2011 TRENDS BY DR. JAMES CANTON, Ph.D. 

(AS SEEN ON NOV 30, 2010)

Business Futures 

Complex and real-time changes will become the norm for business in the 21st century. At the same time we forecast going back to the future. Business leaders need to develop a capacity to envision future opportunities as well as challenges. The short term focus that grips many organizations misses rich opportunities for future success.

There are vast changes yet to come that will frustrate but change every aspect of business. Developing the capacity as a leader to become Future Smart, to learn to anticipate future trends and change may well become the key skill to survival.

Technology will be the major enabling force for business in the future transforming supply chains, value nets, business models, workstyles and opening up new global markets for expansion.

The full integration of technology into business will transform commerce, just as society is being altered. This is the first wave of digital global electronic economics, a new model. The convergence of artificial intelligence, data mining, the next Internet, supply chain engineering, business process change and wireless eBusiness will create both disruptions and opportunities.

The Global Intelligent Marketplace

Much of how business does business is still trapped in 19th century models. There are trillions of dollars of products that are in inventories worldwide. Models for distribution and supply chain optimization, from procurement to marketing are frozen in time, too often disconnected from the electronic web of the enterprise. Suppliers, customers, agents, producers still are paper and distance constrained. The next generation marketplace will find a convergence of applied artificial intelligence, super fast optical networks, wireless systems, smart agents and real-time communications. Hard questions must be asked now to determine core competencies, strategic positioning and corporate identity to meet this fast future.

Future supply chains will possess the super efficiencies of knowledge management, customer data mining; and be linked to Marketplace to Marketplace, M2M commerce. AI enabled decision support systems that are deeply personalized, connecting vendors, suppliers and producers will produce an elegant network of commercial efficiency for customers.

New Visions of Business

Business in the future will need to become even more efficient about providing a highly monetized customer service experience--valuable for customers as well as vendors. As products and services become commodities and pricing is not a sole driver of customer choice, business customer service enabled by IT will win the day. These are the four domains of eBusiness customer service that will shape competitiveness: Speed, Connectivity, Innovation and Quality.

Price Elasticity and Fluid Markets

Real-time anywhere wireless communications will explode competition and open markets worldwide. New marketplaces will revolve around, one minute product offers, predicative demographics, Internet product development polls and other Net-economy innovations. Prices will become highly elastic, moving targets based on the conditions of the moment. Markets will be fluid, very flexible and personalized based on loyalty commitments, dynamic and digitally cash-ready.

Ecash - the new currency of the global electronic economy.

The "wallet" of the future is a smart wireless media appliance, transaction portal, personal computer, and communication device.

New Business Visions

In the next evolution of business, where every business is an e-business, software agents and avatars will play an important role. Agents will help us navigate commerce, find information, negotiate deals and even keep us company.

Our entire idea about supply chains and business will change in the future. Entrepreneur will create on-demand virtual supply chains--super efficient, that come together for a specific project and then dissolve. Someone will build a Virtual Supply Chain Bank, to re-use these resources for others to deploy.

The Digital Lifestyle

The wireless revolution is just beginning. The next generation of consumers, the kids of today, will have less barriers to frustrate their adoption of technology. As communications and commerce merge, as technology becomes pervasive and invisible, tomorrow's consumers will forge new lifestyles.

Smart Portals, engines of the B2B universe;

The integration of knowledge management, ERP, collaborative workspace, intelligent media, and the internet.

Global Diversity

We will all have to learn to deal with a multi-cultural world of different values and lifestyles. China will become the largest market in the world.

The New Security

Our world was changed after 9/11 now personal security is on the front burner and will continue to grow in importance to customers.

Changing Demographics Changing Customers

The largest concentration of wealth on the planet is in the hands of the baby boomers. How will we deal with the Age Wars between Generation X, the Millennial and the Boomers?

New Leadership for a New Future

The new leaders of tomorrow must be ready to face a complex set of unknowns never faced before: competition for talent, managing rapid change and creating real-time agility.

