This book offers an overall road map to navigate the turbulence ahead. The year 2030 isn’t some remote point in the unpredictable future. It’s right around the corner, and we need to prepare ourselves for both the opportunities and the challenges.
Consider that by 2030, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa will be vying for the title of the world’s most populous region. Asian markets will be so large that the center of gravity of global consumption will shift eastward. Fewer babies in most parts of the world mean that we are steadily marching toward a rapidly aging population. It means that the younger generations are driving the ascendancy of the middle class in most emerging markets. Much of that demographic shift is driven by women. They are remaining in school and pursuing careers rather than before. There will be more female millionaires than male millionaires. Wealth is also becoming more urban. While cities occupy just 1 percent of the world’s land area, they are home to 55 percent of the population and account for 80 percent of energy consumption and carbon emissions. And cities create a critical mass of inventors and entrepreneurs intent on disrupting the status quo with innovation and technology. Millennials prefer the sharing economy more. This, in turn, will lead to alternative conceptions of money that are more distributed, more decentralized, and easier to use. But these changes are not a linear representation. That’s not how the world really works. Compartmentalizing blinds you to new possibilities. The writer says we avoid linear thinking, sometimes called “vertical” thinking. He suggests we approach change laterally. It essentially involves reframing questions and attacking problems sideways. Breakthroughs occur not when someone works within the established paradigm.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes,” Marcel Proust once wrote, “but in having new eyes.”
2030 by Mauro. F Guillen: 1~9
