The New Roaring 20s, Part 1: What emerged from the pandemic?
We’ve read 50+ reports from top agencies, consultancies, and research firms worldwide — so you don’t have to. This is our gift to you for Earth Day 🌏
Humanity’s progress accelerates every decade. It is not linear — but also not simply exponential. There are sometimes great leaps. Despite being overall positive, our past progress has often been accelerated by brutal global events including wars, recessions, and pandemics. The COVID-19 standstill that has already affected the entire world for over a year is no different.
Kane Tanaka, the world’s oldest living person, was alive when the Wright Brothers had their first successful flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903, and when the first helicopter flew on Mars just this week.
As we emerge from the pandemic, or the “Great Reset” as many refer to it, we will now settle into a “New Normal.” New trends are emerging, presenting new opportunities and accelerated evolution, effectively reshaping the world as we know it — across all aspects of our lives and businesses.
As disruption enables new ideas to take hold — 86% of adults globally want the world to change significantly post-COVID — 2021 is about laying the groundwork for a more purposed recovery.
At Future Works we design the future. We craft products to last, and help solve real-world problems with the long term in mind. This requires research — and what better time than now, as we stand at the brink of what could be a new world?
So how big is this leap? And what does the future hold?
In the coming weeks, starting today, we will share our evolving analysis and findings in order to help answer this question.
We invite you, our fellow future explorer, to review what we’ve found, and embark with us on a journey toward conclusions that may well have a tremendous impact on our future choices.
This article is destined to be updated, and we’d love your input and thoughts as we continue the work to arrive at increasingly refined conclusions. Today we share the first part of this short series. We are sharing this on Earth Day, which was not our original plan — but the more we dug in over the past several weeks, the more we found this to be the most suitable moment.
What has emerged from our research so far is incredible, exciting, and will define our common future. So let’s dive in!
Trends indicated
Over the course of past weeks, we’ve read reports from McKinsey, Blackrock, Gartner, World Economic Forum, Forbes, Wunderman+Thompson, JPMorgan, Barclays, AngeList, Deloitte, MIT Technology Review, ADA, WPP and many more. You will find a full list of our sources at the end of this article.
All in all, we gathered over 300 predicted bigger trends, then weeded out short-term trends (fads), and trends with smaller impact — as well as those with a low likelihood of going mainstream. We then organized the remaining 193 trends into categories rated for impact and timing, validated, and currently undergoing analysis.
Throughout history, predictions of the future reflected the ideals or desires of that time. In the 1500s, Nostradamus’ predictions were all about war, power, and men. In the 1800s, during the Industrial Revolution, projections involved visions of huge flying steampunk machines. In the 1960s, cartoons like the Jetsons imagined the American Dream in space. The cultural anxiety of the 80s produced dystopian sci-fi films like Blade Runner, Terminator, and Mad Max.
Today’s needs and desires become apparent once you observe trends and watch where the money is flowing. There are some major reasons to be excited.
We split our trends into 3 categories:
- Predictions for the 2020s (mainly from 2020)
- Predictions for the world after the pandemic (mainly from 2021)
- Predictions for 2030
We believe this approach will allow us to notice broader pre-existing trends, and try to identify how they have been impacted by the “Great Reset” — and how they will continue to evolve through 2030.
The pandemic accelerated some trends, such as sustainable investing and mental wellbeing, and slowed down some others such as fast fashion and, oddly enough, social media.
With some exceptions, we mostly ignored purely financial and macroeconomic trends like bonds, debt, inflation etc., and rather focused on entrepreneurial endeavours with a high probability of being funded. At Future Works we work primarily with entrepreneurs and investors. However, our source materials (linked at the bottom) also include the macroeconomic aspects, for those interested in exploring further.
Once we completed our list, we cross-referenced information between reports and noted impact and timing scores for all predictions, as well as their relationships.
This has led to this beautifully organized chaos soup of future trends:
Quite overwhelming unless inspected!
In the near future, we’ll share an interactive version of the charts in this article to make that process easier. Today, as a first step in helping make sense of this data, we grouped highly related trends, allowing us to indicate seventeen categories (or megatrends), explored below.
Trend categories
- Infrastructure
- Sustainability
- Business
- Culture
- Retail
- Governance
- Medicine
- Climate
- Transportation
- Wellbeing
- AI and Robotics
- Farming and Food
- Mixed Reality
- Decentralization
- Gaming
- Work-Life
- Other
To the best of our knowledge, we were able to rate trends for impact as well as estimated boom period (timing). The chart below shows the progression of the megatrends over time.
Note that the bubble position represents the average time of impact “boom” of a category, rather than isolated “explosion” and as it is not median time, it is indicative only at this resolution.
All of the indicated trends are currently present (and quite well underway!), though they’re expected to reach their full potential at different times — and that’s what the chart above presents.
Trends are just a part of our search though. To get a better idea, let’s look beyond reports…
Following the money trail
This year is bringing some incredible amounts of (near!) future funding. Both public and private sectors are realizing that addressing upcoming challenges is not just needed as an existential need, but is also highly preferred by their citizens, stakeholders, and customers.
The US recently distributed a $2 trillion stimulus package approved by the Trump administration (CARES Act), which provided stimulus checks for businesses and individuals, and arguably had a huge effect on domestic markets and the stock market bull run — which highly favoured companies like Tesla and Zoom over others.
When working on the 1 Trillion Trees project with guys from Virgin Galactic (the project sadly didn’t see a release), we realized it’s good to illustrate what a trillion looks like. To briefly reinforce that idea here, we’ll use the full decimal values below.
Right now the US government is working on 2 stimulus packages:
- $1,900,000,000,000 ($1.9T) American Rescue Plan (AKA relief package)
- $2,300,000,000,000 ($2.3T) Infrastructure Plan
What’s more, just last week JPMorgan announced a $2,500,000,000,000 ($2.5T) climate plan for sustainable development, which follows a similar direction from other large banks like Citi and Goldman Sachs.
The same banks have injected $3.8 Trillion into the fossil fuel industry only since 2016 (with JPMorgan leading the pack…), but the recent announcement could spur the long-awaited change of direction.
