Is 2008 going to see radical changes or just the continuation of the current, powerful and well established trends? My guess is that we could get fairly big economic surprises particularly in the second half, yet no matter the size and scale of such surprises, 2008 is going to be very exciting given the variety of challenges and opportunities our world faces.
On the economic front, a global slowdown is anticipated and actually welcomed as competition for natural resources exacerbates. The slowdown may however be quite moderate so that demand for natural resources and energy is likely to remain strong and inflationary pressures could strengthen. Unbalances in growth between BRIC (Brazil Russia India China) + other Asian and Middle East countries, and USA / Western Europe should increase, with significant economic consequences - the recent bail out of large US / European banks by Asian and Middle East sovereign funds illustrates well the on-going phenomena.
On the innovation front, the current powerful trends are expected to develop at full speed; it’s hard to list all the numerous trends that are fundamentally reshaping our way of living with accelerated momentum but here is my own priority list:
- sustainable development - watch in particular the emergence of green sites leveraging social networks
- renewable energy and cleantech
- social networking and entrepreneurship leveraging web 2.0
- mobility
- videomania
- google and apple mania, with a bunch of new projects such as semantic search, google health, etc… that will lead entire industry sectors
- and of course biotech and medtech
Significant opportunities in particular develop at the convergence of technology and societal trends - such as green community networks, mobile videos, etc…
Definitely the environment is very much in favour of innovation and provides plenty of room for entrepreneurship. It’s up to us!
I wish you a very healthy, enjoyable, energetic and successful New Year.
Jean-Philippe Lallement, Founder
