Part consultancy, part thinktank, part social enterprise, Halcyon helps you prepare for and respond to personal, organisational and societal change.
2015
What's Changing? - Work

Please see below selected intelligence about work. This is a synthesis of major recent developments at corporates, business schools, thinktanks, media, commentators, and other key influencers in our external environment.
See also:
April 2018
- Gallup at Work is a new a monthly newsletter claiming to cover everything you need to create an exceptional workplace.
- Today there are no shortage of institutions trying to make the world of work that more liveable. But, asked the RSA, what if a job is no longer enough to get by?
- What is the future of work? - McKinsey & Company
- The Future of the Workforce - Deloitte
- Future Workforce: Reworking the Revolution - Accenture
- The Future of Work - Gartner
March 2018
- Automation is continuing to move income from workers to owners, according to a new study by the Brookings Institute. "Displacement need not imply a decline in employment, hours, or wages. Rather, it simply requires that the wagebill - that is, the product of hours of work and wages per hour—rises less rapidly than does value-added".
January 2018
- The informal sector – the part of the economy where people work/employ without declaring it to the government –comprises 41 percent of the GDP of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. That’s a massive amount of untaxed income and unregulated working conditions.
January 2017
- Forecasts on the impact of technology on the future of work are deeply polarised, creating fear of the challenges to come and inaction on new opportunities. What do we know about the transformation underway and what short- and long-term innovations hold the greatest potential to navigate these changes?
June 2016
- The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy uses real-time data from Google trends and more than 100 billion searches to forecast the rate of joblessness across the EU. The Czech republic will have EU’s lowest unemployment next month at 4.27% ,while Greece has the highest with 25.26% The EU average in June will be 9.07%.
- Asking "what’s the future of the workplace?", an MIT professor predicted that new technologies will enable more decentralised decision making and ultimately more freedom in business.
- Within the next decade, nine out of 10 of your fellow employees may well be gone. Instead, their functions will be carried out by an “on-demand” roster of 10 times their number - permanent freelancers in long-term, flexible arrangements, paid per project in teams corralled by HR managers more akin to Hollywood casting agents. That’s the view at least of an executive fellow of organisational behaviour at the London Business School, who specialises in generational change in the workplace.
May 2016
- The World Economic Forum (WEF) released its Future of Jobs report - a survey based on 15 economies comprising 1.9 billion workers, or 65% of the world’s workforce. It predicts that sweeping changes to the global workforce will lead to more than 5.1 million jobs being lost by 2020 - with 7.1 million positions lost among routine white-collar office functions and 2 million new jobs created in computer science, mathematics, architecture, engineering and related fields.
- Forecasts of real GDP growth attract a lot of media attention. But what matters more to the person on the street is how growth translates into jobs. Unfortunately, the mediocre growth outlook of recent years may lead to a disturbing outlook for jobs, warned the World Economic Forum, particularly among fuel-exporting countries and in the Latin America and Caribbean region.
April 2016
- The OECD area employment rate – defined as the share of people of working-age in employment – increased by 0.2% in the fourth quarter of 2015, to 66.5%, just below its pre-crisis peak of the first quarter of 2008.
March 2016
- About 200 million people are unemployed globally, according to BCG. As a result of demographic shifts, there will be a need for 600 million new jobs over the next 15 years to keep current employment rates stable, particularly in Africa and Asia. At the same time, many companies cannot fill positions because applicants lack the right skills, especially in developing countries.
February 2016
- Most countries produce reliable statistics on the number of people who are employed and unemployed but they find it harder to measure what they call non-standard or contingent work - where the employment relationship is fractured, impermanent or unclear. These labels also apply to people working in the “gig economy” and the “human cloud” of online taskers. Many believe this sort of work is on the rise, but the numbers we have are patchy and ambiguous and policymakers are flailing around in the dark, warned the Financial Times.
January 2016
- The number of jobless people in the world is set to rise this year, as problems in emerging markets prevent the global unemployment rate from returning to pre-crisis levels. The International Labour Organisation, a UN agency, forecasts that the number of unemployed people in emerging and developing countries will increase by 4.8m in the next two years.
