WHAT HAPPENS AFTER WHAT COMES NEXT? PREPARING FOR A DECADE OF DISRUPTION Towards the end of 2021, Hazlewoods invited business leaders to attend an interactive, online presentation with internationally recognised futurist, Graeme Codrington. Graeme joined us to help understand the forces that will shape our lives in the next 10 years, and how we can respond in order to confidently stay ahead of change. In this article, we summarise some of Graeme’s thoughts. PREPARE FOR DISRUPTION The next 10 years are likely to see more change than the last 30 or 40 years combined. We have spent the last few decades creating building blocks for change, such as the internet, smartphones, and different technologies, that are now going to accelerate transformation across industries. Furthermore, there are political changes, economic shifts, geopolitical upheaval, extreme weather pushing quickly towards a green agenda, and much more.
IT IS NOT ALL DOOM AND GLOOM There are some really positive changes coming in the next 10 years that are going to remarkably change our world. In the medical and pharmaceutical arena, COVID-19 has allowed medical development to speed up dramatically, and experts will be able to take some of the mRNA advances that have been proven in delivering vaccines and apply those in other areas. CRISPR was the technology that was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020, and it is the next step beyond mRNA. Researchers hope to use it to alter human genes to eliminate diseases; create hardier plants; wipe out pathogens and more.
CHANGES IN THE RULES FOR SUCCESS AND FAILURE It is important to understand what the norms and standards are in an industry, i.e., how an industry is structured and how businesses operate within that, almost uniformly. If leaders look forward a decade, it is likely that at least some of these norms and standards will have changed. For example, by 2031 will professional services still be charging by the hour? Is it more likely that, between now and the end of the 2020s a lot of the work that needs to be done in accounting, tax and audit is going to be driven by machines? To prepare for the future, leaders should contemplate what might be a surprise to them in their industry that is not a surprise to anybody else who is looking from the outside in. The danger is that they fail to see what everybody else sees.
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Spring 2022 - Hazlewoods Magazine
