HP Innovation Journal Issue 08: Winter 2017 | Page 34
Upcoming Megatrends 2018 Report:
When trends converge
How new technology innovations and
converging trends will reshape our future
By Doug Warner, VP and Global Head of Tech Vision & Strategy, HP
I
n our next issue, we will deep-dive into
HP’s third-annual Megatrends report,
a global look at how socioeconomic
and technology trends are shaping ex-
periences, industries, and markets of
the future.
Over the past year, we’ve seen some
trends accelerate, new ones emerge, and
have started to witness the convergence
of a few trends, creating even greater
impact and shifts. Simultaneously, new
disruptive technologies have come to
the forefront that have the potential
to significantly reshape some of the
Megatrends over the next 15 to 20 years,
and transform global value chains and
economics.
As we’ve dis-
cussed in pre-
vious issues, by
2030 there will
be an estimated
8.5 billion peo-
ple walking the
ea r t h . A la rge
portion of this
population will
be made up of
the additional
1 billion people
joining the mid-
dle class, pre-
d o m i n a n t ly i n
Asia and emerg-
ing markets. This
new consuming
30 Innovation Journal · Issue 8 · Winter 2017
class will represent $30 trillion in spend-
ing power, residing largely in urban epi-
centers. To support them, we will need to
spend approximately 10% of the global
domestic product (GDP) between now
and then on new infrastructure.
At the same time, we are going to
see tremendous drags on the economy,
including human and natural resource
strains. A third of the global population
will be over 65. This will lead to a decline
in the number of workers per retiree,
thus putting a strain on productivity
and output.
Coupled with growing resource con-
straints — food, energy, water, rare
minerals — d eveloped economies will
be struggling with the lack of resourc-
es needed to drive productivity and
fuel future growth, in an effort to bat-
tle global power shifts. And emerging
economies will look for innovations to
help them leapfrog their own infrastruc-
ture, government, and business model
limitations.
To reshape our constrained future
into an efficient one, we will need to
make radical changes and rely on disrup-
tive innovation to pave the way. Efficient
productivity will be the golden ticket to
drive growth in our resource-constrained
world of 2030 and beyond.
So how can we achieve these radically
efficient productivity gains? There are