- The eight-hour workday hasn't changed much since Henry Ford first experimented with it for factory workers. Now, Americans work slightly longer - an average 8.7 hours- though more time goes into email, meetings, and Facebook than whatever our official job duties actually are. Is it time to rethink how many hours we spend at the office? In Sweden, the six-hour workday is becoming common.
December 2015
- Will robots replace people at work? Rapid advances in technology, from big data to artificial intelligence, are revolutionising the way we work and businesses are keen to capitalise on resulting efficiency gains. Raconteur's latest report explored workplaces of the future, including the impact of virtual reality and wearable technology, gamification in the recruitment process, the rise of the freelance economy and top business technology trends for 2016.
- According to Project Syndicate, in the Middle East, half of those aged 18-25 are either unemployed or underemployed. Aggravating this situation is the global refugee crisis, which has displaced some 30 million children, six million from Syria alone, very few of whom are likely to return home during their school-age years.
- Will computers take your job? According to a new book by a financial journalist, they’ll take the “cognitive” work but not the “interaction jobs”. For a long time to come, those positions will need real people with "authentic empathy". Many people get a buzz from collaborating with other people, and computers can’t replace that. New socioeconomic value, 'Humans are Underrated" argues, could therefore derive from innate human skill at engaging with others – collaborating, bonding, creating, caring and giving.
- A new book, The Refusal of Work, argues that the time has to come to challenge the work-centred nature of society. The author, David Frayne, an academic who looks at consumerism and radical approaches to work, describes the powerful view that jobs are an expression of our creativity and selves. There is for some, a religious devotion to work. He writes: “Gratifying work is a fantasy that we have all been trained to invest in, ever since our teachers and parents asked us what we wanted to ‘be’ when we grew up.” Moreover, he argues that “those activities and relationships that cannot be defended in terms of economic contribution are being devalued and neglected”. How different this is from economist John Maynard Keynes’s prediction in 1930 that in 100 years we would devote most of our week to leisure.
- Real estate billionaire Jeff Greene warned that technology will kill white-collar jobs. He says new forms of technology will only exacerbate the growing gap between the rich and the poor, because, he claims, we have left ourselves unprepared for the inevitable automation of many jobs traditionally done by humans. He said: “What globalisation did to blue collar jobs and the working class economy over the past 30 or 40 years, big data, artificial intelligence and robotics will do to the white collar economy - and at a much, much faster pace.”
- Meanwhile, Finland's government is drawing up plans to give every one of its citizens a basic income of 800 euros a month and scrap benefits altogether. A poll commissioned by the agency planning the proposal, the Finnish Social Insurance Institute, showed 69% supported the basic income plan.
November 2015
- The European Commission, together with the European Business Network for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR Europe), launched the European Pact for Youth, a mutual engagement of business leaders and the EU to improve the chances for young people of getting a job, at the Enterprise 2020 Summit. The Pact is an appeal to all business, social partners, education and training providers and other stakeholders to develop or consolidate partnerships in support of youth employability and inclusion.
- It's tough for employees to meet performance goals when they don't know exactly what's expected of them. And far too many employees fall into that category. Based on Gallup's work with companies worldwide, only about half of employees strongly agree that they know what is expected of them at work. Helping employees to set and achieve goals is a manager's key responsibility, but Gallup analysis in Germany shows that many managers don't really own this task. To free employees to take initiative and inspire high performance, managers need to set clear expectations, hold employees accountable for meeting them and respond quickly when employees need support. But managers also should hold themselves accountable for meeting employees' performance needs.
- The OECD unemployment rate was stable at 6.7% in September 2015, 1.4 percentage point below the January 2013 peak. Across the OECD area, 40.9m people were unemployed, 8.0m less than in January 2013, but still 6.4m more than in July 2008, immediately before the crisis. The euro area unemployment rate declined by 0.1% to 10.8%, its lowest level since January 2012. Within the euro area, the largest fall was in Spain (down to 21.6%, now having decreased every month for two years). The unemployment rate in September was stable in Japan (at 3.4%) and in the US at 5.1%), while it increased in Canada (to 7.1%). More recent data show that in October 2015, the unemployment rate fell by 0.1% in the US (to 5.0%) and in Canada (to 7.0%).