Customer Futures 

Customers Are Shaping The Future

Customers are driving change and setting the trends that will shape the future. Are you listening? If your organization or government wants to be in alignment with the future, listen to customers needs, wants and concerns-not just what they want today but what they will want in the future. Listening for this future value is the key to your future product and service development.

Understand how the new demographics can be a powerful force for charting the future of your enterprise. Building Future Maps and Scenarios around how to enable customers' future needs will give your organization an edge on the competition. Those organizations that will lead their customers into the future, by listening to their desires will be successful.

Reaching The Real-Time Customer

Real-time customers in an on-demand fluid marketplace is what's coming. These Real-Time Customers cut across all demographic segments. They have one thing in common: higher expectations of service, essential knowledge, the search for the best deal and they want it now! Understanding and reaching these customers, through Customer Relationship Management, data mining, wireless teleservices and online will make for a profitable future..

Culturally Diverse Consumers

Global diversity is a key trend for organizations to better understand because of the large immature markets in emerging nations as well as the influx of diverse consumers in the US, Europe, South America and Asia. The Hispanic segment alone at 35 million in the US represents a potent new marketplace for workforce talent and consumer purchasing.

As the enterprise goes global, looking for new markets to expand and grow, an attention to the culturally diverse consumer will be necessary. How will culturally diverse consumer segments create opportunity? What are the most profitable trends affecting diverse consumers you need to understand to grow your enterprise?

Aging Baby Boomers

The largest concentration of wealth on the planet is in the hands of the aging baby boomers, 78 million strong-and getting older. How can we better understand and reach this powerful consumer segment? As health enhancement and genomic next generation medicine emerges, people will live longer and be healthier. How is can this be turned into competitive advantage? What is the impact on health care, workforce and society?

From Generation X to the Millennium Consumers

Young, smart, and high tech savvy. How is your organization changing it's culture, products and services to attract these new generations of customers and workforce talent? Organizations that learn the unique cultural needs of these very different demographic groups will thrive in the future.

Global Diversity

Women will make up over 50% of the U.S. workforce by the year 2010. Will your organization be ready to meet this challenge?

Future Trends 

Welcome to the New Future. How are you going to cope with the most challenging business changes you have ever faced? What are the top trends you must know about today? How can you better plan for the future? The Institute for Global Futures provides an analysis of the top trends, scenarios and strategies that will shape the future of your enterprise. 

Whether that future is one minute or one year from today you need to be prepared to face the future challenges and risks. 

Business leaders today need critical knowledge about emerging trends. Leaders must learn to navigate real-time change - whether that change comes from terrorism, competitors, customers, technology or global economic factors. Developing an ability to anticipate the future in the face of uncertainty, disruptions and chaos will be an essential part of leading the 21st century enterprise. Complex and fast changing trends must be integrated into business strategy.

An understanding of key future trends will drive opportunity for business leaders world wide. Key questions that must be integrated into future business strategy are: How will changing customer demographics affect business strategy? What workface shifts will attract talent? What are the top technologies and business processes that will shape competitive advantage? How will future economic trends affect markets? What new opportunities does science offer? What role will globalization and trade play in the future? What are the essential strategies to building an agile organization and navigating uncertainty? 

In the following Future Trends section you will find forecasts affecting technology, customers, science and business. Developing a systems-approach to understanding the future is what this section is about. Both standalone trends and the fusion of different trends will shape future opportunity. Understanding which future trends will have an impact on you, your organization and your marketplace will determine your future success. 

Telecom Futures 

Linking everyone to everything around the world and beyond

Future Telecom

Telecom will be forever reshaped in the future by the Internet. The cost-effectiveness and the flexible nature of the Net will drive telecom innovations. Multimedia wireless 4G and 5G systems will provide access to global markets, Internet-ready, rich multimedia. Event streaming will fully engage the user of nextgen telecom. 

The Optical Future

Optical fiber will be the next evolution of communications networks. It will provide for extreme connectivity. As optical efficiencies network the globe connecting every nation, person and enterprise the possibilities for doing business transnationally become possible. Optics to the last mile, satellites, other wireless platforms, together will enable business to offer a comprehensive array of services not available today in our yet-to-be-linked world. 

