[2010 trends] 10 global trends this year

Miniaturisation:

Every business process will go through intense compression and digitalisation so when it comes out on the other side of the tunnel, it will have already considerably reduced its operational costs. This will enable the process to function effectively, more powerfully, and be highly replicable, with a lower cost structure like a proverbial silver bullet.

Will this now shrink entire office floors into cubicles, and cubicles into little icons on websites? Who would need to come to the offices anyway; managers, to put their feet on desks, water cooler crowds, elevator pitch experts or just the office cleaners? Is this the reason commercial office space is about to fall off the cliff?

Both big and small businesses will be shrinking to survive; with increasing competitive pressure the requirement is to become the silver bullet. Are you running a bullet speed operation or lost in the office maze?

Lateralisation:

The realignment of both the cerebral hemispheres is also urgently required with the next automobile tune-up. Many exhausted and stressed-out individuals throughout the world have suffered tremendously over the last few years, intensifying with the economic collapse.

This raises serious questions about the functionalities of senior executives, their basic business logic, financial literacy and the right-left-brain balance.

Why did the business systems and financial services fail so badly? Despite all the high level education, was their vision got blurred, or was capital risk management insufficient so the real world imploded? Was it the lack of lateralisation which fogged the reality? Is it time to rediscover new types and styles of educational agendas, new methods and new formats of operation?

A new wave of educational programs will sweep the executive corridors. Are you newly trained and outfitted as a gladiator or you are just an old-time spectator?

Trillionisation:

Once society becomes immune to the trivialisation of the trillionisation of nations' debts, it will become a real comfort pillow for the public consciousness to sleep on. After a year of struggle, overconfidence about a US$1 million net profit may sound like an embarrassingly minute accomplishment when pleading for plant expansion funds to a banker, whose tight-fisted policies, despite receiving a US$100 billion bailout, still do not solve your business issues.

The overly casual use of the word trillion, as an ordinary measurement of the rising deficit, with each hiccup is going to diminish our respect and regard to the daily challenges of life, dealing in only a few millions of dollars. Is this the reason why nobody is any longer impressed by how much money you have made during this great recession?

New methodologies and new types of presentation collateral will be required to pitch for any serious business game plan. Do you have the new tools to present your business plan or would you prefer the sign language?

Infotoxication:

If the information is more toxic than the toxic assets themselves, what is the point of believing anybody? Just stay intoxicated; forget joining AA.

The truth is being morphed into twisted sugar candy by the day to keep the masses high while credibility gaps are getting wider by the hour. Is there really a person or a body on this planet that the global masses would blindly believe? Is there a government, a department, a corporation, an NGO, a global body, a credit reporting agency, a polling service or a bank?

What happened? Was it a meteor hit, or just a daisy-cutter type memory loss? Why has trustworthiness simply disappeared and why was credibility just wiped out? Is this the reason for the lowest rating when any head of state goes for national public broadcasts? Is this the reason that newspapers and TV are becoming irrelevant and disappearing?

Creating solid credibility will be the biggest challenge for both the public and private sectors in this new decade. Do they trust you with their life or with empty bottles?

Googlelisation:

If society is already overly dependent on Google without a quick early morning handshake, the day simply doesn't start. The sun does not come out and the moon stays stuck behind the clouds. The entire global search-centric culture is based on Googling to put life in perspective, determine the importance of anything - news, personalities, money matters, buying or selling of any idea.

The new product and services from the mother ship Google will keep us even more comfortably tangled in a kind of great and free service till we all get overly cozy, almost dazed and habitually responding to our stimuli.

What Google did in the last 10 years took others a century to even approach. Today, Google can be credited with a trillion dollar savings in time costs, by having information in seconds available to the global public. It is hard to imagine a life on this planet without it.

Become a Google expert and find all the possible options to build your expansion strategies around its access and services. Ignore the sobbing in other media and advertising as they have run out of batteries. The introduction of new ideas, ranging from phone and gadgets to insurance and banking services, will create amazing shock waves and exciting opportunities to feel the global pulse in real time. Are you being Googled? If not, do it yourself.

Domainisation:

If several key languages other than Roman alphabets are allowed, it will make the Internet really global. It will be a dynamic adjustment, colourful and yet at times extremely confusing, so what should brand name holders do? Scream foul in other languages; buy dictionaries, or simply go exploring on world trips?

A name is the most important and critical component of any serious business today. If a name is not worthy of protection as it is already diluted and confusing, then it could surely become a nightmare very soon. Only well-balanced and protected name holders will really be allowed to play the superior games on new platforms of TLD now offered by ICANN.

A serious business without a solid global name is like a dull joke in search of laughter. Global understanding of domain name management and naming architecture skills will be where all the battles of social-media-searching and customer acquisition will be headed.

So is your name identity a shiny star or a dull object?

Ghettoisation:

Is social media in reality becoming an anti-social-media, as Joe-Social has little or no real relationship with Jane-Public, except as a spectator cheering at dull events? Is it creating its own social-ghettos, where micro-gatherings are only blocking crowd-gathering?

Will this fad mould into another form of personal personification like an old phone directory but with pictures and some quirky messages? If advanced level personal data were manipulated to determine the next action to plant a selling proposition, would it not eliminate all the old selling procedures? Can you imagine this as a new online CyberHeaven or will it be CyberHell?

Is it time to buy stock in delivery vans? Will new processes seriously replace old-style location and large inventory-based retail industry thinking, along with the traditional advertising? Are you in social-media-heaven or anti-social-purgatory?

Cybernetisation:

Once all the processes are electronic, digitised, portable and in cyberspace, then what is the point of a regimented 9-to-5 Monday-to-Friday working society? Free at last!

If everyone were working and thinking while connected to some large portal spread out on a global range, what would it do to corporate structure, hierarchies, protocols and decorum? Would society cope with such an open-ended free flow of work? Will it change habits and daily routines?

Will you find more people in libraries, cinemas, malls or restaurants? Will they just stay home and watch 3DHDTV and get more depressed about repeated ‘socio-politico-economico-climatico-damaged-news'?

Will the home-craft industry boom and autos stay in the garage? Will backyards turn into small grow-op farms, and will groceries stores be quieter? Are you already undressed to be hard-wired?

Frugalisation:

While ‘shop till you drop dead' created the greatest recession, then ‘save till you drop' will keep you there forever.

Was it the failure of capitalism and liberal economic policies without regulation that resulted in ‘beg, borrow and steal, shop at high interest plastic and boost Dow at 15000'? It will surely take all the income to finance these shopping bills.

The capitalist free enterprise system seems broken. Communism and socialism are also not the answer. The society all over the world is getting a free crash course on economy, and what they are going to derive is that saving is perhaps the only way. Wealth is created by actual work and not by spending. Is it possible that the US may end up with a Japan-like decade?

The intense frugality at the main street will spread and linger all over. Are you saving or spending enough or do you have a printing press too?

Globalisation:

If globalisation is the only way to go forward, despite all the nationalism, what will the new world would look like? Will it eventually create select alliances and free trades? Will it create blocks, or just battles in a sandbox?

The search for best markets, best labour and minimum regulation is where the private corporate jets would be parked. The talk of nationalism would primarily feed the textual lines to the tele-prompters all over the world, but the real protectionism will not work well for most of the nations.

The internationalism of business is already way out of the bag and this is where all the cutting edge skills are required. Multiple countries, languages and cultures will all dance to one tune in the same boardroom. New global standards will drive marketing, naming and image management. Are you basically local, somewhat ‘glocal' or truly internationalist?