D. Franklin - Megachange: The World in 2050

Contents

OTHER ECONOMIST BOOKS

Guide to Analysing Companies

Guide to Business Modelling

Guide to Business Planning

Guide to Economic Indicators

Guide to the European Union

Guide to Financial Management

Guide to Financial Markets

Guide to Hedge Funds

Guide to Investment Strategy

Guide to Management Ideas and Gurus

Guide to Managing Growth

Guide to Organisation Design

Guide to Project Management

Guide to Supply Chain Management

Numbers Guide

Style Guide

Book of Isms

Book of Obituaries

Brands and Branding

Business Consulting

Business Strategy

Buying Professional Services

The City

Coaching and Mentoring

Doing Business in China

Economics

Emerging Markets

Marketing

Modern Warfare, Intelligence and Deterrence

Organisation Culture

Successful Strategy Execution

The World of Business

Directors: an AZ Guide

Economics: an AZ Guide

Investment: an AZ Guide

Negotiation: an AZ Guide

Pocket World in Figures

Copyright 2012 by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Published simultaneously in Canada.

Published in Great Britain and the rest of the world by Profile Books Ltd

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

ISBN 978-1-118-18044-0 (cloth)

Contributors

Barbara Beck is The Economist s special-reports editor.

Geoffrey Carr is The Economist s science and technology editor.

Philip Coggan is the Buttonwood columnist and capital-markets editor of The Economist . He is the author of The Economist Guide to Hedge Funds and, most recently, Paper Promises: Money, Debt and the New World Order .

Simon Cox is The Economist s Asia economics editor, based in Hong Kong.

Tim Cross is a science correspondent at The Economist .

Kenneth Cukier is The Economist s data editor. Previously he was the newspapers Japan business and finance correspondent, based in Tokyo.

Martin Giles is The Economist s US technology correspondent, based in San Francisco. He has covered business for the newspaper from New York, Paris and London.

Anthony Gottlieb is a New York-based writer. A former executive editor of The Economist , he is the author of The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance.

Robert Lane Greene is The Economist s professional-services correspondent, based in New York. He also edits Johnson, The Economist s blog on language, and is the author of You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity .

Charlotte Howard is The Economist s health-care correspondent, based in New York. She was previously the newspapers Midwest correspondent, based in Chicago.

Laza Kekic heads the Economist Intelligence Units regional team of analysts covering central and eastern Europe. He is also director of the EIUs Country Forecasting Service.

Edward Lucas edits The Economist s international section. A former Moscow correspondent, he is the author of The New Cold War: How the Kremlin Menaces Russia and the West and, most recently, Deception , a book on east-west espionage.

Zanny Minton Beddoes is The Economist s economics editor, based in Washington, DC.

Oliver Morton is The Economist s briefings editor and was previously energy and environment editor. He is the author of Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet and Mapping Mars: Science, Imagination and the Birth of a World .

John Parker is The Economist s globalisation editor. His previous roles include bureau chief in Washington, Moscow and Brussels.

Matt Ridley is a former science and technology editor, Washington bureau chief and United States editor of The Economist . He is the author of several books, including, most recently, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves.

Ludwig Siegele is The Economist s online business editor. He was previously the newspapers London-based technology editor.

Matthew Symonds is The Economist s defence and security editor. His previous roles with the newspaper include industry editor and political editor.

Paul Wallace is The Economist s European economics editor. He is the author of Agequake: Riding the Demographic Rollercoaster Shaking Business, Finance and our World.

Adrian Wooldridge is The Economist s management editor and Schumpeter columnist. He is co-author of several books and, most recently, the author of Masters of Management: How the Business Gurus and Their Ideas Have Changed the World for Better and for Worse .

The editors

Daniel Franklin is executive editor and business-affairs editor of The Economist . He is also the editor of The Economist s annual publication on the year ahead, The World in....

John Andrews has written for The Economist for more than 30 years and is deputy editor of The World in .... He is the author of The Economist Book of Isms.

Introduction: meet megachange

Daniel Franklin

IT WAS 250,000 YEARS BEFORE the worlds population reached 1 billion, around 1800. But it took only a dozen years for mankind to add its latest billion, passing 7 billion in October 2011, by the United Nations official count. This is megachange: change on a grand scale, happening at remarkable speed. It is all around us. Technology is spreading astonishingly fast think of the internet, mobile phones and the oceans of information now captured on computers or transmitted via social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. The global economy is tilting towards Asia in front of our eyes. All this is having a deep impact on peoples lives, businesses strategies, countries politics and the planets prospects.