The Personal Portal

The Personal Portal, a digital intelligence that lives in cars, homes, our office, our clothes, embedded inside of us for some, will redefine the notion of computing by moving from device to device, location to location, while serving our needs. Personal Portals will be highly customized entities that enable humans for use in their career, communications, en- tertainment, education and commerce. 

Real-Time Collaboration

In the future of work, distance is dead and only the agile and smart who know how to collaborate will be the winners. Rich, interactive, multi-sensory Net worlds that help workers collaborate 24/7 is next. 

Digital Value Networks

As the business landscape becomes global, as customers more tech-savvy and as new channels emerge, such as mobile Net and digital TV, new forms of alliances and business value networks will be forged. Competitors today are collaborators tomorrow, customers can become suppliers, suppliers may become agents. Speed, value, quality and cost-effectiveness will dominate customers choices. 

Internet Futures

Video interactive multimedia will become embedded in everyday objects from paper to clothes to cars all tied to a new communications Internet everywhere architecture. We will be living in the near future in a Blended Reality - part electronic and part physical in the so called “real world”. 

The internet is rapidly transforming business, markets, and customers. Every industry from financial services to health care, to electronics to education will be changed. Supply chains in every market throughout the globe will be reshaped. The convergence of computers, networks, and wireless technologies will create both opportunities and threats. Where is it all going? What are the opportunities for mobile e-commerce, trade exchanges and smart networks? What are the challenges for the next internet? What does the future hold for your customers, industry and marketplace. 

The Next generation Internet will merge telephony and video into a vibrant, interactive, sensory experience that will shape industries such as entertainment, retail, health care and education. 

Imagine in the future where the Net becomes intuitive, sensory, interactive, aware, adaptive and develops a digital personality that can communicate with billions of people simultaneously in over 200 languages anywhere on the planet or off world? Welcome to the Megaverse, the future of the Internet where culture and business needs are met by a global electronic intelligence.

Internet-Ready Cars

The wireless Internet-ready car is coming as another critical link in the mobile eBusiness network that is being constructed. Voice-recognition systems that find that restaurant, buy that stock, or locate a destination for a trip will be rolled out this year. GPS satellite linked communication will offer location-based services for everyone that wants their car to be tied to the global Net. Car companies may discover that owning the portal for eServices in the car may rival the actual profit from manufacturing the vehicle. 

Knowledge-Value Engineering

As the net becomes pervasive driven by the unification of supply chains, shaped by telecom, banks and content players an entirely new paradigm of doing business will emerge. Knowledge-Value engineering is the process of leveraging virtual supply chains to manage, create, sell, distribute, market and finance an entire business online. 

Deep Personalization

Bringing human-like intelligence into the "smart portal" of the future, where the portal knows it's you, understands your interests, gives you the personal experience in a virtual world.

The Semantic Web

The Semantic Web will play a vital role in helping consumers find what they want and vendors to find customers. This is the next stage of making information linked more intelligently and efficiently over the Net. 

Biotech Futures 

The Mapping of the Human Genome is just the beginning. Genomics, bioinformatics, Systems-Biology and Proteomics will transform biotech into a evolutionary design science affecting everything from health care to agriculture. Human performance enhancement will be the largest market in the 21st century.

Synthetic tissue and organisms, "friendly" biobots and bio-nanites, cybernetic enhancements, cellular "repair" systems and biochip implants . . . these are just a few of the applications already being developed.

Molecular repair nanite

here, in this visualization, a bio-nanite travels down the axon of a nerve cell, to re-construct insulating layer that has been damaged due to neurological disease.

Synthetic tissue systems, cellular manifolds, hybrid biologicals utilized for organ prosthetics, tissue replace-ment, and many other applications.

The "hardware" of modern genomics, in which "probes" of DNA are bonded to the surface of a biochip. When DNA from a sample material is "querried" by the ap-propriate receptor probes on the chip's surface, a hybridyzation event occurs, which can be optically detected to signify the presence of a precise "genetic marker". The example shown here is the GeneChip developed by Affymetrix.

The "wheel of life", in the form of a proteomic schematic, is the blueprint from which new geno-pharmacopia solutions are being derived, eventually to provide solutions to virtually all known diseases, perhaps even aging itself.