October 2015
- In One Algorithm to Rule Them All, strategy+business argued that we’ll likely see is unemployment creeping up, downward pressure on the wages of more and more professions, and increasing rewards for the fewer and fewer that can’t yet be automated. Meanwhile, in Will automation replace our jobs?, the professor of management practice at London Business School, discussed the impact of automation trends in the workplace, and in particular how this will affect the work of internal communicators.
- However, in Will Robots Put You Out of a Job, Or Give You a New One?, Design News concluded that over the long term, productivity increases and advances in technology have always created more jobs.Project Syndicate also noted that, while this is an age of anxiety about the job-killing effects of automation, with dire headlines warning that the rise of robots will render entire occupational categories obsolete, such fatalism [wrongly] assumes that we are powerless to harness what we create to improve our lives - and, indeed, our jobs.
- Looking much longer-term, in On the Edge of Automation, in five hundred years from now, claimed venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, fewer than 10 percent of people on the planet will be doing paid work.
- KPMG’s recent piece, Bots in the Back Office: The Coming Wave of Digital Labour explored the ‘withering’ BPO industry. KPMG’s report said “The concept of labour arbitrage as the primary value lever of business process outsourcing (BPO) is dying. The geographic discussion is giving way to automation."
- The EU28 unemployment rate was 9.5% in August 2015, stable compared to July 2015, and down from 10.1% in August 2014 - details.
September 2015
- Eurozone unemployment fell to its lowest level in three years, hitting 10.9 per cent in July amid encouraging data from countries such as Italy that have been hardest hit by the region’s economic crisis. The 213,000 fall in eurozone joblessness has left the rate at its lowest since February 2012. Across the region, 17.5m people in the labour market remain without work. In Spain, the jobless rate fell to 22%. Greece, Portugal and Ireland - all recipients of economic rescue packages - have witnessed dips of about two percentage points over the past year to 25%, 12.1% and 9.5% respectively. Italy’s unemployment rate dropped unexpectedly to 12% in July.
August 2015
- The Millennial generation is causing dissonance in the expectations of many traditional employers, a recent survey from PwC shows. Only 14% wants to work in the traditional office setting in the future and 20% would prefer a ‘virtual’ collaborative space in which to work. In addition, there is a shift to more freelance based work.
- As Europe’s post-crisis workers live through huge labour market upheaval, with growing numbers surviving on short-term contracts, the Financial Times analysed what this means for young people, business and the economy. The FT believes that, in Europe, the increase in temporary work is sinister, as it reflects a rise in precariousness rather than autonomy.
- To identify the 54 Best Companies to Work For, 24/7 Wall St. examined reviews from current and former employees on Glassdoor.com. The best US companies to work for were concentrated in particular industries. For example, technology companies are well represented among the highest-rated employers, as are consulting firms. Of the 54 best companies, only nine received an average rating of 4.0 or higher on a scale of 1.0 to 5.0. Of these, five are in the technology space and several consulting firms also made the list. Seven out of the 54 best companies provided consulting services, including the Big Four. The high pay associated with the technology and consultancy industries may also explain the relatively high worker satisfaction. Not only are software engineers and consultants some of the highest-paid individuals in the workforce, but employees at companies on this list tend to be paid more than similar professionals at other companies.
July 2015
- Creating high-impact employment experiences for youth, a report from EY and the MasterCard Centre for Inclusive Growth, highlighted the fact that global youth unemployment is on the rise and is expected to remain unchanged through 2018. But there is some good news. As the report indicates, some businesses are discovering the dividends of offering work and employment opportunities to young people.
- Unemployment across emerging markets has risen sharply this year, reversing a six-year slide, even as it has continued to fall in developed countries. The figures compound a worsening slowdown in emerging markets, driven by a fall in commodity prices and a pullback in global trade, which threatens to drag consumer spending down.
- The OECD Employment Outlook 2015 highlighted what has been mentioned in countless political speeches over the past years: Europe is suffering a social crisis. Unemployment rates give the first indication of this: whereas unemployment has fallen below 6% in the United States and is under 4% in Japan and South Korea, in the euro area the unemployment rate remains above 11%. It is clear that Europe is still lagging behind the rest of the world when it comes to employment.
