The Decades Ahead: Planning Innovation through Insight and Foresight

As innovation practitioners, we pay a lot of attention to the way society is changing, as innovations are generally developed in pursuit of specific strategic objectives that will certainly be significantly influenced by external events.Recently a number of interesting books have been published that examine the coming decades and have offered some useful insights.  The Economist Magazine published an anthology called Megachange: The World in 2050, and (despite a cover design that makes it look like a comic book), the quality of the writing and insights is quite good.Here are a few of the concepts that I found particularly interesting:Dependency Rate“In 1970 there were 75 dependents (children and people older than 65) for every 100 adults of working age in the world.  In 2010 the number had dropped to 52 – a measure of the greater share of working people in the world and a primary source of growth.  This helped boost economies, especially in China.  By 2050 the world’s dependency rate will have turned around and be back up to 58.”  (p 15)“China now has 7.9 people of working age for every person older than 65.  By 2050, it will have only 2.2.  No country has ever supported so many elderly people per worker.  Even Japan, the grayest country on the planet today, has 2.6 workers per to support every retiree.”  (p 167)Disease Rate“Micro-organisms seeking global domination will be helped by an ever more connected world.  An increasingly international food chain will bring pathgens from a foreign field to your local market.  Airplanes already carry more than 2 billion passengers each year, making the spread of a disease from one continent to another as simple as a mosquito hitching a ride from one continent to another on a 747.  Most worrying of all is the maladies that do not yet exist.  Since the 1970s, new diseases have arrived at the rate of one or more each year.  SARS, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, West Nile all began in wild animals.”  (p 27)Carbon Rate“There is no realistic way at present for developing countries to turn themselves into rich industrial and post-industrial economies without increasing their energy use per person a lot, and thus their carbon emissions per person a fair bit.”  (p 96)Militarization Rate“Off-the-shelf internet-based communications and encryption software, cheap battlefield precision-guided missiles and mortars, advanced mobile and man-portable air defences, anti-satellite systems, anti-ship missiles and highly accurate long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads are all revolutionizing the capabilities” of the world’s military and para-military, and non-state terrorist organizations. (p 117)My copy of the book is heavily marked up, and if the coming decades are of interest to you, I suspect that you’ll find the book quite useful.

• Megachange:  The World in 2050.  Edited by Daniel Franklin and John Andrews.  Wiley, 2012.

In addition, here are some other quite fine titles of the same genre that you may also find interesting.

• 2052:  A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years by Jorgen Randers.  Chelsea Green, 2012.
• The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change by Al Gore.  Random House, 2013.
• Why the West Rules, for Now by Ian Morris, Picador, 2011.

If you know of other worthwhile books that explore these themes, please let us know.

 (Photo:  Jin Mao Tower, Shanghai)