The upside of
disruption
Megatrends shaping 2016
and beyond

Contents
4

Foreword

5

From disruption to megatrends

6

EY on disruption

8

Section 1: Understanding disruption
1.

How did disruption become mainstream?

2.

How is our understanding of disruption changing?

3.

What are the root causes of disruption?

4.

Why is responding to disruption so critical?

5.

Why is it so difficult to respond to disruption?

6.

How do businesses seize the upside of disruption?

7.

How does disruption lead to megatrends?

18 Section 2: Megatrends 20161.

Industry redefined2.

The future of smart

3.

The future of work4.

Behavioral revolution

5.

Empowered customer

6.

Urban world

7.

Health reimagined

8.

Resourceful planet

52 How will you seize the upside of disruption?

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond3Foreword

From disruption to megatrends

Welcome to EY’s The Upside of Disruption. Disruption is
everywhere and the future is uncertain — no one knows what theworld will look like even a decade from now. Our response is tohelp organizations find the opportunity in this challenge and ask:
how do you seize the upside of disruption?

As disruption becomes an everyday occurrence, we explore its
primary causes and the megatrends that are shaping our futureThis report has been produced by EYQ, a new initiative from EY that will bring
together businesses, the public sector and academia to challenge entrenched thinking,shift perceptions and help catalyze change. This is the first of many insights to comefrom EYQ. For more information on EYQ, see page 7.
In this report, you’ll see the primary causes of disruption and how these give rise to arange of megatrends that are shaping our future.
We investigate how each of these megatrends are affecting the world of workand society as a whole, and we share the questions that organizations must ask
themselves to stay relevant. Asking better questions is now more important than ever.

Disruption is fundamentally changing the way the world works. Today’s businesses,
government and individuals are responding to shifts that would have seemed
unimaginable even a few years ago. Artificial intelligence and robotics are reinventing
the workforce. Drones and driverless cars are transforming supply chains and logistics.
And changing preferences and expectations — most notably in the millennial generation —are altering consumption patterns and demand for everything from cars to real estate.
We have looked at the root causes of these transformative trends and, consequently,
have identified three primary forces behind this current wave of disruption: technology,
globalization, and demographic change. By understanding the interaction between theseforces, we’ve identified eight global megatrends which are shaping the future. These arelarge, transformative trends that define the present and shape the future by their impact
on businesses, economies, industries, societies and individual lives.
The eight megatrends generate key questions to answer:

Due to the accelerated pace of change, plans of today might be obsolete tomorrow, andthus learning how to ask the better questions can create or lead to the right thinking.

Industry redefined. Is every industry now your industry?

When responding to disruption and these megatrends, organizations cannot afford
to fall back on old solutions. Embracing creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, diversity
and inclusivity will enable businesses to challenge the prevailing paradigm and create
new business models. By building robust and responsive ecosystems and driving
collaboration in previously unexpected places, they can meet the evolving demandsof customers. Innovative practices such as these will be key to revealing the upsideof disruption.

The future of smart. What intelligence will we need to create a smart future?

The era of being afraid to make mistakes and take risks is over. Over the next 5 to 10
years, those who are bold and able to embrace disruption — and transform the way weall operate — will be the winners.

Urban world. In a fast-changing world, can cities be built with a long-term perspective?

The future of work. When machines become workers, what is the human role?
Behavioral revolution. How will individual behavior impact our collective future?
Empowered customer. How will you change buyers into stakeholders?

Health reimagined. With growing health needs, is digital the best medicine?
Resourceful planet. Can innovation make the planet resource rich instead ofresource scarce?

Uschi Schreiber
EY Global Vice Chair — Markets and Chair, Global Accounts Committee@uschischreiber
uschi.schreiber@eyop.ey.com

4

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

5EY on disruption
See the connections, not just the dots
The march of disruption is unrelenting and this can leave
today’s decision makers and leaders grappling with tremendous
uncertainty and a broad array of challenges. Responding
to disruption has become a central issue for incumbent
organizations everywhere.
EY’s approach to disruption is to amplify the signal rather than
the noise, and see the connections, not just the dots. We do thisby widening the lens through which we see disruption.
Disruption has commonly come to mean a transformation ofbusiness models and value networks driven by technology orbusiness innovation. However, the evidence is growing that it
can come from public policy, macroeconomic trends, geopoliticalevents and other developments. At the same time, disruption
upends more than business models and value networks; it cantransform political systems, regulatory regimes, social compacts
and much more.
Just as important, the perception of disruption is shiftingfrom that of threat to opportunity. Incumbents have begun
to embrace disruption to take advantage of the rapidlychanging environment.
At a time when there are so many unknowns and no easyanswers, we believe we must ask better questions. As people
are becoming less afraid of disruption and more accepting of its
inevitability, the better question becomes: How do you seize theupside of disruption?