June 2015
- According to Deloitte, organisations today must navigate a “new world of work”- one that requires a dramatic change in strategies for leadership, talent, and human resources. In this new world, barriers between work and life have been all but eliminated. Employees are "always on" — hyperconnected to their jobs through pervasive mobile technology. Networking tools enable people to easily monitor the market for new job opportunities. Details about an organisation’s culture are available at the tap of a screen, providing insights about companies to employees and potential employees alike. The balance of power in the employer-employee relationship has therefore shifted - making today’s employees more like customers or partners than subordinates.
- In the Simplification of work: the coming revolution, Deloitte argued that organisations are simplifying work in response to employees becoming overwhelmed by increasing organisational complexity, growing information overload, and a stressful 24/7 work environment. Technology, globalisation, and compliance needs continuously add complexity to work. Left unaddressed, this can lead to an organisational environment that damages employee engagement, lowers quality, and reduces innovation and customer service. Business and HR leaders should therefore, for Deloitte, put “simplification” on the agenda for 2015 and focus on individual, organisational, and work-specific programmes that reduce complexity and help people focus on what really matters.
May 2015
- For the first time since the financial crisis, the employment rate of the population aged 20 to 64 in the EU increased in 2014, reaching 69.2% but not yet its 2008 peak (70.3%). A similar pattern can be observed for men: their employment rate has hit 75.0% in 2014, up compared with 2013 but still below its 2008 level. In contrast, the employment rate of women has continuously risen since 2010 to 63.5% in 2014, above its previous 2008 peak of 62.8%. The Europe 2020 strategy target is to reach a total employment rate of people aged 20 to 64 of at least 75% in the EU by 2020.
April 2015
- According to new Gallup research, employees with the longest tenures in a company are also the least likely to be engaged. After years with the same company, most workers lose some of their motivation to make a difference. Many grow apathetic over time and spend each day doing the minimum to get by. Some nurse grudges for years and even undermine the company when they get the chance.
January 2015
- Unemployment will continue to rise in the coming years, as the global economy has entered a new period combining slower growth, widening inequalities and turbulence, warned a new International Labour Organisation report. By 2019, more than 212 million people will be out of work, up from the current 201 million.
November 2014
- A London Business School professor identified forces shaping the future of work, arguing that technology is rapidly redefining the way we all work, enabling new forms of collaboration across traditional business boundaries. Trends that will profoundly reshape the context and practice of work in coming decades include the rebalancing of globalised markets for goods and labour; dramatically changing demographics; the widening of skills gaps; the demise of middle-skill work; and the rise in the importance of talent clusters, but one other stands out as having the most profound impact on the way work is done and, indeed, as underpinning all of these: IT-enabled hyperconnectivity.
- Tower Watson's The 2014 Global Workforce Study: Driving Engagement Through a Consumer-Like Experience provided a detailed view into the attitudes and concerns of workers globally, with responses from 32,000+ employees across a range of industries in 26 markets. Key findings: (a) just four in 10 employees are highly engaged, so there is room for improvement, (b) regardless of employee age, base pay is the reason most frequently cited by employees for joining or leaving a company and (c) 41% of employees cite job security as a key reason to join a company.
October 2014
- BCG and The Network conducted research on today’s global workforce - everything from what people in different parts of the world expect of their jobs to what would prompt them to move to another country for work to the countries they would consider moving to. More than 200,000 people from 189 countries participated in the survey. The picture that emerged is of a global workforce that is stunning in its diversity - but that is also in broad agreement in certain areas. The areas of agreement included: a high level of willingness to work abroad; the greater appeal of certain work destinations than others; the importance to would-be expatriates of broadening their personal experiences; and the growing interest in “softer” workplace rewards.
- In The Future of the Workforce - a world of contingencies, Shaping Tomorrow argued that the changes in both the nature and skills required of employees and the dynamics in the global labour market are creating both uncertainty and opportunity. Many labour trends have been stable for long periods of time, yet are now entering a period of greater change. Contingent workforces are on the rise. For example: businesses will face a shrinking workforce and fiercer competition for skilled workers; many service industries may shed much of their workforceto automation and more of the workforce may be located in service sectors and the average output per worker (and thus average productivity in the economy) will rise.