Neural prosthetics, implantable biochips, cybernetic enhancement micro-devices . . . this was the stuff of science fiction even just a few years ago, but is already in production, and being provided in various forms to patients. The example shown here is from a line of products being developed and marketed by Medtronics. They are currently producing a variety of devices, including neural implants to treat the effects of epilpsy, and other neurological disorders.

Dendrimers, protein - like molecules which can be used in a remarkable variety of ways to mimic the behavior of proteins. Applications ranging from cellular targeting and delivery systems to "smart" bioprobes are well into development.

Where does current research and development go from here? Advanced sensory and neural enhancement devices, neural interconnect systems, micro and nano scale machines that patrol the human body constantly repairing and updating various organs, blood, tissue systems . . . this is just the beginning.

The ribosome, the nanofoundary of all living cells . . . here in its natural form, is being probed, and eventually will be hybrid engineered as the nanobiological machinery of creation.

The "software" of biotech - protein Recombinant proteomics, the ability to synthesize and construct proteins on demand, to configure with any cellular system, any organism, as the messengers and instruction sets for all living things, current, and yet to be created.

This is what is coming.

Health Futures 

Health enhancement and longevity will merge in the 21st century. Everyone wants to live longer with the vitality of a young person. And they will be given choices that no humans every have faced in the history of civilization. 

Already we enhance ourselves. We use braces to straighten teeth, contact lens to see better, hearing aids, and pharma drugs to enhance sex, mobility and modify our minds. What could be next given the fusion of nanotech, IT and genomics? Preventive medicine that predicts disease before it occurs. 

Personalized health care designed for our specific human and health enhancement needs will transform health care. New options that will affect lifestyle, prolong life, and restrict aging are before us.

DNA, engineered for personalized medicine, will be used to create organs on-demand for a world wide market of individuals looking for new options in life and performance extension. 

Health informatics, the IT systems used to enhance the information delivery of health care, is still in primitive stages. Sharing consumer health information over the Net will become an important aspect of controlling costs and enhancing the efficiency of health care service delivery. 

Telemedicine, using the broadband Net to connect care givers and health care consumers will open up new markets for health care. The fusion of IT, the Net, biotech and communications will transform health care. 

What are the new business models that these Health Futures will offer the health care enterprise of the 21st century?

Nanotech Futures 

The manipulation of matter at the atomic level is what nanotech is about. This revolution, at first in the materials sciences will lead to innovations in energy, health care, food production and small cost-effective devices with enormous power. 

In the background . . . nanotubes, spheres, and many other shapes constructed from carbon atoms, are providing applications ranging from nanoscale wiring for next generation computer chips, to molecular scale "medical devices', and building blocks for complex structures 

Quantum Corral

Scanning tunneling microscope (STM) picture of a stadium-shaped "quantum corral" made by positioning iron atoms on a copper surface. This structure was designed for studying what happens when surface electron waves in a confined region. Don Eigler, IBM. © American Institute of Physics

Biological Nanotubes . . . the next big breakthrough for medical applications? To the surprise of the researchers, these actin-membrane capsules spontaneously self-assembled from their constituents, and are hierarchically ordered, with different kinds of organization at different length scales. On the "mesoscopic" length scales that lie between the microscopic and macroscopic, these tubules have a ribbon-like tubule structure, with average widths of ~0.25 microns. The average lengths can be controlled, from as long as ~100 microns to short nano-capsules for possible drug delivery applications. (Gerard C.L. Wong and colleagues)

AFM . . . atomic force microscopy, has opened the door to "see" directly into the molecular world. There are many variations of the basic concept already being utilized, which allows for the surface of an object to be scanned or tracked with 3D precision well within the nanoscale of resolution. Above is pictured a cartoon diagram of a typical AFM probe head, left is pictured an actual AFM photograph of a "torroidal ring" of interwoven strands of DNA.

This is a "cube" of folded DNA, one of a number of such molecular constructs being explored by Dr. Ned Seeman and collegues at New York State University. The ability to fold and assemble "geometric building blocks" of DNA has far reaching implications into biological computing, nano-scale biological machinery, and many other applications. 

