Business Trends in Practice

The 25+ Trends That are Redefining Organizations

Bernard Marr

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781119795582
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

WINNER OF THE BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2022!

Stay one step ahead of the competitionwith this expert review of the most impactful and disruptive business trends coming down the pike

Far from slowing down, change and transformation in businessseems to come only at a more and more furious rate. The last ten years alone have seen the introduction of groundbreaking new trendsthat pose new opportunities and challenges for leaders in all industries.

In Business Trends in Practice: The 25+ Trends That Are Redefining Organizations, best-selling business author and strategist Bernard Marrbreaks downthe social and technological forces underlying these rapidly advancing changes and the impact of those changes onkey industries.

• Critical consumer trends just emerging today—or poised to emerge tomorrow—are discussed, as arestrategies for rethinking your organisation's product and service delivery. The book alsoexplores:
• Crucial business operations trends that are changing the way companies conduct themselves in the 21st century
• The practical insights and takeaways you canglean from technological and social innovation when you cut through the hype
• Disruptive new technologies, including AI, robotic and business process automation, remote work, as well as social and environmental sustainability trends

Business Trends in Practice: The 25+ Trends That Are Redefining Organizations isa must-read resource for executives, business leaders and managers, and business development and innovation leads trying to get – and stay – on top ofchanges and disruptions that are right around the corner.

PART I
INTRODUCTION: RIDING THE WAVE OF TRANSFORMATION

Our world is rapidly changing and the pace of change has been accelerating. Business leaders tell me all the time how challenging it is to keep up with the pace and extent of change, and I couldn't agree more. I'm frequently staggered by the pace of change, particularly (although not exclusively) in technology advancements – and I say that as someone whose job title is futurist!

That, in a nutshell, is what sparked the idea for this book. I wanted to provide business leaders with an accessible overview of the key trends that are transforming the way we do business. In my advisory work with companies and government organizations, I noticed that the same transformative forces seem to be coming up again and again, irrespective of the size of the organization or the industry in which they operate. This book pulls those insights together in one place. My goal is to give business leaders a chance to learn from other industries and build a business that is more successful, more resilient, and better equipped for the changes coming our way. In short, this book is designed to help you ride the wave of transformation.

I believe the role of any futurist is to be practical. So, far from describing some sort of futuristic business utopia, I cut through the hype and distill each of the business trends into practical insights – insights that business leaders can translate into action.

To help with this, I include plenty of real-world examples to show how other organizations are adapting and responding to change. There are use cases from all kinds of businesses, big and small, from startup eco toilet tissue makers to traditional manufacturers to tech giants, and a whole lot in between. I'm keen to demonstrate that the trends in this book apply to all organizations, regardless of size and industry.

Here's what else to expect from this book:

• In Part I, we'll start by exploring the forces – both societal and technological – that are driving the massive changes taking place.
• Then, in Part II, we'll look at the impact of these trends on key industries to illustrate just how transformative their collective impact is. (I must stress that I had to stick to just the most important industries here. But if your industry isn't featured, please don't skip this part – many of the insights will no doubt be relevant to your own industry.)
• Part III focuses on the key consumer trends that are emerging today – trends that will likely prompt a rethink of your products and services, and how to deliver them.
• Building on the consumer trends, Part IV is all about key trends that impact how businesses operate internally. In other words, as well as rethinking your products and services, you'll also have to rethink how your business is run.
• And in the final chapter, I'll pull these (often interlinked, sometimes disparate, even contradictory) trends together into some broader key lessons and takeaways. These are the things I want to leave you with as you look to the future.

As well as helping business leaders ride the wave of transformation, there is also a loftier goal at the heart of this book. As you'll see in the next chapter, it's not just businesses that are being impacted by these transformational forces; society as a whole is facing enormous changes and challenges. By building better businesses, we can collectively tackle the issues facing our world and create the future we want to live in. If this book plays a small role in that very big task, I'll be happy.