- However, the global problem of umemployment has become a major challenge for governments and international organisations alike. According to the International Labour Organisation, almost 202 million people were unemployed in 2013 around the world. Of this figure, 40 million are long-term unemployed (out of work for over 12 months). In view of this situation, KPMG argued that it becomes crucial to seek new and effective ways to activate the unemployed and, consequently, to curb high unemployment.
- Meanwhile, in Wealth without workers, workers without wealth, The Economist noted that the digital revolution is bringing sweeping change to labour markets in both rich and poor worlds. The modern digital revolution, with its hallmarks of computer power, connectivity and data ubiquity, is disrupting and dividing the world of work on a scale not seen for more than a century. Vast wealth is being created without many workers; and for all but an elite few, work no longer guarantees a rising income.
September 2014
- High joblessness across most of the developed world results mostly from the tepid pace of recovery, rather than increased structural unemployment, a finding that has important implicationsfor policy, the OECD said in a new report. The developed world “is still recording a jobs deficit,” the report said, noting that almost 45 million people are without work - 12.1 million more than before the global financial crisis hit almost six years ago. Weak aggregate demand accounts for a significant part of the persistence of high unemployment, with the number of openings per unemployed jobseeker remained low by historical standards.
August 2014
- Working in an office is becoming increasingly unpopular, with a growing trend away from the traditional nine-to-five day, according to a new PwC report. A survey of 10,000 adults in five countries found that only 14% wanted to work in an office in the future. About one in five of those surveyed said they would prefer to work in a "virtual" environment, where they could work from any location. The report said the lack of interest in working in an office showed a growing desire for people to have more flexibility in their careers.
- The informal sector – the part of the economy where people work/employ without declaring it to the government –comprises 41 percent of the GDP of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. That’s a massive amount of untaxed income and unregulated working conditions.
December 2015
- Will robots replace people at work? Rapid advances in technology, from big data to artificial intelligence, are revolutionising the way we work and businesses are keen to capitalise on resulting efficiency gains. Raconteur's latest report explored workplaces of the future, including the impact of virtual reality and wearable technology, gamification in the recruitment process, the rise of the freelance economy and top business technology trends for 2016.
- According to Project Syndicate, in the Middle East, half of those aged 18-25 are either unemployed or underemployed. Aggravating this situation is the global refugee crisis, which has displaced some 30 million children, six million from Syria alone, very few of whom are likely to return home during their school-age years.
- Will computers take your job? According to a new book by a financial journalist, they’ll take the “cognitive” work but not the “interaction jobs”. For a long time to come, those positions will need real people with "authentic empathy". Many people get a buzz from collaborating with other people, and computers can’t replace that. New socioeconomic value, 'Humans are Underrated" argues, could therefore derive from innate human skill at engaging with others – collaborating, bonding, creating, caring and giving.
- A new book, The Refusal of Work, argues that the time has to come to challenge the work-centred nature of society. The author, David Frayne, an academic who looks at consumerism and radical approaches to work, describes the powerful view that jobs are an expression of our creativity and selves. There is for some, a religious devotion to work. He writes: “Gratifying work is a fantasy that we have all been trained to invest in, ever since our teachers and parents asked us what we wanted to ‘be’ when we grew up.” Moreover, he argues that “those activities and relationships that cannot be defended in terms of economic contribution are being devalued and neglected”. How different this is from economist John Maynard Keynes’s prediction in 1930 that in 100 years we would devote most of our week to leisure.
- Real estate billionaire Jeff Greene warned that technology will kill white-collar jobs. He says new forms of technology will only exacerbate the growing gap between the rich and the poor, because, he claims, we have left ourselves unprepared for the inevitable automation of many jobs traditionally done by humans. He said: “What globalisation did to blue collar jobs and the working class economy over the past 30 or 40 years, big data, artificial intelligence and robotics will do to the white collar economy - and at a much, much faster pace.”
- Meanwhile, Finland's government is drawing up plans to give every one of its citizens a basic income of 800 euros a month and scrap benefits altogether. A poll commissioned by the agency planning the proposal, the Finnish Social Insurance Institute, showed 69% supported the basic income plan.
