Notes from Seven Revolutions Webcast
by Erik Peterson, Senior Vice President, Center for Strategic and International Studies
- See also: Global Strategy Institute and GSI Blog
- Intro
- Saint Exupery – “… your task is not to foresee the
future, but rather to enable it.” - Inverse correlation between leadership responsibilities
and the capacity to plan and lead strategically - William Gibson – “The future is here; it’s just not
widely distributed.”- Our capacity to look at short and long range trends is
better than it has ever been
- Our capacity to look at short and long range trends is
- Saint Exupery – “… your task is not to foresee the
- What will the world look like in the year 2025?
- What are the challenges facing humanity?
- To what extent will we be able to deal with the
organizational situations in front of us? - What are the precursors of a better world?
- To what extent are we vulnerable more even now?
- Seven Revolutions
- Population
- Strategic Resource Management
- Technological Innovation and Diffusions
- Information and knowledge creation/distribution
- Economics
- Conflict
- Governance
- Overarching Comments
- Darwin – “It is not the strongest species that survive,
nor the most intelligent… but the ones most responsive to change.” - Einstein – “No problem can be solved from the same
consciousness that created it.” - Need to think about a new paradigm
- Darwin – “It is not the strongest species that survive,
- 1. Population
- Where we have been: from 150 million to 6 billion people
in 1999- We are growing at a rate of millions every year: 2.4
people per second - Now at about 6.7 billion people
- 8.0 billion in 2025, 9.2 by 2050
- We are growing at a rate of millions every year: 2.4
- Global population growth in an absolute sense has been
going up, but the rate of growth as slowed significantly- We can anticipate a stabilization of 9-10 billion
people at the end of the century - But… the highest growth will be in the poorest
countries - Soviet Union, for instance, has de-population; China,
in 2005, has a contracting population
- We can anticipate a stabilization of 9-10 billion
- Population expansion and contraction
- Most populous countries in 1950 had six well developed
economies; by 2050, only the US will be in the top ten - 15% of population is migrants in 50+ countries
- Developed world could contract
- Tensions in population with immigration, for instance
in France
- Most populous countries in 1950 had six well developed
- Global aging
- More older people on our planet than younger ones in
the near future - Life expectancy has gone from 50 years in 1950 to
nearly 80 by 2050
- More older people on our planet than younger ones in
- Urbanization
- 60% of humanity in urban areas by 2020
- Could be good for education, health, and other social
services - But… it is bad, too. More slum dwellers in Mumbai and
in all of Norway
- Change in distribution of world population — move from a
pyramid to a rectangle- Tremendous capacity problem for those who are younger
to work with those who are older - “Age quake” in industrialized country — more older
people in industrial world than youth; more youth in undeveloped world
- Tremendous capacity problem for those who are younger
- Where we have been: from 150 million to 6 billion people
- 2. Strategic Resource Management
- Food
- Need to be looking at issues that have change
agricultural horizon - We currently have 800 million chronically
undernourished people — can we feed 8 billion? - Doubling global food production
- No limits to growth in agricultural productivity and
water… yet- But, how much more usable land it there?
- How much more water?
- Effects of global warming?
- Need to be looking at issues that have change
- Water
- Imagine that all the world’s water was in one gallon…
only two drops would be accessible fresh water. - 2025 – 3 billion face severe water shortages
- One flush of a western toilet – one day of use of water
in a developing country - Need twice the amount of water by 2050, and then 50%
more for each generation after that - Mobilizing new and old technologies
- Climate change will negatively affect our ability to
deal with all of these factors
- Imagine that all the world’s water was in one gallon…
- Energy
- Transitioning away from oil will be the most difficult
thing we can face - Reliance on hydrocarbons continues to increase more and
more - By 2025, US will still rely on 65-75% of oil
- Developing world is using more and more oil, up to US
levels by 2030 - Can we continue with this same infrastructure,
environmental impact, and geopolitical forces
- Transitioning away from oil will be the most difficult
- Food
- 3. Technology Innovation and Diffusion
- Computation
- Deep computing
- 467 trillion calculations per second
- Pervasive computing
- No longer a discrete experience
- Information security
- Personal privacy
- Deep computing
- Biotechnology
- Human genome project allows us to think about what used
to be impossible — personalized medicine - 120 year life span?
- How do we regulate human cloning and the broader
manipulation of the body? - Who will get to see these technologies and who will not
- Human genome project allows us to think about what used
- Nanotechnology
- Nanotech is moving down to the molecular and atomic
level - Could have need for 2 million nanotech workers in near
future
- Nanotech is moving down to the molecular and atomic
- Computation
- 4. Information and Knowledge Creation and Dissemination
- Global information and knowledge flow — the death of
distance? - Eroding prerogatives, redefining community, shattering
established practices - Children today will go through a number of career
changes; need to retool - Differentiating between learning and working — are they
becoming the same thing? - Shorter life span of information — need to reeducate in
order not to become stale - Thomas Friedman — The World is Flat — “innovate without
having to emigrate” - What is right, what is wrong, what is true, what is false?
- We choose our truth based on where we get our
information - Reduced decision times
- More complex issues
- Polarized positions
- We choose our truth based on where we get our
- We need to be knowledge proficient
- Global information and knowledge flow — the death of
- 5. Economic Integration
- National Intelligence Council, “Mapping the Global Future”
- 80% output growth to 2020
- 50% growth in average per capita
- “It is now possible to produce a product anywhere to be
sold anywhere…” - Global economic output of industrialized countries has
gone down while non-industrialized countries are going up - China increases to 129% of US output by 2050
- Brazil, Russia, India, and China are beginning to
overtake the G6 - That said, 2.8 billion people live on less than $2 a day
- 225 richest people in the world = combined annual
earnings of 2.7 billion other people
- 225 richest people in the world = combined annual
- National Intelligence Council, “Mapping the Global Future”
- 6. Conflict
- How will terrorist groups use the information capacity?
- Bioterrorism — anthrax and ricin attacks
- Even in the context of this revolution, we need to find
ways of retrofitting a cold war mentality in the new kinds of theaters
that are occurring today.
- 7. Governance
- We are now beyond nation states, but one in which
corporations and NGOs are taking a bigger role - 9 of the largest corporations would be in the top 50 GDPs
of the world - How are new standards for corporations, moving beyond
profitability - Exponential growth in NGOs around the world
- What does this mean?
- Atomization
- Dispersion
- Fragmentation
- Henry Kissinger — challenges now are different in that
they are global and information is readily available to all - Innovative, dynamic coalitions
- We are now beyond nation states, but one in which
- Conclusions
- Promise and fulfillment or peril and danger
- World of higher deviations
- Hyper-promise and hyper-peril
- Need Hyper Leadership
- Promise, not Peril
- Leaders, not Managers
- Strategy, not Tactics
- Lincoln — thinking and acting anew
- Challenging future leaders