GEAB 140

This in-depth assessment of our anticipations for the year will be used to update our map of major global transformational trends. We present here a synthesis of a year of anticipations tested against reality and placed in a more classical temporal continuum (past and present). This meticulous work is specially intended to enable everyone to purge their mental map of all the certitudes that still obscure their vision but don’t fit with reality. With this update of the GPS map, your navigation of the future will definitely be much safer!

For a fluid and interconnected world, belonging to a group should not be exclusive (GEAB 2019)

Highlight: End-of-year ‘gifts’ 

In October, we announced some good surprises for the end of the year:

Brexit, the US-China trade war, NATO, the Middle East; the surprises at the end of the year could abound… but the real surprise is that they could also be good surprises… especially on the economic front, which should experience some breakthroughs.

We don’t seem to have made a mistake: optimism about the signing of a US-China deal; about the United Kingdom’s exit on 31 January; about the ability of NATO allies to agree on substantive reform; about the easing of tensions in Yemen, Ukraine… even economic figures are singing a cheerful song.[1]

Figure 1 – Dow Jones Index, Dec 2018- Dec 2019. Source: Boursorama.

Systemic issues

Transformation speed: On the global systemic transition, we reported the arrival of a phase in which the transformation speed would slow – this being evocative of landing in the “world-after” (or new world order).