What's Changing? - Regulation

Please see below selected recent intelligence about regulation. This is a synthesis of major recent developments at business schools, thinktanks, media, commentators, and other key influencers.
2018
What's Changing? - Cybersecurity

Please see below selected recent external intelligence about cybersecurity. This is a synthesis of major recent developments at corporates, business schools, thinktanks, media, commentators, and other key influencers.
2018
March
GZERO Media warned that there’s no Geneva Convention for cyberspace at the moment. Without global agreement on the distinction between online behavior that is merely bad and what’s truly unacceptable, it’s difficult to determine proportionality in the cyber realm. Does large scale IP theft, for example, demand the same response as hacks or disruptions of critical infrastructure?
What's Changing? - Society

What would it take to build a more just society? In contemporary debates about justice, identity is frequently front and centre, but the 20th-century American philosopher John Rawls thought that looking past identity was the key to more equality. In his book A Theory of Justice (1971), Rawls argued that if we could build a society from behind a ‘veil of ignorance’ that kept us from knowing anything about our identity, we would make choices resulting in a fairer society than we now have – one in which all would benefit from greater freedom and ‘fair equality of opportunity’.
See also:
2018
January 2018
2017
July 2017
- Battling modern slavery - Raconteur
- Buying time promotes happiness - PNAS
- Future Workplace Special Report Published in The Times
- How will you drive talent strategy in the digital age?
- How work changed to make us all passionate quitters | Aeon Essays
- Independent work: Choice, necessity, and the gig economy | McKinsey & Company
- India is a migration superpower. Here's why | World Economic Forum
- Jinfo Blog: Jinfo for knowledge management
- Policymaking must become more empathetic rather than continuing its current overreliance on economic measures - LSE
- Preparing for a new era of work | McKinsey & Company
- Superfluid Labor Markets — Tapping Into Skilled Talent Anywhere and Everywhere - EYQ
- The cost of universal basic income might be lower than you think | World Economic Forum
- The Era of Ownership Is Ending - Futurism
- The World's Broken Workplace | Gallup
- These are the most peaceful countries in the world | World Economic Forum
- This is how a universal basic income can end financial exclusion | World Economic Forum
- Universal basic income could work in Southeast Asia — but only if it goes to women | Responsible Business
- You might not believe it, but the world just got a bit more peaceful | World Economic Forum
- Navigating through new forms of work | Deloitte University Press
- Navigating the future of work | Deloitte University Press
- The changing nature of careers in the 21st century | Deloitte University Press
- Tom Friedman interview: Jobs, learning, and the future of work | Deloitte University Press
- Workforce of the future - The competing forces shaping 2030:PwC
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August 2017
- Inadequate sleep costs employers $7 billion a year: How to look after your employees' wellbeing - Deloitte
- The cost of universal basic income might be lower than you think | World Economic Forum
- The future of jobs: is decent work for all a pipe dream? | Tim Jackson | Global Development Professionals Network | The Guardian
- The rise of philanthropic investing - Raconteur
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September 2017
- 'Inspirational' robots to begin replacing teachers within 10 years
- British Social Attitudes: Record number of Brits with no religion
- The 'internet of things' is sending us back to the Middle Ages
- Why economic growth doesn't mean social progress | World Economic Forum
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October 2017
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November 2017
- Companies That Lead on Societal Impact Reap Financial Benefits - BCG
- IGP's Social Prosperity Network publishes the UK's first report on Universal Basic Services | UCL Institute for Global Prosperity - UCL - London's Global University
- Refugees are not the creators of the crisis. They are the victims | World Economic Forum
- Robots will drive us to rethink how work is distributed - FT
- The 2017 Best for the World Honorees 846 Companies Leading the Way to a Shared and Durable Prosperity for All - BCorp
- The progressive case for immigration - Free exchange
- The rise of inequality: Can it be reversed? | LinkedIn
- To fix income inequality, we need more than UBI—we need Universal Basic Assets — Quartz
- What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills, and wages | McKinsey & Company
- Women in the Workplace 2017 | McKinsey & Company
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December 2017
