Helping you navigate the new normal
The chemical industry is the best leading indicator for the global economy. On Friday, I had the privilege of discussing a wide range of key issues with Ajaya Sharma in a lunchtime interview for India’s main business station, ET Now. Our interview focused on a number of critical areas and why the future is going
All of us would love to be able to see into the future. And 5 years after the publication of ‘Boom, Gloom and the New Normal: How the Ageing of the Western BabyBoomers is Changing Demand Patterns, Again‘, it seems timely to review its 10 predictions about how the world will look in 2020: […]
Companies and investors need to refocus on demand as the key driver for revenue and profit growth. Supply-driven business models are no longer sufficient. ‘How do we do this?” is the key question, as I discuss in this short video interview with ICIS deputy news editor, Tom Brown: The key is to focus on critical […]
Around 1 in 3 of all babies born this year in the rich countries of the world are likely to live to be 100 years old. Its an astonishing change, when one remembers that life expectancy was just 34 years in the West only 200 years ago. UK data provides major insight into the opportunity […]
There is never a shortage of growth opportunities. But too often companies choose not to access them. Hopefully that won’t happen with the opportunity to supply millions of tonnes of polymer to meet India’s desperate need for toilets. As the blog wrote recently, 600 million Indians currently defecate in fields – as shown above in the photo – […]
As the blog discussed last week, it seems that a new type of leader is starting to emerge in some of the world’s major countries. Premier Narendra Modi in India, like President Xi Jinping in China, seems to be focused on achieving change – and not just on staying in power for its own sake. His […]
Chapter 6 of Boom, Gloom and the New Normal in October 2011 was one of the first detailed analyses to highlight the way in which pollution was rapidly moving up the political agenda in China. Controversial at the time, it warned: “Recent growth in China and India has come at a price: Poor air quality, chronic water […]
The Euphrates is the longest river in Western Asia at 3000km (1850 miles), and with the river Tigris (1850km) it has been supporting Middle Eastern agriculture for 450k years. But new research from the Water Resources Research academy confirms that bo…
The latest Global Risks report from the World Economic Forum warns that its highlighted “societal risks all have a relatively high likelihood of occurring in the next 10 years”.
As the chart above shows, the top 3 risks are those also highlighted in ‘…