Storyboard18 | Bookstrapping: ‘2030: How Today’s Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything’

(Representational image) Women will own 55% of the world's wealth by 2030, writes Mauro F. Guillén in his book '2030: How Today's Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything'.

Nutshell time - here’s a book that says it's pointless to sit back and wish the world would just stay the same. It never has. And now, more than ever, the world is in the midst of massive change whether we like it or not. So drop whatever it is that you're doing and read this book. Or read a summary somewhere. And this is as good a place as any because we've got you covered!

First up - the author of 2030: How Today's Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything, Mauro F. Guillén writes as though 2030 is just around the corner, not in the faraway future. He’s right.

Who’s he again? Guillén is a professor of international management at the Wharton School. Does that work for you in terms of credentials? Because some impactful stuff is to follow! The good news is that this is not a politically charged book - it’s a book about patterns and projections that affect us all.

Five big ones - and I’m using the hyperbole ‘rule’ to drive home the point.

1. Grandparents will rule: The human population will look vastly different by 2030. The world will be older almost everywhere. The elderly (constantly being edged out today in preference of younger folk) will have a greater say in the world economy - thanks to a lifetime’s accumulation of disposable income. On the other hand, some elderly will suffer because of zero pensions and no young to take care of them.

2. Women will rule: Women will like this - 55% of the world’s wealth will be owned by women... though only a few will benefit because of inequality. And women will rule because of better choices- less alcohol consumption, more secondary education, etc. Simple logic there.

3. Africa will rule: Or not. They have 500 million acres of fertile land, and the whole world is interested in them. That’s why. They will not ‘rule’ in a sinister empire sense but have more influence on the rest of the world.

4. Asia will rule: Asian middle-class markets will grow at a much faster clip than in Europe and North America. But you knew that already.

5. Cryptocurrency will rule: Abstract forms of money are here to stay - chiefly because they cut out middlemen and are tough to hack. Also, you must study Estonia, a country that presents itself as an e-republic and what that means.

Guillén is worried about cities - they occupy one percent of the world’s land yet are home to about 55 percent of the human population. He’s also worried about the dehumanisation of cities, he quotes the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who in 1929 after a stay in New York said, “There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers’ battle with the heavens that cover them.”

There’s come criticism that he’s perhaps not dwelt enough upon the environment; oversimplifying it by saying that “small, ordinary adjustments to our daily behaviour” can stimulate the dramatic carbon reduction necessary to mitigate climate change. And there’s a chapter titled ‘Imagine no possessions’, which took me back to John Lennon.

Summing up, the lessons for you and I are; be nimble, leave many exits, change often. Because the world is already doing it.