- 10 Trends Shaping Migration - European Commission
- AI isn't just taking away our privacy—it's take away free choice, too — Quartz
- Inequality is a threat to our democracies - FT
- What does your country think about globalization? | World Economic Forum
- What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills, and wages: Jobs lost, jobs gained | McKinsey & Company
2016
October
- 4 Megatrends in the World of 2030 - SOSV
- A world without work is coming – it could be utopia or it could be hell | Ryan Avent | Opinion | The Guardian
- Approaches to Leveraging Female Talent - World Economic Forum
- The jobs of the future – and two skills you need to get them | World Economic Forum
September
- Future jobs: How many will they employ? - Book of the Future
- Check out these 10 jobs of the future - Silicon Republic
- China Eclipses the US to Become the World's Largest Retail Market - eMarketer
- I already live in the future — and so should you - The Washington Post
- Map of Global Mega-Trends 2016 - What's Next: Top Trends
- The decline of cash? - raconteur.net
- Three Paths to European Disintegration by Philippe Legrain - Project Syndicate
- Universal basic income is an idea whose time has come at last - Workplace Insight
August
- All Can Be Lost: The Risk of Putting Our Knowledge in the Hands of Machines - The Atlantic
- An end to facile optimism about the future — FT.com
- BBC - Capital - Is full-time work bad for our brains?
- Could we be our own biggest obstacle to health care reform? — Quartz
- Economic decline is leading to political instability. What's the solution? | World Economic Forum
- Fully cashless society by 2036, study projects | Network World
- Future Agenda
- How to identify a mega trend | Business Standard News
- Mega-Map of Global Mega-Trends | What's Next: Top Trends
- Shaping Tomorrow : Megatrends
- The lag between demography and the concurrent social systems - EIU
- The surprising solution to inequality: economic common sense | World Economic Forum
July
- All Can Be Lost: The Risk of Putting Our Knowledge in the Hands of Machines - The Atlantic
- An end to facile optimism about the future — FT.com
- BBC - Capital - Is full-time work bad for our brains?
- Could we be our own biggest obstacle to health care reform? — Quartz
- Economic decline is leading to political instability. What's the solution? | World Economic Forum
- Fully cashless society by 2036, study projects | Network World
- Future Agenda
- How to identify a mega trend | Business Standard News
- Mega-Map of Global Mega-Trends | What's Next: Top Trends
- Shaping Tomorrow : Megatrends
- The lag between demography and the concurrent social systems - EIU
- The surprising solution to inequality: economic common sense | World Economic Forum
May-June
- Big business moves into co-working spaces - FT.com
- Does future growth depend on the universal basic income? - Prospect
- Education trends towards 2030 - The Economist
- On the future of taxes - Reddit
- Realising gender equality’s $12 trillion economic opportunity - McKinsey & Company
- The Future of Humanity’s Food Supply Is in the Hands of AI - WIRED
- U.S. sees first case of bacteria resistant to all antibiotics - Reuters
April
- How will workplaces change by 2025? - Wired
- On the ongoing rise of smart homes - Book of the Future
- Six trends shaping the evolution of health and wellness in 2016 and beyond - Trend Briefing
- The coming $1.5 trillion shift in healthcare - strategy+business
- The ‘connected work’ market will be worth almost $US63bn globally by 2020 - PwC

Please see below selected pre-2016 intelligence about sustainability. Please contact Dominic Kelleher with any questions.
June 2015
- Sustainability-focused startups are entering established companies’ market space, bringing both new threats and new opportunities. Employees want to work for them, customers are willing to pay more for their products and investors are eager to become shareholders. “Hybrid social ventures” like Whole Foods, Patagonia, and Honest Tea that combine commerce with sustainability missions are leading the movement for sustainability-oriented innovation in business. For established companies that were not necessarily built with sustainability in mind, these new entrants are competing for their most attractive customers and talent.
- It took about $150bn in today’s money to put a man on the moon in the 1960s, and now it is said we need to come up with the same amount to save the world from climate change. That is the message from Sir David King, UK Foreign Office climate envoy, and six other prominent British scientists, business people and civil servants behind a climate plan modelled on the US Apollo space programme. They want large countries to spend an average of 0.02% of gross domestic product a year for the next decade to encourage the technical breakthroughs needed to make renewable electricity cheaper than coal by 2025.
