“We are already in an era of profound shifts, innovation, and discontinuity,” Eamonn Kelly, Deloitte Chief Futurist, stated in one of his latest works. In the paper The next frontier: Innovating toward Sustainable Abundance, the expert analyzes the main global challenges in terms of climate and sustainability, as well as the functioning and survival of businesses and people. For the author, it is more than possible to coexist. But for this to happen, changes that are already underway need to be maximized.

According to Kelly, many limitations on our capacities and capabilities are being reduced rapidly by technological advances. But each shift must be targeted toward boosting the critical innovations required for our journey toward Sustainable Abundance:  

Responsible business

“After decades of rigorously focused shareholder capitalism, many businesses are now actively embracing a broader stakeholder capitalism and using new tools like the Sustainable Value MapTM.”

Reperceiving globalization

“Having reached a plateau in the rapid expansion of cross-border trade, globalization is now manifesting in increasingly distributed innovation activity, growing interdependence around shared challenges, and highly fluid geopolitics.”

Return of government

“The role of government has varied over history and geographies. In much of the world, many citizens and even businesses are looking to government for increased leadership around mounting challenges like climate change, technological disruption, growing inequality, and security threats.”

Rising networked power

“Amplified by massive digital connectivity and information sharing, networked power models are challenging conventional, hierarchical models of influence and fostering the emergence of highly collaborative, co-creative, and productive cross-sector ecosystems.”

Radical science and technology

“The exponential progress of technologies including AI, biotechnology, and nanotechnology is ushering in a new era of scientific discovery and opening up rich new frontiers for innovation—while also presenting considerable recognized risks and challenges.”

The author believes that, together, these shifts help reveal the broad shape of progress and an increasingly clear, albeit emergent, innovation agenda.

—

Source: Deloitte US