6

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

EYQ
EYQ helps organizations seize the upsideof disruption. We generate new insights bybringing together people from business,the public sector and academia to challenge
entrenched thinking, shift perceptions andhelp catalyze change.
By asking better questions aroundmegatrends and other disruptive forces
impacting the global economy, we cantease out more creative answers. This
report is an example of the insights EYQ
will continue to deliver.
Asking better questions helps reveal theupside of disruption, which leads to a betterworking world.

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

7Section 1:
Understanding disruption

8

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

91. How did disruption become mainstream?
Disruption has worked its way into every sphere of our lives.
The rapid acceptance of disruptive innovations has led to a
growing awareness in the business community that disruption is
ubiquitous and accelerating.

Meanwhile, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of firms — from
Blockbuster Video to Waldenbooks and Zenith Electronics — failed
to adapt in time, and ended up either shadows of their former
selves or out of business altogether.

The birth of disruption

To highlight how commonplace the idea has become, we charted
the number of media articles mentioning “disruptive innovation”
between 2010 and 2015. Our research found an increase of
more than 440% during this period (see Media mentions of“disruptive innovation”, below).

The theory of disruptive innovation was first
posited by Harvard Business School professor
Clayton Christensen in 1995. According toChristensen, the term describes the transformationof business models and value networks by technology
or business innovation.

However, despite growing commercial awareness, only a handfulof companies have successfully disrupted their own businessmodels. For instance, Netflix switched its business model fromone built on DVD home deliveries to one built on streaming. Morerecently, auto giant Daimler have begun experimenting withmoves into car-sharing and ride-sharing.

At the time, he wrote about “disruptive technologies,”
since the most visible examples of disruption werein the information technology space. The frame ofanalysis soon expanded from disruptive technologies
to disruptive innovation, since the phenomenon is notjust about technological breakthroughs — disruption
can equally come from other innovations, such as
new business models or production processes. For
instance, the disruptive innovation that allowed
automobiles to displace horse carriages was not theinternal combustion engine but rather assembly line
production, which created reliable automobiles at anaffordable price point.

Number of media articles about“disruptive innovation”

Media mentions of “disruptive innovation“

624

918

1,528

1,745

2,075

2010 2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

378

Source: EY analytics using Factiva database. Figures show number of media articles mentioning “disruptive innovation” in each calendar year, excluding duplicates.

10

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

112. How is our understanding of disruption changing?
In the past two decades, the definition of disruption has expanded
far beyond its textbook meaning — the transformation of businessmodels and value networks by technology or business innovation(see The birth of disruption on page 11).
For one, it is increasingly evident that disruption does not stem
solely from technology or business innovations — it is also
influenced by demographic shifts, globalization, macroeconomic
trends and more.

between governments and citizens, and perhaps even calling into
question fundamental aspects of the human experience. Indeed,
one reason that the concept has gained widespread traction —appearing in everything from Hollywood movies to the surge of
populist political movements — is that it resonates so well withmuch of our shared experience.

3. What are the root causes of disruption?
Based on our analysis, we see three root causes behind disruption — what we refer to as “primary forces.” These forces —technology, globalization and demographics — are not new. Indeed, they have been around for centuries. But they evolve insuccessive waves, and it is these new waves that generate new megatrends. Understanding the next waves of disruption — and theinteractions between them — gives this root-causes-first approach more predictive power.
Our approach also provides a simpler and more balanced perspective. It narrows the field of vision by focusing on three causes rather
than a longer list of effects. It also widens the field of vision, since focusing on new waves of primary forces reinforces that any list of
megatrends is by definition incomplete and will expand over time.
The three primary forces of disruption are:

It is also evident that the effects of disruption are beginning toextend far beyond the business world. For example, “sharing
economy” start-ups such as Uber and Airbnb are alreadydisrupting regulatory frameworks. Meanwhile, some of the mostdisruptive technologies on the horizon (e.g., AI and robotics) will
not only disrupt corporate business models, but also society as
a whole — realigning income distribution, altering relationships

1

Technology. While we usually think of disruption in therelatively recent context of IT, advances in technology
have been disrupting business models for centuries. The
Industrial Revolution, for instance, eliminated guilds andcreated massive labor displacement. In our lifetime, successive
waves of the IT revolution (PC, online, mobile, social) havedemocratized data, empowered consumers and spawned
scores of new industries. The next waves — the Internet ofThings (IoT), virtual reality, AI, robotics — promise to beeven more revolutionary.