On Leonard Cohen

"So come, my friends, be not afraid.
We are so lightly here.
It is in love that we are made;
In love we disappear."
Happy posthumous birthday, Lenny.
You tried, in your way, to be free. Thank you. Now go join that great gig in the sky. So I wrote a year ago, when Lenny left us. However, the legend lives on - listen for example to How the Light Gets In.
'We Love Leonard Cohen' celebrated his 81st Birthday, and then, for his 82nd and final birthday, Leonard gave us a present. "You Want It Darker" is the title track to last album, his 14th studio album in his 49-year recording career. (See also Leonard Cohen Makes it Darker.)
"Leonard Cohen offers the possibility of living with grace, dignity, and integrity, without submitting to illusions, without succumbing to indifference, and without indulging in denial of our own failures and flaws, in a world that is too often corrupt and malevolent" - Allan Showalter
What's Happening? - SDG 6. Clean Water and Sanitation

Please visit this page regularly for significant developments concerning the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal goal six (SDG 6) of ensuring clean water and sanitation by 2030.
What Happened? - Africa

Please see below selected pre-2016 intelligence about Africa. This is a synthesis of major recent developments at corporates, business schools, thinktanks, media, commentators, and other key influencers.
2016
- The “Africa Rising” narrative gained momentum around 2010. As is the way with these things, it arrived about a decade late - and just as things were about to go pear-shaped. Investors, hungry for yield, alighted on the only continent where living standards had not yet visibly begun to converge on those in the west. Their bet was that Africa had turned a corner. Were they wrong? These days, the mood has darkened. Nigeria and South Africa, which account for half of sub-Saharan Africa’s gross domestic product, are at or close to recession. Nigeria has squandered its oil boom. Long-sluggish South Africa has failed to meet the pent-up expectations of its black majority. The hopes of other resource-rich countries — including Angola, Mozambique and Zambia — have faded along with commodity prices. A flawed election in Uganda, plus a cavalcade of leaders clinging grimly on to power, from Zimbabwe to Burundi, undermine the idea that governance is on the mend. Those who helped change the Africa narrative, however, are sticking to the script. Among the true believers is the consultancy McKinsey, whose 2010 “Lions on the Move” report did much to feed the original story. This week it published a follow-up . Call it “Africa Rising: The Sequel”.
- South Africa’s economy grew by an annualised 3.3% in the second quarter, the fastest pace since late 2014. In the first three months of the year GDP contracted by 1.2%, leading to fears of recession, but mining, the mainstay of the economy, has since rebounded. #SouthAfrica: Consumer inflation slowed to 5.9% year on year in August, from the 6% reported for July.
- India’s vice president vies for influence in West Africa. Hamid Ansari is finishing a trip to Nigeria before embarking on the first high-level Indian visit to Mali in history. India has been touting itself as a preferable alternative to China for foreign investment in Africa, promoting its long history in the region and the potential for mutual benefits.
December 2015
- The sixth Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), held on 4–5 December 2015, set in motion a deeper pattern of exchanges with its partners that could drive economic transformation across the continent. In ‘scaling-up’ measures to ease African bottlenecks in infrastructure, skills and finance. China is already a leader in investing and financing infrastructure in developing countries, with an estimate that China financed US$13.4 billion of African infrastructure in 2013. This sum surpassed the total financing provided by European and North American countries combined, as well as that of all multilateral and regional development banks.
- As access to the internet is growing, so are cyber ]crime rates in Africa where businesses and governments are starting to face a new type of threat for which few are currently prepared. Statistics show that 298 million people in Africa are active internet users, nearly 30% of the total population, a number expected to grow as internet penetration continues to improve in towns and rural areas. The financial sector is by far the most vulnerable sector. For example, every year Kenya's Commercial Bank loses $9.4 million to cyber perpetrated fraud. Resulting not only in economic loss but also affecting brand image and market reputation, there is a significant need for corporate entities to recognise these cyber threats and develop incident response strategies.