Influencing New Zealand's Future [2006]
Windshifts 2006 report entitled 12 Trends : What Customers Will Do Next and Why. is now complete. Here are some excerpts from the report - to give you something of the overall flavour of the report.
Excerpt One
.Many of the key elements of the next ten to twenty years have already been determined – simply by the way we think about them and behave towards them. Most of our eggs are already in ONE basket: producing an increasingly anxious, ambitious and stretched society, running at close to full capacity, but with the sinking feeling it’s going nowhere. Is this our future too?
Excerpt Two
. . There’s every chance that reasonable economic growth will occur in the next ten years. The BRIC economies [Brazil, Russia, India and China] will grow crazily in that time as more and more of their citizens rise above subsistence levels. There will be plenty of cash circulating in the global economy and it would be odd if we didn’t get our share.
Excerpt Three
There will be three elections in the next ten years for both central and local government. Expect possibly two changes of central government in that time as a powerful but fickle and fragmented electorate first flexes its muscles, then changes its mind. We’ll see increasingly reactive politicians, hide-bound public servants, a plethora of sources of advice – all conflicting - and very little progress
Excerpt Four
Though the most recent analyses suggest that the next ten years are critical in limiting the worst effects of greenhouse gases, there is little to suggest that we are ready to do this yet, unless there are personal social and economic benefits for doing so – higher status or savings, for example. Nothing about our behaviour suggests we will reduce our consumption of energy or natural resources [e.g. land, water].
Excerpt Five
. . . . This is a small nice country. But it’s becoming a bigger backwater in global terms than it really needs to be. Yes, we have a few smart entrepreneurs, artists and visionaries who’ve shown what you can do if you create and execute great ideas. Jeremy Moon, Sam Morgan, Geoff Ross are 2006’s hottest properties but there are others – Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor, Peri Drysdale, Claudia Batten, Karen Walker, Rod Drury, Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie . . They’re all dramatically expanding their value and influence in this country – not just because of what they’ve earned, but by what they say, where they’re seen and heard and who they encourage and inspire..
But we also have a lot of people sticking to what they know, unprepared to take risks or seek new opportunities. And a lot more who have no idea how little value they’re bringing to the collective as they go about their lives. It’s not that they owe us anything, just that they’re not amounting to much. Not fully optimising their future value. Or ours.
Let’s not be them.
[Copyright Windshift Communications Ltd 2006] Distribute [unchanged] with impunity. Quote with attribution.
Most of our eggs are already in ONE basket: producing an increasingly anxious, ambitious and stretched society, running at close to full capacity, but with the sinking feeling it’s going nowhere
