2030 summary

The Netherlands, 1891: Frederick and Gerard Phillips, a father and son team, cofound the electronics company Phillips. Thanks to a series of innovative inventions – amongst them, tungsten filament light bulbs, the electric razor, the VCR, and the CD – Phillips stays relevant and profitable through most of the twentieth century. This changes in the 1990s, when Philips is suddenly undercut by cheaper, Asian-manufactured electronics. In the 2000s, the ailing company flirts with bankruptcy.

Phillips might have folded entirely if Frans van Houten hadn’t taken the helm in 2011. He shifted Philips’s focus to health-care technology, like scanners and imagers. Thanks in part to the world’s aging population, these products are now in high demand – and that demand will likely continue to grow.

Ask any economist and she’ll tell you: the middle classes are the engine of the economy. Neither affluent nor impoverished, they are steady – if cautious – consumers. And it’s their steady spending that keeps the economic wheels spinning.

And yet, in Europe and America, the middle classes, once robust, are stagnating. Many traditional middle-class jobs have been automated or outsourced. 

In 2008, the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers signaled the start of a global recession. But what if it had been Lehman Sisters instead of Lehman Brothers? Would the bank have gone under? Perhaps not. A study of male and female brokers at an investment bank showed that the female brokers were more cautious, while the men took more risks. 

Why is that important? Well, come 2030, women will hold more than half the world’s wealth for the first time. And global spending habits will change as a result. Spending will likely increase in sectors such as education, health care, and insurance, where women have typically been bigger spenders than men. In investing, women will lead the trend for “safer” investments, like indexed stock funds. 

Paris, New York, Delhi, Shanghai, London: The world’s major metropolises are hotbeds of art, culture, and finance – as well as inequality, pollution, and, well, actual heat. It’s true. Cities are warming at faster rates than rural areas, thanks to their high concentrations of concrete and asphalt. These materials trap heat, which in turn increases global warming. They’re also hubs for consumption, construction, and traffic. In fact, the globe’s cities are responsible for 75 percent of energy use and 80 percent of carbon emissions.

Climate change will undoubtedly be felt more keenly in cities. Cities account for only one percent of the world’s land, yet 55 percent of the world’s population lives in them. Moreover, 75 percent of cities are on or near a coast, making them vulnerable to rising sea levels. Asian mega-metropolises like Jakarta and Bangkok are especially at risk. Elsewhere, Venice, New Orleans, and Miami face immediate threat. So what can cities do to mitigate the coming climate crisis?

Remember the cartoon series The Jetsons? It was first released in 1962, but is set in the year 2062, where it followed the adventures of a futuristic family, the Jetsons. Father and husband George zipped off to work every day in a flying car, while his wife, Jane, delegated household chores to the robot housekeeper. 

By the year 2030, we might not be commuting in flying cars – but we can expect lots of exciting technological developments in the next ten years.

If you’ve ever observed kindergartners playing with buckets and spades in the sandpit, you’ll know it’s true: sharing doesn’t always come naturally. But by 2030, we’d better have gotten used to it. The sharing economy is on the rise. Soon, we’re all going to own less and share more.

Imagine having a home on every continent, or a car in every city you visit. The only catch is, they’re not yours. Or not just yours. You’re one of many people who pays a fee to access them. Does that bother you? If the answer is no, you could well be a millennial or a Gen Zer. Statistics show that you value lifestyle over property, and are far more likely than your parents to see the value in paying a low price to use a product rather than paying a high price to own a product.

Late in the thirteenth century, the intrepid Italian explorer Marco Polo ventured to China. He was the first European to set foot there. He saw lots of amazing things that hadn’t yet arrived in Europe, like gunpowder and porcelain. But the thing that really blew his mind? Paper money. The explorer observed it being exchanged with great solemnity, “as if it were pure gold or silver.”

These days, we’re comfortable using forms of money that are increasingly abstracted from the value they represent – from the paper currency that so impressed Marco Polo to stocks and bonds. And the next potential revolution in currency is already well underway. By 2030 cryptocurrencies may have moved from the fringe to the mainstream.