2030: How Today's Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything by Mauro F. Guillén

 105 of 2021. 

“Breakthroughs occur not when someone works within the established paradigm but when assumptions are abandoned, rules are ignored, and creativity runs amok”

Once upon a time, the world was neatly divided into prosperous and backward economies. Babies were plentiful, workers outnumbered retirees, and people aspiring towards the middle class yearned to own homes and cars. Companies didn't need to see any further than Europe and the United States to do well. Printed money was legal tender for all debts, public and private. We grew up learning how to "play the game," and we expected the rules to remain the same as we took our first job, started a family, saw our children grow up, and went into retirement with our finances secure.

That world—and those rules—are over.

By 2030, a new reality will take hold, and before you know it:

- There will be more grandparents than grandchildren

- The middle-class in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa will outnumber the US and Europe combined

- The global economy will be driven by the non-Western consumer for the first time in modern history

- There will be more global wealth owned by women than men

- There will be more robots than workers

- There will be more computers than human brains

- There will be more currencies than countries

All these trends, currently underway, will converge in the year 2030 and change everything you know about culture, the economy, and the world.

According to Mauro F. Guillen, the only way to truly understand the global transformations underway—and their impacts—is to think laterally. That is, using “peripheral vision,” or approaching problems creatively and from unorthodox points of view. Rather than focusing on a single trend—climate-change or the rise of illiberal regimes, for example—Guillen encourages us to consider the dynamic inter-play between a range of forces that will converge on a single tipping point—2030—that will be, for better or worse, the point of no return.

2030 is both a remarkable guide to the coming changes and an exercise in the power of “lateral thinking,” thereby revolutionizing the way you think about cataclysmic change and its consequences. 

2030 is not far away and already some trends are clear.

1. Birth rate is dropping everywhere except in India and Africa. By 2030 there will be more middle class people in China and India. The developed world will remain relatively stagnant.

2. Gray is the new black: more seniors will work to supplement their pension and they are the ones with money, just waiting for smart people to sell them the right stuff.

3. Women are going to be even richer and they will be the new entrepreneurs. They will want more stuff and services.

4. Global warming will affect cities

5. Developing countries may jump some technologies as compared to developed ones. Most people in Subsharan Africa have a cellphone but many have no running water or toilet.

6. Network effects will ensure the power of platform continues

7. Sharing economy will change consumer behaviour: the old will rent out their place to the young; gig jobs will be taken mostly to supplement the income of people who already have jobs. Increased inequality will ensue.

8. Blockchain currencies will not really succeed because governments will control it. The technology will survive though, as a ledger, automatic contract etc.

9. How to succeed: be nimble, leave many exits, change often. No one can predict the future but we all adapt to it.

“The most important thing to be successful is to stop saying ‘I wish’ and start saying ‘I will”