Just by looking at these figures, we can expect around $10,000,000,000,000 ($10T) dollars being injected into the US economy over the next several years.
To put this into perspective, this is more than 10x the valuation of Facebook and 5x the valuation of Apple (the most valuable public company in the world). It’s also 75x the entire film industry ($136 billion in 2018), slated to be deployed this decade, with most coming over the next 4 years.
And that’s just public and large institution funding, and just in the US.
This is joined by China, some of the Gulf States, and India which are investing in green energy on a scale that would have been considered improbable even a decade ago — reports McKinsey.
Now, it estimated that we need $90 trillion to fully overturn the climate crisis globally, which currently does not seem impossible due to changing financial markets, with existing bonds and pension funds showing lowering returns and the need for redirection.
Also, the $10 trillion is also not just green energy, so let’s take a closer look at where this money will be going.
$1.9T American Rescue Plan
The plan contains a range of measures such as a further direct round of payments to most Americans, amounting to more than $400 billion.
We can expect the effects of this plan to be quite similar to the previous (CARES Act) from 2020, which is not only allowing many Americans to make ends meet but also stimulates the economy further to follow the path set by existing trends.
A large chunk of the American Rescue Plan funds will land in the hands of Americans, who per Blackrock’s analysis has already slashed 12% of their regular spending. Rather than spend, people are saving and investing to protect against the risk of things going south again. The new public funds will likely not just be spent, but will also end up on Robinhood, Coinbase, Revolut etc.
Markets are expected to be highly stimulated at least for the rest of this year — and a lot of it will affect trendy stocks: electric, sustainable, future of work, etc. Investing in these stocks and cryptocurrency is not just a way to make some money — it’s also a way to vote for the future. Americans did it under Trump, and they will do it even more in 2021 and beyond.
$2.3T Infrastructure Plan
During his campaign, Joe Biden declared he would make a $2 trillion accelerated investment with a plan to deploy those resources over his first term, setting us on an irreversible course to meet the ambitious climate progress that science demands.
The work has started and the bill is underway. Since this post is being shared on Earth Day and it was written before — we can only assume that Biden’s administration will announce progress on this today. We’ll make sure to include any updates in our follow-up.
With that said, it’s early — but most of what’s proposed, is expected to go into action (following some partisan shitshow, as it happens lately!). The Act will probably be passed by the end of 2021.
This proposal would increase corporate taxes to pay for fixing roads and bridges, boosting research, and tackling climate change. The money is expected to be spent over the course of eight years, with most deployed within the first four years.
The plan includes $135 billion for infrastructure, $100 billion to expand high-speed broadband across the entire country, $100 billion to upgrade and build new schools, $174 billion in spending on boosting electric transportation, $85 billion improving and expanding mass transportation (the main mode of transportation for many people of colour), and $100 billion to expand and improve power lines and spur a shift towards clean energy. Embedded within the plan are efforts to build out a US clean energy infrastructure that, by itself, would rank as one of the most ambitious initiatives ever enacted by the federal government to lower the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, along with efforts to address racial inequalities and advance the US economy to compete with China.
The initial package includes two environmental ideas Biden regularly discussed when running for president: creating a New Deal-inspired Climate Conservation Corps to work on conservation projects and environmental justice efforts, as well as catalyzing an irreversible shift from gasoline-powered to electric vehicles.
“Biden wants to spend billions on rebates and tax incentives to encourage Americans to purchase electric vehicles, and he proposes paying for the transition of thousands of transit and school buses from diesel to electric. At the same time, he wants incentives for state and local governments to build electric vehicle charging stations to power those new cars and buses.”
- Washington Post reports
$2.5T JPMorgan Initiative and more
The biggest US bank just announced a sweeping initiative to help with trillions in investment to promote climate responsibility, sustainable developments, and racial and socioeconomic equity.
JPMorgan mapped out a 10-year target to facilitate and finance more than $2.5 trillion to address climate change and contribute to sustainable development.
The bank’s plan includes $1 trillion for green initiatives such as finding clean-energy solutions and transitioning to a low-carbon economy.
Big banks have drawn criticism for pumping trillions of dollars of financing into the fossil fuels sector since 2016, according to reports from environmental activist groups. JPMorgan, which the study found to have extended $317 billion in financing to the fossil fuel sector since 2016, topped the list.
Citigroup launched a sustainability-focused investment banking group led by the bank’s global energy and power heads just last month. And Goldman Sachs is honing in on the auto industry.
We reached out to our contacts at JPMorgan for more detail on this, and if more information is available we’ll add it to our update.
Overall investment trends
It’s hard to predict the snowball effect of those larger investments on smaller-scale investors, but it does help us indicate where we can see gigantic tectonic shifts.
Our impact indication has been adjusted to match. The differences can be very high — some trends such as self-driving are expected to reach billions, but that’s orders of magnitude lower than trends like far-reaching energy transformation, which are expected to see trillions of dollars in investment over the course of just the next decade.
And on this note, let’s get back to trends!
Trends rated
Alright our dear future explorer, take a deep breath — time to dive deeper! 193 trends are quite a few to make a good sense of all at once, so let’s take a look category by category.
We ordered these by the number of subtrends indicated to have a high impact and probability of lasting. The order does not indicate which megatrend is our favourite or will have the most impact. For now, we’ll need to leave this unanswered.
Infrastructure 🏗
Starting with the big one. For many, this may be the category-defining the 20s. We are in the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, accelerated and impacted by COVID-19. The pandemic and moments like the recent Suez Canal blockage have brought problems into clearer focus, driving public and private spending on supply chain robustness. This is nothing too unexpected: in February 2020, MIT Technology Review wrote that “global supply chains will crumble and poor countries will suffer.” Nations and industries alike are looking to diversify their supply chains, and loosen their dependence on single points of risk like the Chinese government.
Meanwhile, a far-reaching energy transformation is well underway. Big polluters like the US and China are making bold promises about energy sustainability and independence. We are seeing a diversity of new technologies aimed at both reducing and removing the world’s emissions, unleashing a wave of innovation to compare with the industrial and digital revolutions of the past.
