From 'the resurgence of religion' to 'food price volatility', cyber-viruses, urbanization, quantum computing, and peak water, Richard Watson's table highlights societal, technological, economic, and political trends that the world faces in the next decade. And if that wasn't enough, Bain & Co.'s 'Great Eight' trillion dollar growth trends should provide some food for thought as the US enjoys its vacation (although we wonder how soon until Q1 GDP misses are blamed on not only snow in the winter but also on nationally recognized holidays resulting in completely unforeseeable economic growth deductions: after all something has to be the culprit for the secular contraction, but never, ever the Fed's ubiquitous economic micromanagement and central planning).

Via What's Next,

Here’s something to start a few arguments, which is the whole point of the exercise, of course. Briefly, it’s a table of key trends and technologies that are likely to shape the world out to 2020. I’ve used the periodic table, not because the trends are weighted in any way, but by following the basic structure of the table (i.e. the number of categories and boxes) this has forced me to edit what would otherwise be an almost endless list.



The categories themselves broadly follow S.T.E.E.P, which is widely used in scenario planning, but I’ve extended and added to this with the result that we have S.T.E.E.E.P.P.I (Society, Technology, Energy, Environment, Economy, Employment, Population, Politics and Identity). There are also two lines devoted to global risks, both high and low probability.



And, as usual, there are a few jokes so that people don’t take this too seriously.

Bain & Co.'s Great Eight Trillion Dollar Trends