerate the shift to renewables.
Although there are short-term factors in matching
current supply and demand in varied regions, most
agree that long-term we will move to a renewables-
based energy system. At the moment solar energy
is playing a small role, contributing around 0.6% of
the world’s energy mix, but is expected to increase
to between 5% and 20% by 2020 (depending
on whose view you believe). The key variable is
around cost. Today in some regions solar is already
comparable with the cost of electricity from natural
gas, in others government subsidies are used to
make it competitive.
Successful transformation of the energy system
is increasingly being linked to the development
and scaling of storage solutions and there is much
optimism that substantial improvements will be
achieved over the next decade. However, it would be
rash to expect better storage solutions alone to solve
our current energy crisis based as it is on a system
focused around fossil fuels which simply hold their
energy until it is ignited. It will take many years or
even decades to shift to renewables.
Controlling how and when energy is provided is
implicitly linked to our ability to store it, especially so
in locations where energy demand is not in sync with
supply – whether that be from solar, wind or wave
renewables or a wider energy mix. People have been
looking forward to the advent of smart energy grids
for some time and having two-way transmission of
electricity between supplier and consumer is a core
element of this. Today the main options for large-
scale energy storage are pumped hydro-storage
and batteries. California’s Inland Empire Utilities
Agency uses spare energy capacity at periods of low
demand to pump water up mountains so that it can
be released at peak demand and turned back into
electricity using conventional hydroelectric turbines.
Meanwhile, though, the role that batteries can play
in displacing other energy solutions, even with
incremental change, can be significant. Battery costs
are falling steadily – they have halved in the last five
years. In the past, batteries have been made from
materials such as lead-acid and nickel-cadmium.
Highly toxic, some of these ingredients are also bulky
and heavy. The rechargeable lithium-ion battery
helped slim them down and these batteries now
power not just smartphones and laptops but also
power tools, electric cars and drones. Lithium-ion
batteries have been steadily getting better and, with
improved chemistry and production techniques, the
energy stored in them has increased by 50%.
Today the main options for large-scale
energy storage are pumped
hydro-storage and batteries.
50. 50
For some applications, such as electric cars, a better
battery would be transformative. Until recently the
battery for an electric car could cost $400-$500 per
kilowatt-hour, perhaps 30% or so of the overall cost
of the vehicle. General Motors (itself involved in about
a dozen battery storage projects) expects the battery
in its latest Chevy Bolt electric car to cost around
$145 per kilowatt-hour; once costs come down to
around $100 per kilowatt-hour, electric vehicles will
become mainstream because they will be able to
compete with petrol cars of all sizes without subsidy.
Other organisations are looking at a more radical
change in the technology. Sakti3 focuses on a lithium-
ion battery with a solid electrolyte that offers about
double the energy density; Dyson, the British inventor
of the bag-less vacuum cleaner, recently bought the
company. As Dyson expands into domestic robotics,
expect to see solid-state batteries in the mix. And,
with further engineering, maybe in electric cars and
grid storage too; in large volumes, such solid-state
batteries should cost around the target $100 per
kilowatt-hour.
Many research groups around the world are hoping
for battery breakthroughs. 24M, a Massachusetts
start-up, is using nanotechnology to develop a cost-
effective “semi-solid” lithium-ion battery, while over
in Cambridge, UK, there is much expectation from a
new lithium-air cell that has overtaken current lithium-
ion batteries in the amount of energy stored per kg.
A spin-off of Carnegie Mellon University, Aquion
Energy’s nontoxic, saltwater-based batteries are
designed to deliver high-performance storage while
avoiding the expensive maintenance of competing
chemistries such as lead-acid. South Korea’s LG
Chem is building on its experience supplying lithium-
ion batteries for electric cars to provide residential,
commercial and industrial stationary batteries.
Alongside LG Chem, numerous other big lithium-ion
battery producers, such as BYD, Johnson Controls,
Panasonic, Samsung and Sony, are partnering solar
installers, inverter manufacturers and innovative
product integrators.