Over the next five years, the energy transition will reach a tipping point. The cost of new-build renewable energy will be lower than the marginal cost of fossil fuels, according to the World Economic Forum website. Renewable energy is rapidly becoming a preferred “mainstream” energy source, according to Deloitte. A BCEI whitepaper released just this week by Square points to the crossroads between progressing decentralization of finance and accelerated scaling of renewable energy.
Furthermore, 5G and ubiquitous connection technologies will be globally embraced, enhancing the global economy, boosting education and quality of life, creating more unity between cultures, and in many cases, saving lives.
Prevailing trends
- Accelerated Fourth Industrial Revolution
- Further digitalization
- Supply chains change
- Deglobalization / Globalization rewired
- Focus on resilience over efficiency
- Localization of businesses and life
- Turbocharged transformations
- New economics models (circular, doughnut, etc.)
- Far-reaching energy transformation / self-driving vehicles
- 5G wide adoption
- IoT wide adoption
- Massive investments in Cybersecurity
- New frontiers of FinTech
- Industrial robotics
- Smart cities
- Redesigning cities (greener)
- Shared mobility
- High-speed rail
- Outdoor redesigned
The human living will continue to become more local, more sustainable, and more decentralized. Future-thinking cities like Amsterdam have led the way in rethinking how to deploy public money to shape and enhance modern urban life. For conscientious cities who are paying attention and following Amsterdam’s lead, basic living standards and life-satisfaction measures will lift, resulting in an uptick in productivity.
Sustainability 🌿
We split Sustainability and Climate in our analysis, treating addressing climate as something much more top-down and large-scale, and sustainability more of a bottom-up process that must be led by everyone’s everyday choices. As reported by Blackrock, the pandemic has added fuel to pre-existing structural trends and now “the tectonic shift towards sustainable investing is accelerating.” Much like in Climate, this is pushing ahead a large wave of entrepreneurship and innovation, however, focused more on the consumer (b2c) space.
“Respondents plan to double their sustainable assets under management in the next five years — rising from 18% of assets under management on average today to 37% on average by 2025.” — Blackrock
As you will see in the list below, the overall caption here could be “sustainable everything” — increasingly outspoken consumers and employees are seeking responsible businesses and sustainable products and offerings, and the demand is only accelerating.
Prevailing trends:
- A tectonic shift towards sustainable investing is accelerating
- Globally increased focus on sustainability
- A wave of innovation
- Sustainable mobility
- Sustainable agriculture
- Sustainable food systems
- Sustainable packaging
- Environmental protection
- Plant-based revolution
- Ocean economy change
- Re/Up/Transcycling
- Sustainable tourism
- Data sustainability
- Decarbonized aviation
- Big brands go circular
- Climate-friendly diets
The race away from the point of no return is leading an increasing number of people to switch to choose “Climatarianism” — a new trend of climate-friendly, sustainable diets. Europeans and Gen Z choosing not to travel by air are pushing aviation and tourism industries to work toward carbon neutrality. Recycling remains marginally effective, plastic is still very much in play, and the conversation is rightly being shifted from plastic straws too much larger offenders. Reshaping supply chains offers ways to rethink recycling, upcycling, and transcycling. Pictures of plastic PPE polluting beaches are circulating the internet. “Seaspiracy,” a recent Netflix documentary, has caused a wide debate and will quite likely help the existing trend towards plant-based and climate-friendly diets.
As we emerge from the grip of COVID-19, we have a much stronger indication that the 20s will be a decisive time for humanity to tackle climate and rethink industries. With platforms like WeDontHaveTime increasingly serving as a crowd-sourced way to scrutinize green-washing, it does seem that we will see a large (and authentic!) shift to sustainability.
Business 💰
Business is changing globally on a large scale, and fast. We expect to see a big difference within just a couple of years — led by all other trends in this article.
Resilience is short-term talk. Companies that survived 2020 are more resilient and will now pull away from the pack. We are seeing a huge increase in entrepreneurship. Last year there were 4.3 million new company applications in the US alone. Both the US and Europe saw about a 30% increase in 2020. But not everyone is starting their own venture. Many are instead increasingly applying pressure on their employers. Wunderman+Thompson researchers foresee an increase in employee activists.
Stakeholder capitalism will become ever stronger. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the interconnectedness of business and society. “It will be a true inflexion point,” says Rajnish Kumar, chairman of the State Bank of India.
“Investing in social good is finally becoming profitable,” the New York Times proclaimed in an August 2020 article, citing research from RBC Capital Markets that showed impact investments — which aim to promote environmental or social good — have outperformed traditional investments during the pandemic.
Forbes reports that Triple Bottom Line and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are increasingly embraced by businesses all over our planet. The triple bottom line is a sustainability framework that examines a company’s social, environmental, and economic impact. 3Ps stand for: people, planet, profit. In this order.
Prevailing trends:
- Stakeholder capitalism will become stronger.
- Companies will infuse profit with a sense of purpose (3Ps, SDGs)
- Entrepreneurship increases highly
- Investments will continue to be strong and bullish
- Re-envisioning the nature of ownership
- Focus on responsibility, sustainability and transparency in business
- Business owners move to help solve the inequality problem
- Good “Employership”
- Flexibility is a new talent strategy
- Companies that survived will pull away from the pack
- 75% of conversations at work will be recorded and analyzed
- Tech as a force for good
- Ethical scoreboard
- Brand safety
- Employee activists
In a world where skilled people are scarce and increasingly demanding, every business needs to embrace good employership as a key trend in its strategy. It means being a good employer — being good to one’s employees by offering working conditions in which they flourish and feel good.
— Forbes
Next-generation startups are striving to reimagine entrepreneurial tech as a force for good. The unfettered growth of Big Tech is no longer so readily tolerated by governments or people.
According to an IBM survey published in 2020, 40% of consumers are purpose-driven in their purchases, while Forbes mused whether 2020 “was the year that ‘purpose’ went mainstream.” While brands may not have had a moral or ethical responsibility in the past, they absolutely do now.
“Communities, people and purpose will take precedence in the boardroom, as organizations across the world redefine what wellbeing means at home and in the workplace.”
