Re-Emergence: decoding the trends that will be shaping the world beyond the virus

Join us on December 17th, 2020, at 11.00am-12.00noon AEDT Australian Eastern Daylight Time.

If digital disruption was the dress rehearsal for your business transformation, then COVID19 has now made it a burning platform. By now, we know that this virus has wreaked havoc on lives and livelihoods. None of us has been immune to either type of future shock.

What does a world beyond the pandemic look and feel like? As leaders how do we prepare ourselves? 

Will we be going back to the status quo after lockdowns 2.0 ease, or will we be forever transformed? What will we value, and how will we be spending our disposable income? What technologies are here to stay? Will we be migrating back into cities for work, or stay at home? Will the physical and virtual continue to blend? Will frugality be the new norm? What consumer behaviour will shape the commerce of tomorrow?

Beyond COVID19, will we continue to be germophobes, or will the ‘2 Second Rule’ ever make a comeback? Did Corona deliver a deadly blow to the ‘Sharing Economy’? Have we finally understood exponentiality and science, and how to respond to it? Will we be ok with living in surveillance states, and will sustainability become the central tenet of the near horizon future? What about human gatherings and knowledge exchange - will we ever attend an analogue conference again?

Importantly, what can we learn from disruptive events in history and are we now potentially at the dawn of a re-emergence of human creativity, innovation and flourishing?    

Questions abound. And while answers about the future are not definitive, imagining emerging future worlds can help us prepare for tomorrow, and enable us to accelerate out of the curve today.

While history doesn’t necessarily repeat itself, occasionally it rhymes. After disruptive pandemics like the black plague and the Spanish Flu, human ingenuity has flourished.

Structural and existential shocks can bring about values and behavioural shifts that usher in transformative new worlds.

We believe we are at the beginning of such a re-set. 

Join futurists Chris Riddell and Anders Sörman-Nilsson as they reflect on 2020, decode tomorrow, and share re-emergence strategies for 2021.