2030

A groundbreaking analysis of the fundamental demographic, economic and technological trends rapidly remaking the world — and now accelerating under the global impact of COVID-19.

Once upon a time, the world was neatly divided into prosperous and backward economies. Babies were plentiful, workers outnumbered retirees, and people aspiring toward the middle class yearned to own homes and cars. Companies didn’t need to see any further than Europe and the United States to do well. We grew up learning how to ‘play the game’, and we expected the rules to remain the same as we took our first job, started a family, saw our children grow up, and went into retirement with our finances secure.

That world — and those rules — are over. By 2030, a new reality will take hold. Before you know it:

• There will be more grandparents than grandchildren
• The middle class in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa will outnumber the middle class in the United States and Europe combined
• The global economy will be driven by the non-Western consumer for the first time in modern history
• There will be more global wealth owned by women than men In his powerful analysis, Mauro F. Guillén shows that the only way to truly understand the global transformations underway — and their impacts — is to think laterally. That is, using ‘peripheral vision’, or approaching problems creatively from unorthodox points of view. Rather than focusing on a single issue — climate change or the rise of illiberal regimes, for instance — Guillén encourages us to consider the dynamic interplay between a range of forces that will converge on a single tipping point that will be, for better or worse, the point of no return.