Interconnected systems
Once costs come down to around
$100 per kilowatt-hour, electric
vehicles will become mainstream.
51. 51
Perhaps most significantly however, SolarCity, the
largest residential PV installer in the U.S., is rolling
out storage systems relying on lithium-ion batteries
supplied by electric carmaker Tesla — whose CEO
and founder, Elon Musk, is also SolarCity’s chairman.
The duo’s entry into stationary energy storage is
significant. SolarCity hopes to offer its solution to
enable residential customers to take advantage of
time-of-use rates, ancillary services and PV system
interaction. It is spearheading a 200-kilowatt project
to store energy from rooftop solar arrays at Tesla’s
factory in Fremont, with the aim of helping Tesla
offset millions of dollars in demand charges.
Tesla (with its Japanese battery supplier, Panasonic)
is building a $5 billion lithium-ion battery factory in
Nevada - the ‘Giga Factory’. A new Tesla battery,
Powerwall, can be used to store solar electricity
generated at home, as well as lower electric car
costs. Some see Tesla as much as an energy storage
company as a manufacturer of electric cars.
Some solar industry leaders see that within the next
couple of years consumers will no longer be buying
solar systems on their own, but rather a complete
energy system, consisting of generation, storage,
load-management and an app - all leveraged through
big data analytics in the cloud. Each consumer will
take more responsibility for storage, generation and
usage, but do it in such a way that is less expensive
than pure utility energy while the utility has access to
what it needs to, to make sure that it plays well on
the grid.
Tesla’s Elon Musk highlights the possible network
benefits of “system-wide implementation” of energy
storage, including flattening peaks of electricity
demand which could lead to far less conventional
generation power plants being required – “you
can basically, in principle, shut down half of the
world’s power plants if you had stationary storage,
independent of renewable energy.”
Some see Tesla as much as an energy
storage company as a manufacturer
of electric cars.
Energy storage
Air quality
Rising air pollution in many cities is
killing people and becomes a visible
catalyst for changing mind-sets and
policies across health, energy,
transportation and urban design.
Full cost
Increasing transparency of society’s
reliance on nature, intensify requirements
for business to pay the true cost of
the resources provided by ‘natural capital’
and so compensate for their negative
impact on society.
Key resource constraints
Economic, physical and political shortages
of key resources increase and drive
increasing tension between and within
countries. As we exceed the Earth’s
natural thresholds, food and water receive
as much focus as oil and gas.
Speed to scale
Greater global connectivity, growing
consumer wealth and broader reach all
combine to accelerate the time to 1bn
customers and a $10bn valuation for
start-ups and new corporate
ventures alike.
Related insights
52. 52
2 billion tonnes – amount of food wasted each year
50% – target reduction in US food waste by 2030
Food waste
53. 53
Food waste
30-50% of our food is wasted either in the supply chain or in
consumptionandcouldfeedanother3billion.Optimisingdistribution
and storage in developing countries and enabling better consumer
information in others could solve this.
We live in a world where 1 in 4 of the calories we
create are never eaten. Every day, consumers in the
West throw away as much food as is produced in
the whole of Sub Saharan Africa, while, globally, the
2bn tonnes of food wasted each year are equivalent
to around $1 trillion of financial loss each year. Going
forward, if we are to support another billion or so
people on the planet this century, with limited land
and water resources, reducing this massive wastage
is perhaps the most significant shift possible to help
us to feed the global population.
Depending which region you are in, the nature of
food waste shifts from production and storage to
distribution and consumption; in developing counties,
40% of the loss occurs post harvest, storage and in
processing, while in developed nations 40% of the
losses are in retail and with the consumer. In China,
losses of rice are at 45% of total production - in
Vietnam it is 80%. In India, Delhi has Asia’s largest
food produce market but no cool storage facility; so
in soaring temperatures how can fruit and vegetables
stay fresh? In South Africa, 50% of mangoes are
damaged in the first mile of transportation, while in
India 20m tonnes of wheat, equivalent to the entire
production of Australia, are lost every year due to
poor storage. Improving storage with simple, low
cost methods such as using crates rather than bags
and sacks can drastically cut food loss. The UN FAO
has already built well over 50,000 small grain storage
silos across 20 or so countries that are significantly
cutting food loss. Refrigerated transport is clearly an
ideal, but in the absence of that cool storage depots
can have significant impact.