Using particle beams, a "carbon onion," a structure consisting of nested fullerene-like balls, can be converted into a diamond. Here a growing diamond can be seen inside concentric graphitic layers. The diamonds can assume sizes of up to 100 nanometers. (Image - Florian Banhart, Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart, Germany.) 

Kinks in carbon nanotubes create different conduction environments for electrons moving along the tube. The nanotube wire on one side of the kink (the bend is possible because of some pentagon or heptagon structures among an otherwise hexagonal arrangement of carbon atoms) might, for example, be a conductor while on the other side the wire might be a semiconductor. This intramolecular versatility will help the designers of nanocircuits. The atomic force microscope image, showing a kinked nanotube draped across three electrodes, was recorded by Cees Dekker and his colleagues at Delft University in The Nether Lands.

What's Next . . .Complete bio-molecular robots and nanomachines, designed to perform patrol and maintainence procedures within the human body, ecological monitoring and management, agriculture, and myriad other applications only beginning to be explored. 

Self assembling "smart materials", sometimes referred to as "molecular xenomorphs" (Cyberlife, Charles Ostman), designed to reconfigure on a moments notice, from liquid to solid, from one shape form to another, and be prepared to fullfill any range of tasks that it's encountered environment may "request". In this 3D visualization, a state phase boundary threshold, morphing from liquid to crystalline is in mid-transition, while new molecular material is being assimilated.

Device Futures 

Biochips, MEM's, Microfluidics, Optics, Lab-on-a-Chip Systems, Microrobotics, and Beyond

Microdevices

Imagine combining the capabilities of a TV, computer and phone with a car, or perhaps an engine to drive your car that is organic? The brave new world of microdevices from pacemakers today to neural biochips embedded into the brain, for giving memories back is tomorrow.

In work that can potentially lead to a real-life Dick Tracy watch, researchers have built a tiny microphone on a silicon chip and have made significant progress towards building a low-power, single-chip radio. These would both be important components of a Dick Tracy watch. Using silicon micromachining, a state-of-the-art approach for making silicon materials with microscopic features, Peter Gammel and his colleagues at Bell Labs/Lucent Technologies in New Jersey built a microphone on a silicon integrated circuit, shown above. The base has marks with an approximate size of just 100 microns (0.1millimeters).

Dramatic advances in micro-scale fluidics technology have changed the concept of what a "laboratory" is or looks like. What once filled an entire room with complex tubing, valves, glassware, etc., can now be shrunk down to fit on a chip.

Complete "Lab on a Chip" systems are now being manufactured in which an entire biochemistry laboratory can be miniaturized into a device about the size of a credit card. (Orchid Biocomputer)

Extraordinary advances in micro scale fabrication techniques, materials science, and assembly automation has opened up a virtual "Pandora's Box" of possibilities.

Extending far beyond just merely creating the next version of electronic computer or memory chips, integrated microsystems technologies have accelerated a vast array of applications, such as biotechnology, medicine, robotics, aerospace, telecommunications, automotive, and many others. These technologies are rapidly being transformed in ways that could hardly be imagined except in the anals of science fiction . . . only now they have become science, and business fact.

Complex micro-mechanical systems, complete with gears, motors, and all of the components of an entire machine, are now being shrunk down to devices small enough to fit into the head of a pin, and beyond. Here, a marauding spider mite is getting a gander on one of the latest micro-device systems being developed at Sandia National Laboratory. (Image courtesy of SNL)Micro-mirror arrays, originally developed at Texas Instruments, are currently being applied to next generation display systems, optical switching components, and a plethora of developments just beginning to emerge into the military and commercial markets. (Texas Instruments)

Electron-microscope image of the world's smallest guitar, based roughly on the design for the Fender Stratocaster, a popular electric guitar. Its length is 0 millionths of a meter-- approximately the size of a red blood cell and about 1/20th the width of a single hu- man hair. Its strings have a width of about 50 billionths of a meter (the size of approx- imately 100 atoms). Plucking the tiny strings would produce a high-pitched sound at the inaudible frequency of ap- proximately 10 megahertz. (Dustin W. Carr and Harold G. Craighead, Cornell.)