CHAPTER 1
THE FIVE GLOBAL SHIFTS THAT WILL SHAPE THE ORGANIZATIONS OF THE FUTURE

This is a book about business trends. But no business operates in a vacuum. Organizations are constantly shaped by the world around them. And that's why we start our journey here, with some of the biggest trends emerging in politics, economics, and society.

In this chapter, I outline five major global shifts that business leaders must take into consideration as they plan for the future. This is not just a “nice to know” chapter; these trends have very real business implications (you'll find some practical lessons at the end of the chapter). Each global shift outlined in this chapter indicates where future business opportunities may lie, meaning the most successful organizations of the future will be those that address and move with these shifts. The flip side, of course, is that these global shifts also pose risks for businesses, particularly the risk of being left behind. As a result, many businesses will end up sidelined, overtaken by their more forward-thinking competitors.

What struck me as I was writing this chapter is that many of these trends are contrasting. For example, we're seeing a trend toward cultural convergence at the same time as growing divergence, which, on the surface, is a bit of a head-scratcher. Perhaps one feeds into the other. Or maybe it's simply a sign of the confusing, uncertain world we live in these days. One thing is sure: businesses will have to contend with some trends that are seemingly pulling in different directions. Adapting to this new age of uncertainty may mean rethinking what your business offers and how it is run (more on this in Parts III and IV of this book). For now, let's immerse ourselves in five of the biggest global shifts that are emerging, starting with our relationship with our planet.

Trend 1: Our Changing Relationship with Our Planet

To put it mildly, we've not had the best relationship with our planet. We've chopped down forests, burnt carbon, dug mines, polluted waterways – all in the name of growing prosperity. For Western countries at least, this has paid off. Using our natural resources has led to greater prosperity. But it has also led to climate change, the collapse of ecosystems and loss of biodiversity, chemical and plastic pollution, and the decline of our natural resources (particularly water). As a result, our planet is under immense pressure and showing the strain through abnormal weather patterns and natural disasters, which, in turn, create pressures around crop production, food security, migration, and more.

Some food for thought on the emerging climate crisis:

• Climate change is happening so quickly, many species are struggling to adapt. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that a 1.5°C average rise in global average surface temperature may put up to 30 percent of species at risk of extinction. Push that up to 2°C and most ecosystems will struggle.¹ For context, the temperature has already increased by 0.9°C since 1906 (the figure is even higher in polar regions).²
• By the end of this century, 150–200 million people could be forced to migrate from land that will be underwater.³
• Some of the biggest sectors in terms of greenhouse gas emissions include agriculture and forestry (responsible for 18.4 percent of global emissions), energy use in industry (24.2 percent), energy use in buildings (17.5 percent), and transportation (16.2 percent).⁴
• Our precious resources are under enormous pressure. Fresh water makes up just 2.5 percent of the world's total volume of water (and half of that is ice). So it's perhaps no wonder that 1.8 billion people are already living with water scarcity. Even more worryingly, 5.2 billion people are expected to face water stress by 2025.⁵
• Competition for land (particularly land for agriculture) is also growing, and many countries such as China and Saudi Arabia are already pursuing land in Africa. Global competition for finite resources, including land and water, is only going to increase as the population grows.
• There may also be a global fight for rare earths, some of the most important minerals and metals found in the ground, which are used in everything from lithium-ion batteries to electric cars. The US is 80 percent reliant on China (the world's biggest rare earths producer) for rare earth imports, and this could lead to further strains on political relationships in future.⁶
• To keep pace with the growing population (I talk more about global demographics later in the chapter), an often-quoted statistic is that we'll have to double crop and animal production by 2050. More conservative estimates suggest that, as food production has already increased in recent years, we may only need to increase production by between 26 percent and 68 percent by 2050.⁷ But that's still a significant increase to accommodate on an already struggling planet.
• Plastic pollution is another pre...