Wall Street Journal bestseller
A revolutionary analysis of the global trends underway that will end the world as we know it. Will you be prepared for what comes next?
Once upon a time, the world was neatly divided into prosperous and backward economies. Babies were plentiful, workers outnumbered retirees, and people aspiring towards 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.
That world—and those rules—are over.
By 2030, a new reality will take hold:
- There will be more grandparents than grandchildren
- The middle-class in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa will outnumber the US 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
- There will be more robots than workers
- There will be more currencies than countries
According to Guillen, 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 and from unorthodox points of view. Rather than focusing on a single trend—climate-change or the rise of illiberal regimes, for example—Guillen encourages us to consider the dynamic inter-play between a range of forces that will converge on a single tipping point—2030 AD—that will be, for better or worse, the point of no return. 2030 will revolutionize the way we think about cataclysmic change and its consequences.