Productivity around the world varies; India overall
is half as productive as global averages – whereas
US farmers produced 11 tonnes of food per acre, in
India the figure is 3 tonnes. The problem is not about
lack of land but inefficiencies of production; 90% of
Indian farmers don’t use animal feed and therefore
miss out on easy ways to improve yields. Given that
we have pretty much used all the arable land we
have available and urbanization and climate change
are fast shifting the balance, higher productivity per
hectare is a major theme.
One option is clearly to increase the amount of
genetic modification. However, when in some
regions this is embraced, in others it is demonized.
The GM actions that gain greatest support are for
the introduction of drought tolerant and salt-resistant
crops but many would argue that the problem can be
solved without taking too many steps towards more
GM food produce. Given US and Chinese support for
this and the significant interests of companies such
as Monsanto, ADM and Cargill, we are likely to see a
combination of new varieties and the better adoption
of today’s leading farming practices. Other actions
called for include land reform in Africa and greater
investment in funding famer education programmes
to reduce post-harvest loss.
India overall is half as productive as
global averages.
54. 54
Also significant in the list of areas for improvement is
water supply and irrigation: as agriculture consumes
70% of our fresh water, reducing food waste frees up
more water. In the US, where 30% of purchased food
is thrown away, this means that half of the water used
to produce food is wasted. Globally, shifting from
flooding and spray irrigation to drip-and-trickle feed
of water can improve productivity by over a third.
In the Western world of retail, quality standards
and obsessions with food appearance are the
major issues driving food waste. One easy answer
is to modify food labelling, as consumer confusion
between ‘use-by’, ‘sell-by’ and ‘best before’ dates
is a major driver of waste. In the UK, 20% of food
thrown away by consumers is incorrectly perceived
as being out of date, leading to calls for the wider use
of just the use by date – now being piloted by Tesco
across Europe.
Another simple option is to redistribute food that
is not sold. While unfortunately in many countries
food safety regulations forbid the reuse of food,
firms like Pret a Manger have made a point of giving
unsold sandwiches and salads to the homeless
while apps such as the US’s Leftoverswap have
taken off in linking people with left over food, and
in Australia Secondbite has redirected unwanted
food to community food banks. A partnership of
grocers, food brands and government should focus
consumer awareness through education campaigns.
Networked smart fridges and storage cabinets that
interact with food packing to track supplies, use-
by dates and link to on-line delivery firms are a
direction of travel in some countries, for many simple
attitudinal shifts of the consumer may be just as
effective. Similarly, our expectation of perfect looking
food 24/7 in every supermarket has to change; in
many developed markets 50% of some vegetables
harvested do not make it onto the shelves because
they don’t look right.
Interconnected systems
Reducing food waste frees up
more water.
55. 55
Considerable waste takes place worldwide also
in hotels and catering where 80% of food waste is
attributed to events. Because they are cheaper to
provide than plated service at tables, hotels typically
favour buffets to feed lots of people. Although cost
effective in terms of labour, buffets are incredibly
inefficient in terms of the ratio of food consumed to
that prepared, especially so with banquets.
In some countries, more aware of the financial
impact of the waste in food, many restaurants are
seeking to improve efficiency. In many US cities,
food can no longer be sent to landfill and instead it
is either being redistributed or turned into energy –
anaerobic digesters are popping up all over the place
to turn food scraps into gas. In Europe, France has
announced measures to reduce food waste and
passed a law banning supermarkets from destroying
unsold food, while, in the UK, Waitrose is just one
of the supermarkets that has already diverted all
its shop generated waste from landfill to anaerobic
digestion.