Mark Read, CEO, WPP
Culture 🪆
As Yuval Noah Harari aptly points out in his book Sapiens, if you observe humanity’s course over a long enough time frame, we are headed towards inevitable unity.
Today cryptocurrency is an exit from banking. DeFi is an exit from Wall Street. NFTs are an exit from auction houses. Homeschooling is an exit from industrial education. Remote work is an exit from 9–5. Creator economy is an exit from employment. More and more of us are choosing to do our own research and take ownership.
It does seem that our Culture, the most human trend category which mixes with any other in this article, is headed towards personal choice and individualism. Perhaps a world where 10 billion people can embrace their uniqueness is unity in itself?
Prevailing trends:
- Increasing inequality (and attempts to close the wealth gap)
- Post-Woke
- Norm recalibration
- Embracing Nature
- Higher accessibility
- Privacy is pervasive and prioritized
- Personal data monetization
- Fading Importance of Social Media
- Ageing population
- Individuals are leaving institutions
- Talent transfer and re-skilling
- Future of live events
We’ve seen so many shifts in just the past year, cities on fire, protests, cancel culture, embracing individualism and “realness.” It truly feels like the year of lockdown has highlighted many issues in existing paradigms and these are now being reconfigured.
Our norms are being recalibrated, privacy remains in high focus. Accelerated industry 4.0 is creating a talent and wealth transfer not seen for many decades. We are beginning to look at spirituality with a new sense of clarity and awareness, without the cheese of “woke” culture, yet with increasing adoption.
Being quite close to the event industry, we do not expect a tectonic shift there despite COVID. However much like many other categories on our list, digitalization has accelerated for the event industry too.
Retail 🛍
Physical retail was dealt a hard blow by COVID-19, and it is safe to say that things are not going back to normal. The shift to e-commerce has accelerated, and in-person retail must adapt to new realities.
Many brands that previously depended on in-person retail distribution are being forced to double down on direct-to-consumer e-commerce, and increased reliance on e-commerce heavyweights like Amazon. In-person outlets are closing everywhere. Brands are building out e-commerce experiences and experimenting with online marketing, driving growth in dropshipping and retail supply chain tech.
While during the pandemic digital retail exploded out of necessity, many have also recognized the power of real-life retail experiences. Whether through more individualized experiences, digital elements, or inspiring, unique design, retailers will strive to make physical retail experiences truly stand out. We’ll see an increase in experiential, escapist and robotic retail among others. People still want physical stores, but with digital bells and whistles. Digital retail, with massive gains, continues to evolve with Live commerce and retailtainment moving online with engaging, tailored shopping experiences provided by influencers to digital-first consumers.
Prevailing trends:
- Shopping moves more online
- The dominance of e-commerce at the expense of traditional retail
- Conscious consumer / Mindful shopping
- Fall of hyper-consumerism
- Robotic retail
- Experiential retail
- Escapist retail
- Disrupting the dealership
- Dark stores
- Live commerce
- Anti-Amazon retail
- Clicks and mortar
From Gucci to Uniqlo, fashion brands are getting into the second-hand business — reports Wunderman+Thompson — embracing the circular elements of the circular economy. We can observe a fall in hyperconsumerism, and as people save up more, they also become much more mindful about their shopping choices.
Governance ⚙️
Universal Basic Income (UBI) experiments are popping up globally, as citizenries begin to understand the benefits and expect more bang for their tax buck. A narrow majority (54%) of Americans oppose a $1,000 monthly UBI for all adult citizens, but enthusiasm for UBI is strong among younger demographics. In the wake of 2020’s economic woes and the spike in unemployment, a new perspective on universal income may point the way to recovery.
Meanwhile, recent experiments in “fair-weather” populist authoritarianism are being tested, and their weaknesses exposed, particularly by their handling of the pandemic, with Brazil and the US being the most flagrant examples. Voters are taking note, and liberal democracy is regaining its hard-earned allure. Bastions of conservative thought are being challenged from within, and politicians are taking a back seat to activist billionaires on matters of public policy.
Governments continue to print money to prevent depression caused by the pandemic and are expected to increase or modify taxes to make up for it in the near future.
The pandemic has unevenly affected the Women+ workforce, causing something coined as the “shecession.” We are seeing work to reverse this and prevent it from occurring in the future.
Prevailing trends:
- Governments will be raising taxes or cutting spending — or both.
- Crisis of Populist Dictatorships
- The Rise of “Moderate” Populists
- Progression towards systemic justice and equity
- Young People Become Less Political
- Rising Wages for the Low-Skilled
- Conservatives Become More Diverse
- Global Financial Inequality Falls
- Liberal Democracy Regains Its Allure
- Big tech taking roles of governments
- Politicians losing importance
- Preventing shecession
- Universal income experiments
Just two days ago we saw a landmark ruling against former police officer Derek Chauvin in the George Floyd case that set the US on fire a year ago. Issues brought into focus during the lockdown have finally become a subject of everyday public debate, leading to greater social justice.
Medicine 🧬
As the world becomes more decentralized, so too do personal concerns such as health and diet. People are depending ever more on their own behaviours and choices to drive healthy living, aided by the broad availability of personal health tracking technologies, with institutions playing a supporting role. Concepts like work-life balance, healthy sleep, and clean eating have blasted into the mainstream.
The biopharma revolution continues, alongside the AI drug discovery revolution. Chemists are increasingly looking to generative AI to assist with areas like drug discovery and finding more efficient and manufacturable paths to synthesizing essential compounds.
Selected trends:
- Healthcare paradigm shift to prevention through diet
- Biopharma revolution
- Higher focus on healthcare
- Individuals — not institutions — at the heart of healthcare
- Predictive healthcare analytics
- AI drug discovery
- Longevity tech
- Robotic surgeries
- Personalized medicine
- Antimicrobial resistance
- Pandemic prevention
COVID-19 has palpably brought focus to the existential threat of pandemics, driving governments to build robustness against such threats. While horrific and tragic for many, COVID-19 has been a test-run for more devastating maladies.
Climate 🌍
This is an interesting one. Perhaps the biggest threat we are facing as a civilization this decade — if things go wrong, they will go really wrong across all disciplines of life for pretty much everyone, perhaps except the ultra-rich.
