Future Thinking … 10 megatrends driving 50 transformational opportunities for the world … harnessing the power of tech to reimagine our health, environment, communities, systems and progress

March 14, 2025

It’s increasingly difficult to make sense of the speed of progress.

The acceleration of AI is mind boggling, doubling in its power every 3 months. ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, and many others, will soon be displaced by a new generation of agentic bots and intelligent interfaces. Transforming work, play, and almost every aspect of life. The advances in multionomics, or genetic engineering, are at a similar pace, and even more profound. Ready to transform our bodies, health, and our very concept of living. And more. Much more.

Our understanding of progress will continue to evolve. We will need to reflect on and adapt to what we think meaningful progress looks like. However, as the world moves towards more complexity, and in an era of quantum shifts, change is happening very quickly, making foresight both increasingly more challenging and more important.

At the start of 2025 I brought together over 100 trend reports, as a platform to share in keynotes and workshops, and also for my own sanity. Not being up to speed feels stressful, not being able comprehend seems alienating. But we all need more fluid minds to cope in today’s fast and complex spaces, to make some sense of the drama and dimensions of change.

I started with a trend kaleidoscope if you like, analysing all the reports, curating the most profound changes, relevant right now. You can download the presentation A to Z:

But then I needed to go much further.

Incredible Tech

There are many sources of foresight. Some accessible, some credible, some comprehensible. Most people tend to focus on technology. Revolutionary, rampant and remarkable. AI’s impact is already incredible, as its ability to galvanise other tech, and in particular networks (blockchain), multinomic (genetics), energy (storage), and robotics.

Two of the best future tech reports that come out each year have just been published

  • Big Ideas 2025: ARK Invest focus on the opportunities for investors in a bewildering world of opportunity
  • Tech Trends 2025: Future Today Institute’s epic 1000 page report on the tech and tech titans embracing it

Tech gets all the focus, the glamour, the hype. But the future is much more than tech. It’s how you use it.

Inspiring Possibilities

How can tech address the big challenges of a changing world – social mobility, climate change, and much more? How can tech align with human capability and social aspirations, to enable us to do more? How can tech be embraced within new business models to create real breakthrough innovations which can transform markets and business?

To go beyond tech, I love the annual reports from the Dubai Future Foundation. While they might sound like a provincial think tank, preoccupied with turning the UAE into a land of foresight, they are much more  global thinking, and profound too. There are two fantastic reports, just published, exploring the big ideas for innovation and growth in a world of quantum shifts:

  • Megatrends 2025: Exploring the 10 megatrends that are shaping the world over the next decade
  • The Global 50: Focusing on the 50 big opportunities which these convergent trends offer us.

The emerging opportunities are driven by the convergent megatrends, and cluster into 5 significant opportunity spaces. The opportunities are defined in ways that sound futuristic, even fun, but have huge consequences for every government and corporation, startup and investor, in terms of how the rampant technologies and evolving societies could embrace them:

Opportunity Space 1: Health Reimagined … Redefine mental and physical health, support longer lives, drawing on science, technology and nature for better health and new ways to personalise access for individuals and communities everywhere.

  • Sense and Serenity
  • Viral Solution
  • Power Fungi
  • Organ Map
  • Mindscape
  • Alg-Air Purifier
  • Nanomedicine Over the Edge
  • Game-Changing Link
  • Breath of Intelligence

Opportunity Space 2: Nature Restored  … Minimise environmental risks and harness nature’s capacity to restore itself or have a positive impact on crucial environmental ecosystems and habitats, creating a more stable, healthier planet for all.

  • The Feel of Nature
  • Living Gardens
  • Floating Filters
  • Sonic Sweep
  • Planet Pulse
  • Deep-Sea Energy
  • Calcium Power Play
  • High Energy
  • Fish Waste to Value

Opportunity Space 3: Societies Empowered … Empower societies by offering solutions to humanity’s most complex and universal needs, optimising systems they rely on, safeguarding risks that could make societies more fragile in the face of crises, and extending individual and collective potential for growth and development.

  • Robot Rapport
  • Quantum X
  • Dystopian Inspiration
  • Reinventing Happiness
  • Aqua Tech
  • My Algorithm
  • Women’s Prosperity
  • Healthy Play
  • Climate Ready
  • A Catalyst for Common Good

Opportunity Space 4:  Systems Optimised … Improve and build more effective and resilient systems underpinning advances in services and solutions at various levels of business, government and society.

  • Cool Materials
  • Beyond Classification
  • Public Publications
  • Nutrition Spray
  • Dynamic Power Mix
  • Adaptive Patent
  • Perfect Chains
  • Global Sandbox
  • Renewable Asset Loop
  • Nature Shield

Opportunity Space 5: Transformational … The power to radically change ways of life by replacing the models that countries, communities and individuals live by. These new models enable individuals and communities to innovate and improve the transformation of humanity to new digital and non-digital realities.

  • Future-Proof Agreements
  • Energy without end 2.0
  • Economies on a Mission
  • Better Water Meter
  • Next-gen Geothermal
  • Space Flex
  • Innovation beyond Borders
  • Neural Charter
  • Dark Energy
  • Autoimmune Stem
  • Self-assembling Molecules
  • Higher Paths

Innovative Reinvention

The big question for most of us, is then how can we embrace these incredible opportunities within the businesses of today? How will they help to transform our mindset about possibilities, to supercharge innovation, to accelerate growth, to reinvent business?

Look around us, and we already have so many incredible innovators shaking up every market, not just through product innovations but through fundamental reinvention of organisations, markets, and entire industry sectors.

So which are the innovative companies around the world that inspire you? My passion is to track down and learn from the world’s most inspiring companies –  disrupting conventions, reinventing business models,  innovating and transforming, creating value with positive impact. Fast Company is a great source of inspiration, and has just launched their latest ranking

Every one of these companies has a fabulous story, and great insights in terms of how to unlock the new opportunities of change, and how to drive innovation for practical, profitable success. I typically focus most on their leaders, what inspires them, and their strategies, what drives their futures. You can explore many more on my website, A to Z of the Most Inspiring Companies.

What can you learn from them? In this world of incredible possibility, what will you do?

Because the future starts here. Next is now.

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