If we could reduce current food waste by just
a quarter, that would be enough to feed all of the
world’s hungry. If we can reduce it by half then we
will free up enough to cope with an extra billion or
so people on the planet. By 2050 the world will need
60 per cent more calories every day to feed 9 billion
people. Cutting current food loss and waste levels in
half will shrink the gap by 22 percent.
As a step to this, in 2015 the US Department of
Agriculture announced an initiative to reduce national
food waste by 50 per cent by 2030. Driven both by
the need for greater food security as well as resource
conservation, many see that this may soon become
a target elsewhere as well: the EU has the same
target by 2050.
Today, across the world, we have no meaningful
food waste data. If, as we move forward, robust and
consistent data collection occurs and is used to both
improve famer education, highlight process efficiency
opportunities and support clearer guidelines for
consumers, then we should be able to make
significant progress.
By 2050 the world will need 60 per
cent more calories every day to feed
9 billion people.
Food waste
Full cost
Increasing transparency of society’s
reliance on nature, intensify requirements
for business to pay the true cost of
the resources provided by ‘natural capital’
and so compensate for their negative
impact on society.
Nature’s capital
In the Anthropocene, humankind is
presiding over the Earth’s sixth major
extinction. But as biodiversity declines,
nature becomes increasingly valued
and valuable.
Plastic oceans
There are increasing high levels of
man-made pollution in many of the world’s
seas and little actually disappears.
By 2050 there will be more plastic than
fish in the oceans.
Key resource constraints
Economic, physical and political shortages
of key resources increase and drive
increasing tension between and within
countries. As we exceed the Earth’s
natural thresholds, food and water receive
as much focus as oil and gas.
Related insights
56. 56
80% – global GDP generated by 600 urban centres
75% – world’s natural resources consumed by cities
Intra city collaboration
57. 57
Intra city collaboration
Increasing competition between cities overrides national boundaries
and drives change. They compete to attract the best but also
collaborate to avoid the downside of success – over-crowding,
under-resourcing and pollution.
Global trade and power is generally defined between
governments at a national level; nations acting
collectively to negotiate deals to their mutual benefit,
on occasion with the support of organisations such
as the WTO. This process is often time-consuming,
and fails to deliver benefits for specific regions. For
city administrations this can be particularly frustrating
as they are disproportionately responsible for most
of the world’s output - 600 urban centres generate
80% of global GDP. As a result, some cities have
become more actively involved in generating trade
and business opportunities, their influence increasing
depending on the amount of revenue they generate.
Such is their success that some argue the focus in
the future will no longer be between nations - rather it
will be between cities. The concept of the city-state,
last seen in the eighteenth century, is about to enjoy
a renaissance.
Cities offer opportunities to prosper that cannot
be found elsewhere. The sheer proximity of others
allows smart people to more easily connect with
other smart people to do business, attract funding
and find customers. While economic size and growth
are important and necessary, several other factors
determine a city’s overall competitiveness, including
its business and regulatory environment, the quality
of human capital and indeed the quality of life.
To truly prosper, cities need more than office buildings
and research parks. Cafes, concerts, art shows and
open spaces are all necessary to allow creative
people to meet and interact. Across the world huge
investments are being made to create liveable,
healthy cities, encouraging more walking or cycling,
improving public transport and adding green spaces
- New York’s High Line, London’s Olympic Park and
Seoul’s rediscovered Cheonggyecheon River are all
good examples. In addition urban developers are
keen to focus on culture. Abu Dhabi, for instance, is
developing the new Saadiyat Island cultural district,
an area a quarter of the size of Paris with three new
museums (the Louvre, the Guggenheim, and the
Zayed) at its centre. It aims to position the city as
a leading showcase for art in the Middle East and
is at the heart of a plan to reshape Abu Dhabi’s oil-
dependent economy by 2030.
The city brand is also important, and projecting the
right image to attract the right kind of people works.
New York for example is proud of its “never sleeps”
by-line but Austin, Texas uses the slogan, “Keep
Austin Weird”, highlighting the city’s commitment
to creativity. It acts as a reminder that urban growth
should not drive out the culture that shaped its
identity and appeal.
Urban developers are keen to focus on
culture.