Heralded as Point of No Return by thousands of organizations and scientists for decades, the moment when it will become too late to save the climate of our planet from a dramatic shift is now estimated to be just about 8 years from today.
The world is waking up to this on a larger scale every year, but seemingly nothing has done more to advance the conversation than 2020. Beyond recent US declarations, “China, some of the Gulf States, and India are investing in green energy on a scale that would have been considered improbable even a decade ago. “ reports McKinsey. VC investment in climate tech is growing rapidly. VC investment in climate technologies hit a record high of $16.4B in 2020, according to Pitchbook data.
Climate action is becoming better funded by the day, which is spurring a wave of innovation and entrepreneurship. The solutions are becoming accessible. The price of solar energy, for example, plunged from $21 per watt in 1980 to $1 per watt today — making it cheaper than natural gas.
COVID-19 has opened the eyes of many on the issue and increased popular demand for action. “At the height of the coronavirus pandemic in April, with many countries in lockdown, daily global CO2 emissions fell 17% compared with 2019 levels. The drop is certainly major — emissions were temporarily comparable to 2006 levels — but the fact it was not, even more, gives an insight into how much deeper emissions cuts need to go than the lifestyle changes available to individual people.” — wrote recently BBC Future.
Prevailing trends:
- Gigantic public sector investments in Asia, Gulf States, USA and Europe ($Ts)
- A wave of innovation
- Renewable energy (including massive offshore wind) cheaper than fossil
- Electric transportation
- Biofuels, Hydrogen and alternative fuels
- Decarbonization / Carbon capture
- Carbon sequestration
- Carbon offset technologies
- Highly reduced fossil fuel use
- Tackling climate migration
- Rewilding
Popular demand for climate action is driving companies to choose carbon-neutral sources of power. Just several days ago Facebook announced they reached carbon neutrality. “We set these goals in 2018 and today we are one of the largest corporate buyers of renewable energy,” Facebook said. “We have contracts in place for more than six gigawatts of wind and solar energy across 18 states and five countries. All 63 projects are new and located on the same electrical grids as the data centres they support.” — this follows declarations from Apple, Google and many others.
The United States is transitioning away from coal and is innovating in a wide array of green technologies, such as batteries, carbon-capture methods, and electric vehicles. We are seeing a continued push for lowering carbon emissions and the use of alternative carbon-neutral fuels. What is coming onto the agenda, much more than the gentle action and greenwashing of past decades is a large scale industrial carbon removal and sequestration.
“In 2025, carbon footprints will be viewed as socially unacceptable, much like drink driving is today.”
— World Economic Forum
All this leads not just to new opportunities for business, but also to upcoming explosions in Climate careers. Climate change is making its way onto curriculums, setting the stage for a rising generation of climate professionals. Gen Z lists climate change as a top global concern.
As Wunderman+Thompson noticed, there are growing opportunities for brands that want to tackle climate change to partner with rewilding initiatives — which can often also mean carbon sequestration and community impact work.
Transportation 🚄✈️
Electric transportation has lept the chasm from champagne-liberal status-symbol to mainstream mainstay, led by Tesla’s meteoric market capitalization, and investment in charging stations and supporting infrastructure. Cities around the world will see charging stations popping up on every corner. Competition from new electric car brands in China will accelerate innovation, while governments around the world shift to ever-cheaper, more sustainable electric mass transport. The Biden administrations heavy investment in infrastructure will further supercharge this necessary change while bringing economic benefits for the underprivileged, who make outsized use of public transportation.
Looking to the skies, there is already a dearth of investment in decarbonized aviation. Clean and autonomous air transport startups are popping up amidst excited buzz, brushing aside apprehensions about pilotless flight. The European Union’s Clean Sky initiative reported in June 2020 that the use of hydrogen energy and technologies could mitigate the global warming impact of aviation “by 50% to 90%.” The cost of the climate damage caused by aviation’s emissions was estimated at $100 billion for 2018 alone, according to research published in the journal Global Environmental Change. Forward-thinking businesses should already be thinking about how to capitalize on the decarbonization opportunity, according to W+T.
Prevailing trends:
- Sustainable mobility
- Electric transportation
- Biofuels, Hydrogen and alternative fuels
- Self-driving
- Autonomous fleets
- Subscription service (no ownership)
- Self-Flying transportation (taxis)
- Robot Taxis
- Drone deliveries
- Organic vehicle design
- Sustainable vehicle materials
- Transportation apps
Looking to the stars, the tech industry has long since set its sights on outer space. NASA has become increasingly dependent on private-sector innovation to power its publicly funded missions. In October 2020, NASA and Nokia announced a new partnership to put a 4G network on the moon. “Eventually we’re all going to want the Hulu or Netflix experience when we’re in space,” — W+T
Wellbeing 🧘
Much like Mixed Reality, wellbeing is collecting multiple approaches which are increasingly being blended. In 2021, increasingly mindful people will look for products and services that seamlessly boost their mental wellbeing. Entertainment platforms are transporting viewers into a world of calm — or Calmtainment. Disney launched Zenimation on Disney+. Calm’s valuation hit $2 billion in December 2020 after its latest round of funding, and Headspace raised an additional $100 million in 2020. We’re seeing a new meditation app hit the app store every day. Even Mattel released a meditation Barbie. As the demand for mindfulness resources rises, the entertainment industry is enhancing the practice of self-care with unique, immersive experiences — which in the near future will also be available to be prescribed by doctors, and covered by insurance.
COVID-19 accelerated the search for happiness and proliferated new forms of therapy, some of which are expected to stick (eg. Grief therapy), and some to go away (message-based therapy). Following a chain of legalizations in US stages, at Future Works we’re seeing a surge in psychedelics therapy businesses that are raising increasing amounts of funding. All these are here to help with the mental effects of lockdown in the short term but also bracing us for tackling and perhaps preventing the biggest illness of the future — depression.
