Business Trends for Future

Business in today’s world is undergoing paradigm change and every year industry has seen changes in the factors having critical impact of nature of Business. Companies struggle hard to come in terms with the fast pace of change happening in the world of business. Customer taste, loyalty, technology and economic factors undergo rapid changes within very short span of time. Mckinsey has come up with list of Top 10 trends which are likely to have major impact in 2006.


Macroeconomic trends

1. Centers of economic activity will shift profoundly, not just globally, but also regionally.

2. Public-sector activities will balloon, making productivity gains essential. The unprecedented aging of populations across the developed world will call for new levels of efficiency and creativity from the public sector.

3. The consumer landscape will change and expand significantly. Almost a billion new consumers will enter the global marketplace in the next decade as economic growth in emerging markets pushes them beyond the threshold level of $5,000 in annual household income—a point when people generally begin to spend on discretionary goods.

Social and environmental trends

4. Technological connectivity will transform the way people live and interact. The technology revolution has been just that. Yet we are at the early, not mature, stage of this revolution. Individuals, public sectors, and businesses are learning how to make the best use of IT in designing processes and in developing and accessing knowledge. New developments in fields such as biotechnology, laser technology, and nanotechnology are moving well beyond the realm of products and services.

5. The battlefield for talent will shift. Ongoing shifts in labor and talent will be far more profound than the widely observed migration of jobs to low-wage countries. The shift to knowledge-intensive industries highlights the importance and scarcity of well-trained talent. The 33 million university-educated young professionals in developing countries is more than double the number in developed ones.

6. The role and behavior of big business will come under increasingly sharp scrutiny. As businesses expand their global reach, and as the economic demands on the environment intensify, the level of societal suspicion about big business is likely to increase.Business, particularly big business, will never be loved. It can, however, be more appreciated.

7. Demand for natural resources will grow, as will the strain on the environment. In China, for example, demand for copper, steel, and aluminum has nearly tripled in the past decade.The world's resources are increasingly constrained. Water shortages will be the key constraint to growth in many countries.

Business and industry trends

8. New global industry structures are emerging. In response to changing market regulation and the advent of new technologies, nontraditional business models are flourishing, often coexisting in the same market and sector space.

9. Management will go from art to science. Bigger, more complex companies demand new tools to run and manage them. Indeed, improved technology and statistical-control tools have given rise to new management approaches that make even mega-institutions viable.

Today's business leaders are adopting algorithmic decision-making techniques and using highly sophisticated software to run their organizations. Scientific management is moving from a skill that creates competitive advantage to an ante that gives companies the right to play the game.

10. Ubiquitous access to information is changing the economics of knowledge. Knowledge is increasingly available and, at the same time, increasingly specialized. New models of knowledge production, access, distribution, and ownership are emerging. We are seeing the rise of open-source approaches to knowledge development as communities, not individuals, become responsible for innovations.

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