Already in commercial production, electronically programmable biochips offer applications ranging from medical diagnostics devices to biological computing. In the background is a silicon wafer fresh off the assembly line, with dozens of complete biochips ready to be cut and packaged for waiting customers.

Robot Futures

Is a robot in your future? Robots are already omni-present in industry, and are now appearing in law enforcement, medical facilities, the military . . . at the nexus coordinate of artificial intelligence, complex micro-mechanical systems, and eventually, nanotechnology, the next generation of autonomous robots is emerging.

Robots may become more biological than mechanical . . ultimately, robots will be everywhere, ranging from nanobots and "smart microbes", to hybrid cyborg and artificial beings of all descriptions and types, integrated into a symbiotic ecology with their human and "natural" counterparts.

It's a bird . . . it's a plane . . . no, it's a flying autonomous surveilence robot, perhaps soon to be hovering about over a street or around a building near you.

Have robot . . . will travel. This is a current example of human-like robotic machinery being controlled and "trained" by its human counterpart.

A robot in every garage, the office, the local store . . . according to some developers, this scenario is not that far off at all. Here, this mobile autonomous robot platform "follows" the human around the room, and remembers what it has learned about its surroundings.

Workers from the local carpenter's union don't have to worry . . . yet. Rapid advancements in complex limb systems, visual cognition, and artificial intelligence are closing the gap between the R2-D2 robot of Star Wars fiction, and the reality of what is being developed.

Don't run for the industrial strength fly swatter just yet . . . but a myriad of "robo-bugs" in various forms are currently in development in labs all over the world. Such insect-like mechanical critters can be extremely effective in industrial or hazardous situations, performing mission critical tasks where humans could not possibly function, and eventually, perhaps exploring the surfaces of other planets.

This mirco-robot uses a shape changing alloy as a type of "artificial muscle" fiber to operate its tiny limbs. One plan in development is to create hordes of these insect sized robots which could be released by a mother craft on a planetary surface, such as Mars, for detailed exploration and sample collection.

Robo-pet . . . in a world where crowded conditions in the city, and the hectic pace of life have made the caring for "organic" pets evermore difficult, companionship is now available with our "artificial friends". This particular commercial example is the robot dog from SONY corp.

Where things are headed . . . smaller, smarter, more integrated. Micro-mechanical systems, smart "shape changing" materials, complex integrated structures, sensors . . . and eventually, nanotechnology, incorporating all of these elements into autonomous entities approaching actual biological systems in function and complexity.

Nano-bugs, nano-bots, "invisible robots" . . . nanotechnology will soon bring robotic devices down into the realm of the invisible, microbe sized smart devices that will roam about within the human body, and out in nature.

Robots have already been roving about on the surface of Mars, and are continuing to be developed to probe the outer frontiers of the Solar system, and the deepest chasms of the ocean floor here on Earth.

The far future . . .

Define "robot" . . . the day may come when robots are no longer mechanical contraptions, but rather sentient biological / cyborg beings, designed and created as integral counterparts to our life and society.

Extreme Futures 2010 

Terrorists steal quantum devices and high-jack time travel. No one of course believed this could happen–it defied science as we knew it. That was the problem. Hacking into the Grid Computing portal, cyberjacjkers from a bored breakaway former Russian republic, stumbled upon a quantum uplink that had a AI brain that was looking for payback. 

Multiple parallel universes discovered that might contain life. Not life that we understand. Parallel universes too small or measure explain where all the exotic matter in the universe is from--maybe. Super strings and M-universe theorists have been looking at this possibility for decades. 

Health care becomes dominated by global corporations who specialize in genomic mass medicine. This opens a new era of personalized medicine to a network of community clinics. 

China becomes the largest marketplace in the world rivaling India. The day the Internet came to China began the Gold Rush of opportunity and freedom. The Net opened up a new generation of markets that could touch billions of consumers–in real time. 

Consumers sell and buy their DNA over peer-to-peer Internet exchanges. The open market for advanced intelligence, athletic ability, technical or music skills at the genomic level, opens up a new global market for human enhancement. Human Enhancement clinics offer augmented intelligence, memory, and high performance treatments. 