Prevailing trends:
- Increased research into mental wellbeing
- Fighting depression (most common disease)
- The proliferation of Psychedelics in therapy
- Digital prescribables
- Mass adoption of mindfulness practices
- Immunity wellness
- Digital nutrition
- Immersive gamified fitness
- Data wellbeing
- Grief therapy
- Calmtainment
As we try to prevent issues of the future, rising individualism is leading to more and more people preventing illness through diet, natural supplements and even biohacking. As an effect, the wellness industry is expanding to incorporate immune-strengthening components, which have traditionally been part of the medical realm.
Fitness has been a trend for a long time and as much as the pandemic had the average earthling increase their body weight, we also explored new ways to stay healthy, including an explosion of gamified digital experiences which are expected to keep reaching wide adoption.
AI and Robotics 🦾
Contrary to popular opinion, artificial intelligence and robotics will lead to a net increase in jobs over the next five years, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF). The labour-intensive development of AI/Robotics tools will create many jobs. Furthermore, MIT predicts that AI will cause a productivity boom, and supercomputers will become the domain of not just big tech, but also small businesses. AI-driven productivity tools are becoming a core part of the tech stacks of mega-corps and freelancers alike.
Drones will become a core part of industries like agriculture and logistics. Robotics has long been mainstream in manufacturing. In fact, more than 20% of produce and products are now manufactured without humans.
Despite the net growth in jobs, many will find themselves needing to “upskill”, after the double whammy of COVID-19 and the AI/Robotics boom. Alongside the inevitable obsolescence of farmworkers, factory workers, customer service reps, bookkeepers, and stock clerks, professions that were previously considered mainstays like accountants, executive assistants, operations managers, and machinery maintenance crews may all find themselves in need of a career change.
As AI/Robotics become more widely adopted, fear of AI will continue to decrease. People are beginning to understand AI as an efficient tool for accelerating human decision making and human ingenuity, rather than a replacement thereof.
Prevailing trends:
- Less fear of AI
- Wide adoption of AI (like the internet now)
- Robots on farms
- Robots in cities (security, monitoring, enforcement)
- Robots in factories and warehouses
- Africa a test-bed for robotics
- Neuromorphic computing
- DNA storage
- 20%+ produce and products made without humans
- Further optimization of manufacturing
AI increasingly looks for inspiration in the billions of years of evolution of biological systems. Innovations in neuromorphic computing and DNA-based data storage models pay homage to the brilliance of the design of the human brain and reproductive systems. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg.
The continent of Africa is bristling with enthusiasm to play a central part in the coming evolutions of AI/Robotics. High-tech investors are setting up shop there to develop test-beds for human-robot coexistence.
Farming and Food 🌾🍑
The plant-based food revolution is here, and showing strong signs of going mainstream. Consumers are increasingly changing eating habits not just for health reasons, but also to mitigate personal environmental impact.
Alternative protein, once ridiculed as “lab meat” has gained broad acceptance, not only by being a healthier and more sustainable alternative but more importantly by being delicious. Brands like Beyond Meat and Impossible Products are in all major supermarkets across the US, Europe and Asia. Venture capital is funnelling funds towards alternative protein supply chains, as everyone begins to realize the inevitability of the eventual end of the traditional livestock industry.
Prevailing trends:
- Wide adoption of lab meat and other alternatives
- Plant-based revolution
- Robots on farms
- 20%+ produce and products made without humans
- Rethinking seafood
- AgriTech
- GM food
- Cannabis goes global
- Mushrooms go mainstream
- Asia goes plant-based
Meanwhile, farm automation has taken off. By 2025, consumers will be the first humans to touch more than 20% of the products and produce in the world (Gartner). Countries like the Netherlands are leading the way, showing that technologies like vertical farming can generate exponential nutrition per square km. As a result of the Netherlands embrace of agriculture tech, the tiny country has become the world’s second-largest exporter of agricultural products.
Mixed Reality 🔮
Just as many were about to give up on the decades-old dream of Mixed Reality, COVID-19 has accelerated us by years in this direction. Virtual, Augmented, Extended, Mixed… all point that the real world is increasingly mixed with digital. At Future Works many of us already spend large amounts of every day in virtual reality as we work to deliver projects that rather than pure entertainment, tackle real-world problems, such as mental wellbeing. Every now and then we try to have business meetings in VR and these get better each time.
The search for virtual alternatives to live events in 2020 has highlighted shortcomings of the platform and countless entrepreneurs and innovators found funding to work on solving these in a short time frame. The World Economic Forum heralds the coming “blurring of physical and virtual spaces.” Virtual athletics and fitness overall are growing on a larger scale than ever. Virtual-first offices point to a future of decentralized work, while ever the expanding gaming industry is starting to blur its boundaries, not just with realities, but also with content and social.
“By 2025, 40% of physical-experiences businesses will improve financial results and outperform competitors by extending into paid virtual”.
— Forbes
Prevailing trends:
- Fully immersive gatherings in mixed reality
- Virtual currency, goods and actions
- Physical-experiences businesses extending into paid virtual
- The blurring of physical and virtual spaces
- NFTs and boom of digital art
- A paradigm shift in creativity
- Mixed realities booming (AR, VR, XR, IRL, URL…)
- Virtual-first HQs
- The transition from phone to the headset
The Mixed Reality market was valued at $382.6 million in 2019, according to Mordor Intelligence, and is set to grow at a rapid pace, thanks to improvements in hardware and software. Facebook invested billions in Oculus, their own incoming platform Horizon and startups like in Jio ($5.7 billion in April 2020), while Google announced an additional $4.5 billion investment in the company in July the same year. Patents filed by Apple in 2020 led many to predict that the company would soon launch its own Mixed Reality headsets.
“Using extended and mixed realities to layer more nuanced and shareable dimensions to space will become the norm”
predicts Wunderman+Thomspon.
Decentralization 🧩
If you still find this polarizing in 2021, it is likely time to do more research. Cryptocurrencies took nearly 10 years to reach $1 trillion in market capitalization and just 3 months to reach $2 trillion a couple of weeks ago. As per the recent Goldman Sachs asset report, Bitcoin brought 118% return where gold brought -7% (negative!) and so did US treasury bonds (-5%). We promised no finance talk, however, this paints the picture and attracts more and more people. COVID-19 and stimulus packages have accelerated retail investing and today 1 Bitcoin is expected to reach more than $1M within 4 years (call us out on this in 2025!).
