This is what the startup of the year 2050 looks like
Do you know what megatrends will revolutionise the world in the next 50 years? Shane Wall, CTO of Hewlett Packard, does — it’s his job to keep HP alive throughout the 21st Century. He recently shared his predictions at an event at the London School of Economics.
Let’s use these megatrends and see what you think of the year 2050. Are you ready to enter the time machine and meet Olesugun, Nigeria’s hottest new entrepreneur?
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10th January, 2050
8am. Olesugun arrives at his desk on the 91st floor of Buhari Tower, Central Business District in Abuja. He quickly consumes his breakfast, a vitamin-protein latte from Starbucks.
Then straight to work. This young entrepreneur has developed a popular hologram dating platform in Nigeria, and is hoping to roll it out across AMEE (Africa, Middle East and Europe that is). Crack that market and he has a chance of succeeding in the East Asian Free Trade Area.
His first meeting of the day is with a marketing agency, who share their advice for promoting the product:
“You should leverage a series of our hypereffective Robot Influencers. These bots have an enhanced emotional and cultural intelligence, making them perfectly suited to engage both the greying millennials and the ‘flirty’ 2030s generation.”
Olesugun is impressed. He agrees to the agency’s proposal and instructs his Siri-PA to start drafting a smartcontract.
Next on his list is the financing plan. Olesugun puts on his VR goggles to meet with his Indonesia-based Chief Blockchain Officer (CBO) Abdul.
“So Abdul, how do we finance the AMEE-wide expansion? The cryptoseries A was relatively poorly subscribed and has not traded well in the secondary market.”
“Well, I have designed a cryptoseries B that will do the trick! Dividends are payable in either Bitcoins, a free hologram dating profile or MarsTravel lottery tickets. There is a lack of these multi-purpose shares, so they will appeal to a broad range of investors.”
Olesugun agrees to a Beta version for the new financing, to be trialled in a closed environment of existing shareholders.
He takes off his glasses and decides to investigate the security of his platform:
“Load CyberDefence report”
Siri-PA starts churning. “CyberDefence report, day 239. Yesterday we had 54 instances of fake dating holograms, 35 of which were of military dictators and 19 of America’s Next Top Programmer contestants. All have been removed. There were 98 instances of attempted profile data thefts, 80 of health-related DNA data. 5 of these instances were successful. However our Autoimmune Coding Strategies have been strengthened, and we expect a 5% reduction in likelihood of future successful thefts”
“That’s not good enough!” Olesugun shouts angrily. He knows that publication of this dataheist in the Abuja Times could seriously hamper his company’s brand.
Fortunately, Siri-PA detects the presence of distress signals. It jumps to the rescue, turning on soothing soft-rock music and repeating positive affirmations. “I am the master of my destiny, I am lying on a tropical beach and am relaxed.”
Olesugun calms down.
He decides to check in on the hiring process for his South Africa brand ambassador. However Amahle, his Human Capital Manager, is not reachable — he gets an Out-of-VR response.
Not to worry, he thinks. It is already 10am, so time for him to leave the office anyway. Siri-PA is reset to autoCEO-pilot mode and Olesugun jets off to the golf course.
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Back to 2018… Which megatrends did you spot?
1- Mass urbanisation
2- Rise of emerging markets
- 97% of growth will be emerging markets driven
- Nearly half of Fortune 500 will be in emerging markets
3 The blockchain revolution
- Financial services
- Contract drafting
4- Automated workforce
5- Artificial Intelligence with empathy
6- Cybersystems develop own auto-immune systems
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