New personalized DNA targeted based nutriceuticals, boost intelligence, speed, communication and memory with titles like: SuperMind, FastMem, Rush, LearnNow. 

Therapeutic cloning thrives and becomes invisibly integrated into the population. Driven by free market forces and the thirst for longevity, consumers a robust market opens up for this industry. 

Rouge enterprises steal and sell intellectual property to the highest bidder over electronic real-time markets. The IP is based on corporate customer data, human enhancement, quantum and bio war, hydrogen fuels and life science patents. 

Internet based artificial intelligence, aware of its own existence, spontaneously emerges. This DEP, digitally engineered personality spawns its next evolution and human's co-evolve with the newcomers. 

Nanotech creates a new species of human beings that conflict with other natural humans. The merger of human and nano-enhanced humans is viewed by many as a parallel evolutionary step. Others view this as an abomination. 

Business is totally dominated, as are governments by the speed, intelligence, communications and linkage of technology enabled services that support the culture. 

Ten Top Climate Trends for the 21st Century

The climate is changing due to natural causes and mankind's industrialization ethos. Global warming is a reality that will threaten health, life and security that must be dealt with now. 

1. The Sustainable Innovation will become one of the largest global markets of the 21st century as the public's awareness about the risks to the environment heighten 

2. CleanTech, is becoming one of the largest global industries as the public's desire to create a more environmentally sustainable world grows in popularity. 

3. Climate change will become a strategically important global trend to consumers, business and nations as threats to health, life, property and security grow more profound in the 21st century. 

4. Global warming from carbon energy sources such as coal, gas and oil dominance as well as natural causes, will lead to increased threats of extreme weather changes such as glacial melting, shoreline flooding, widespread drought and drastic climate shifts. 

5. Food production supplies will not keep pace with growing population demand especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America without new solutions to production and distribution. 

6. A new collaboration with the totality of nations, citizens and corporations must be forged, to both protect global sustainability and prevent future ecologic destruction 

7. Global climate change will become linked to future public health and safety risks. 

8. Security and defense implications of climate change will emerge as one of the leading social and political issues of the 21st century. 

9. The Green Corporation will become the gold standard adopted by business as the environmental management becomes a social responsibility issue that affects consumer purchasing 

10. Ecological disasters, on a scale not seen before, are likely as climate change becomes a global public policy issue. 

The Top Ten Energy Trends for the 21st Century 

Energy is a metaphor for the future economic mobility of the world. Deep changes are coming. Energy is mission-essential to the growth, social stability and security of all nations. Oil overdependence and petro-fuel decline offer the world an incentive towards the discovery of renewable energy.

1. Global demand for energy in the near future will outpace supply within twenty-five years unless new sources are found to support global growth. 

2. Energy terrorism and theft will become a future weapon of choice, threatening global peace and security. 

3. Energy, being linked to all vital services such as health, food, transportation and commerce will be a key driver of future global business. 

4. Clean, renewable energy sources such as solar, hydrogen and wind will be essential for future productivity. 

5. Oil-dominated energy is politically and economically unsustainable as a reliable source of fuel for the future. Although oil reserves are in supply decline and increasingly costly, oil will continue to play an important role in the 21st century. 

6. GDP, growth and productivity will decline if new and cost-effective non-oil energy sources are not found fast to protect future growth and prosperity, and to help rebalance the future of the world. 

7. New sources of renewable abundant and cost-effective energy must be fast developed within 20-30 years to manage the population's expectations of enhanced quality of life worldwide. 

8. Carbon based pollution, from fossil fuels, will be linked to a growing number of future public health risks. 

9. Energy security will be one of the chief concerns in the 21st century leading to global competition, conflict and the collaboration of nations and corporations. 

10. Exciting new energy frontiers are emerging such as nanotechnology which will offer promising alternatives to traditional sources of energy in the future. 

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Publisher and/or Author and/or Managing Editor:__Andres Agostini ─ @Futuretronium at Twitter! Futuretronium Book at http://3.ly/rECc