The dollar will no longer be the world’s reserve currency
— MIT Technology Review
Cryptocurrencies are driving a revolution in finance (and some of them grab the attention of the media), however, decentralization is starting to touch on other aspects of our lives beyond money — such as ownership and art with the recent NFT frenzy. Over time we can expect the continued race to mass adoption throughout new aspects of our life.
Prevailing trends
- Crypto reaches mass adoption by 2024
- NFTs move from art into ownership of anything (homes, cars, etc.)
- Sustainable blockchain infrastructure
- BTC moves towards reaching $1M and higher
- Decentralized economics
- Decentralized companies are challenging the likes of Amazon and Google and others.
- Decentralized governance models reaching wider adoption
According to research by Accountable Tech, published in July 2020, 85% of Americans believe Big Tech has too much power. Eventually, we will see decentralized organizations challenge Google, Amazon, Facebook and others. As decentralized governance comes into the spotlight, these organizations will be structured very differently — and perhaps as a distant ripple of the pandemic, in much more resilient ways.
Large companies and governments are warming up to this revolution with Tesla, and the City of Miami famously buying bitcoin and many others following suit, while US states like Wyoming (not New York or Delaware) becoming magnets for a new decentralized class of business.
Gaming 🎮
Gaming continues to explode, both in time and money spent. Enabling consumers to use virtual currency, goods and actions to achieve real-world impact is a surefire way to attract attention.
“Gaming is no longer just for gameplay. According to Michael Wolf, co-founder and chief executive of Activate, gaming is set to emerge as the next dominant technology platform — much the way search engines, mobile phones and social networks redefined industries in previous decades”, the Wall Street Journal reported in October 2020.
The pandemic has truly accelerated the Gaming industry. In search of social experiences, many have turned to games such as Animal Crossing, Fortnite and GTA. Gaming has become much more than just games, as foundations were laid for games to become gathering spaces around content and experiences. We also saw much higher adoption amongst women. This trend is expected to continue.
Prevailing trends
- Accelerated gaming industry growth
- Primetime game-tainment
- Gamefluencers
- Virtual athletics
- Immersive gamified fitness
- A blending of games and social
- A blending of games and content
Is gaming the new Hollywood? Gaming has been steadily growing in popularity and influence over the past few years, with far-reaching impact: it has spurred a new league of gamefluencers, informed luxury retail, served as an outlet for wanderlust and wellness, and even as a platform for activism. Now, with playership skyrocketing, big brand investments are elevating game-tainment to a primetime attraction. — Wunderman+Thompson
Work-Life
The pandemic has accelerated the “Future of work.”
As reported by McKinsey:
“20 per cent of the global workforce could work the majority of its time away from the office — and be just as effective.”
In fact, over 20% of the US workforce is expected to remain working remotely. At HKEK we anticipated the shift which drove our decision to be remote-first since 2015. We’ve been ready for 2020 for quite some time.
Workplaces and work are being redesigned, partly due to the pressure from competitive “activist employers.” Young talent is no longer in search of big salaries alone. Increasingly, they are viewing their prospective employers through the lens of positive impact. Top companies around the world are adjusting, and those that aren’t are losing their best people.
Prevailing trends
- Future of work accelerated (or arrived!)
- Workplaces are being redesigned
- 20% of Americans will remain remote
- Hybrid and remote-first companies
- Remote-only companies
Flexible hours, work-life balance, diversity, and carbon neutrality programs are evolving from feelgood HR initiatives into being the cost-of-entry for a qualified workforce. Even primary industry stalwarts of decades past like Rio Tinto and British Petroleum are clearing out their antiquated leadership, and being forced to completely rethink their approach to ESG.
Other
We grouped our prevailing trends with a rule that a category should have a minimum of 5 trends, so here we have all the outliers.
This decade we can expect a huge economic growth in Africa, which will involve many trends listed before. Quite surprisingly to us, Ed Tech, despite being expected to grow, is not expected to see a gigantic boom in the short term — despite the reskilling and distributed education brought on by recent job losses and school closures.
Remote work exploded last year! And despite many companies planning to re-open their offices soon, many of us are planning to remain remote and therefore a mixture of work and pleasure — “workcations” — are expected to stay. Naturally, there were some large shifts to the dining and hospitality industries, with new hotels and restaurants being redesigned to accommodate observations from 2020.
Prevailing trends
- Africa Rising
- Future of construction
- Streaming economy
- Cost of Housing Stagnates
- EdTech
- Animation resurgence
- Space tech
- Protecting generation alpha
- Redesign of the hospitality industry
- Redesign of the dining industry
- Workcations
- Unbiased banking
- Insurtech
- Fin-fluencers
- Ewallet wars
The fast-growing fin-fluencer phenomenon is yet another sign that most people are losing trust in traditional institutions, and are taking investing and retirement savings into their own hands — including the increasing use of digital wallets. People are saving harder than before, due to uncertainty of times to come, which is also stimulating the expansion of a follower of FinTech — the InsurTech industry.
Trends analyzed and the path ahead
Having read over 50 reports in the past weeks, we are well aware that we’re presenting only a fraction of the 300+ trends we found, of which all (or few!) may materialize.
I believe that a good idea of what is to come might be already forming in your head as it is in ours.
There’s a reason we chose to publish this on Earth Day — and luckily, the direction seems overwhelmingly positive (if late!) for the planet.
According to much research, we currently have just about 8 years left to fix things, and if anything the magnitude of investments and trends above indicate that we are seeing the giants waking up to this realization — under the pressure of changing workforce, culture, and votes (whether with a ballot or wallet). The change in business will bring further impact, and it is hard not to smile seeing the correlation between these trends, and what our next years might bring.
But the work is just really starting, and it is now time that we all make the best decisions we can to thrive. The emerging trend of adoption of the “3Ps” rule of the triple bottom line (people, planet, profit) shows us that thriving, or success, both on personal and corporate levels will now have a new meaning.
The early 2020 hopes for an instant green future past the pandemic have not materialized, and a lot needs to happen, the changes in coming years will be dramatic under humanity’s control, or dramatic without our control, it will be all about making the right decisions.
Every day we make about 500 decisions. There are almost 8 billion of us on earth now. This means we make 4 Trillion decisions per day… Imagine what this planet would be like if we made 4 Trillion good decisions per day?
— Nainoa Thompson
We believe the only way to make good decisions is to have all the information we can. This way we can predict the future, and perhaps even create it.
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
— Abraham Lincoln
We invite you to share your thoughts on our findings thus far. Our quest continues and we will triple check our findings and publish final conclusions. We expect to release a follow-up report within 3 months, which will also allow us to observe developments, and check vectors over time.
⚡️ Join the WhatsApp group here.
If you’d like to continue the journey with us and be the first to receive our finalized report, simply drop your email below.
With any suggestions, ideas, material we missed or other comments, simply shoot us an email. We’re always happy to partner up and collaborate.
Thank you!
Matt Cyrankiewicz
Founding Creative Partner
with help of our stellar team Joe, Michael, Ari, Justyna, Jackson, Yifu
& hugs from the rest of us at Future Works 💛 🌊
Sources
McKinsey — The Next Normal Arrives
Angel List — Inside the venture climate tech boom
Barclays — 150 trends for investors to watch in the 2020s
Gartner — Top 10 Strategic Predictions for 2021 and Beyond
TrendWatching — 21 trends for 2021
World Economic Forum — 17 ways technology could change the world by 2025
Blackrock — 2021 Global Outlook
Blackrock — Sustainable Investing
Blackrock — Sustainable Investing Survey
Business Insider — Citi announces clean-energy investment-banking group
Business Insider — Goldman Sachs sees the auto industry’s tech revolution as a big opportunity to win new business
Business Insider — JPMorgan’s $2.5 trillion climate plan targets sustainable development
Forbes — Four Essential Trends
Forbes — Here’s When The $2 Trillion Infrastructure Bill Could Actually Pass
Forbes — Top Business Trends Shaping A Post-Covid-19 Environment
Forbes — What The 3Ps Of The Triple Bottom Line Really Mean
Future Timeline — 2021 — Future Timeline — 2030
Joebiden.com — The Biden plan to build a modern, sustainable infrastructure and an equitable clean energy future.
MIT Technology Review — Predictions for 2030
Deloitte — A market approach for valuing onshore wind farm assets
Deloitte — Global renewable energy trends
New York Mag — What Is in Joe Biden’s $1.9 Trillion Stimulus Package Plan?
Npr — Here’s What’s In President Biden’s $2 Trillion Infrastructure Proposal
The Atlantic — What Will the World Look Like in 2030
The Drum — Fact or fantasy? Futurists predict a better world for 2030
Simon, Kucher & Partners — New Study: Gamers Around the World … Post-Pandemic
Square — BCEI Whitepaper
The Wall Street Journal — Biden’s $2.3 Trillion Infrastructure Plan Takes Broad Aim
The Wall Street Journal — Biden’s Infrastructure Plan Visualized: How the $2.3 Trillion Would Be Allocated
World needs $90tn infrastructure overhaul to avoid climate disaster, study finds
The Washington Post — White House unveils $2 trillion infrastructure and climate plan, setting up giant battle over size and cost of government
BBC Future — Who is really to blame for climate change?
Wunderman+Thompson — Future 100 2021
The biggest banks have poured $3.8 trillion into fossil fuels since 2016. JPMorgan tops the list of contributors, report says
50 More reports for 2021+ in PDF
ABI Research — 68 Tech Trends That Will Shape 2021
ABTA_s — Six Trends for Travel in 2021
Accenture-Fjord — Trends-2021-Full
Accupac — Sustainability Trends to Watch for in 2021
ADA/March Capital — The Next Ten Years_Tech Trends that Matter
CISCO — 2021 Global Networking Trends Report
Contagious — Most Contagious 2020
Content Marketing Institute — B2B Insights for 2021
Deloitte — 2021 Global Marketing Trends
Deloitte — Global Blockchain Survey 2020
Deloitte — Tech Media Telecom Predictions 2021
Deloitte — Tech Trends 2021
Dentsu — Brave_New_Normal_Creative_Trends_2021
EITO Western EU- 11 Tech Trends for 2021 and Beyond
eMarketer — 10 Key Digital Trends for 2021
Fashion Snoops — 2021 Macro Cultural and Colour Trends
Forrester — Predictions 2021
Gartner _ Ant Group -Top 10 Fintech Trends for 2021
GARTNER — Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2021
Glassdoor — Workplace Trends 2021
GSMA — Global Mobile Trends 2021
GWI — Connecting the dots 2021
HELABA — Capital Market Outlook 2021
Hootsuite — Social Trends 2021
IAB — Brand Disruption 2021
Kantar — Predictions 2021 Media Trends
KANTAR — The State of Ecommerce 2021-_EN
KPMG China — 10 Macro Economic Trends in 2021
Macorva — Learning _ Development Trends to Know for 2021
MCKINSEY — The State of Fashion 2021
MCKINSEY China — Consumer report 2021
Monetary Association Singapore — SG Blockchain Ecosystem Report 2020
Ogilvy — S_hift_-_The_Future_of_Retail
Oliver Wyman — Singapore FinTech Landscape
PANDORA — The 2021 Definitive Guide To Audio
PWC APAC — Emerging Trends in Real Estate Asia Pacific 2021
S_P_Global Banks 2021 Outlook
Signals_Melanie Shreffler — Cultural _ Consumer Shifts Defining 2021
smartly.io — Global Social Media Advertising Trends 2021
SPARXOO — 2021 10 Digital Marketing Trends
Synergy Flavours — Consumer Food Trends for 2021
Trendhunter — 2021 Trend Report
UOB Asean — Fintech Get Up Reset Go
Visier — HR People Strategies for an Uncertain Future 2021
We Are Social — Think Forward — Great Reset 2021
WGSN — Future Consumer 2021
Willis Towers Watson — 2021 Global Medical Trends Survey Report
WPP — Martech 2030_Five Trends in Marketing Technology for the Decade of the Augmented Marketer
WVU Marketing Communications 2021 Trends
YELP — 2021 Trend Forecast