2

Globalization. Like technology, globalization has been
upending the status quo for centuries, going at leastas far back as the 15th century launch of the Age of
Discovery and colonialism. Globalization has accelerated inrecent decades, thanks to trade liberalization and emerging
market growth. These trends disrupt existing business models
by creating new competitors, reordering supply chains andlowering price points. The next waves — including the emergence

12

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyondof Africa and a more multipolar world — will increase complexity
and require flexible business models to respond to global shifts.

3

Demographics. Throughout human history, demographics
have determined destiny. In the decades ahead, relatively
high birth rates will make Africa and India engines of economic
opportunity. Aging populations will transform everything fromhealth care to real estate. Millennial-dominated workforces
will reinvent the workplace. Urbanization will increase cities’
economic and public policy clout, even as it strains their ability
to grow in sustainable ways. Migration and immigration will haveprofound impacts on workforces and economic development.
All these demographic shifts will require new strategies andbusiness models.
The continued evolution of these primary forces — andinteraction between them — leads to the disruptive megatrends
outlined in section 2.

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

134. Why is responding to disruption so critical?
Business’ response to disruption is perhaps the most important
strategic imperative facing companies, for three reasons:1

Everyone is affected. The pace of disruption is accelerating
and impacting a growing list of sectors. The next wave ofdigital innovation — harnessing AI, robotics and virtual reality —will transform activities long considered safe from disruption.
Indeed, these developments are already starting to disrupt
sectors such as legal and professional services in ways thatwould have seemed unimaginable even a few years ago.
Meanwhile, disruption no longer emerges from Silicon Valley
alone. It can just as easily come from emerging markets. Today’s
leaders need to be aware of the game-changing threats andopportunities bubbling up in markets around the world.
• If you think you won’t face disruption, it’s not because you
won’t — it’s because you don’t yet know how it will happen.
• What are you doing to understand the myriad ways in whichyour organization could be disrupted?

23Smart strategy and execution are not enough. It may
sound counterintuitive, but organizations get disrupted not
by doing the wrong thing, but by doing the right thing. The long
list of companies that have fallen victim to disruption includes
firms that dominated their industries for decades. They were
often ruthlessly competitive, relentlessly focused on the market
and led by competent strategic thinkers. In many ways, theysuccumbed to disruption not despite, but because of, that focus.
Organizations are typically structured and incentivized to focus
on fulfilling the needs of their existing constituents — blinding
them to disruptive opportunities, which often do not initially meetthose needs.
• The strategy that got you here may not be the one you’ll needfor the road ahead.
• How are you realigning incentives and structures around
disruptive innovation?

5. Why is it so difficult to respondto disruption?

6. How do businesses seize the upsideof disruption?

Incumbent companies typically fall victim to disruption.
The reasons for this have been well documented in Clayton
Christensen’s classic book, The Innovator’s Dilemma.2

Fortunately, as disruption becomes mainstream, organizations
have become more proactive in addressing the challenge.
With the right response, disruption offers tremendous upside
to firms that can harness its forces. Discovering the upside of
disruption requires both learning from those who do it well andbeing aware of the constraints that companies face in formulating
their responses.

Incumbents dismiss the initial disruption of their industry
because it appears inconsequential relative to establishedproducts/services and fails to meet the needs of existingcustomers. However, a small core of customers embraces the
disruptive offering, giving market entrants a toehold, and theoffering improves more quickly than incumbents expect. Its
capabilities soon surpass those of the prevailing product orservice — at which point existing customers, who have so far
resisted the offering, adopt it en masse.
Incumbent firms now scramble to move into this new market,
but it is often too late, particularly if the space has significant
network effects or switching costs. Time and again — whether
with the 1980’s PC revolution that disrupted mainframe
computers or the more recent disruption of standalone GPS
devices by smartphone apps — the same pattern occurs withpredictable regularity.

Companies in the technology sector are laser focused on creating
disruptive opportunities. For example Alphabet, the parent
company of Google, has its famous “20% time” policy, which
encourages employees to spend as much as a fifth of their timeon any idea they consider promising, even if completely unrelated
to their regular work projects.
More generally, the title of the late Andy Grove’s 1999 book ispart of the DNA of technology firms: Only the Paranoid Survive.
Without exception, the titans of technology are obsessed withgetting into each other’s business because they understand how
real the threat of disruption is.
Sometimes these ventures are successful, sometimes they aren’t—  but technology firms know that this single-minded focus gives
them their best shot at remaining relevant in the long term.

It’s easy to underestimate the pace of change.
“In retrospect, all revolutions seem inevitable. Beforehand,
all revolutions seem impossible.” That observation, attributed
to Michael McFaul, former US Ambassador to Russia, is justas applicable to business and economic revolutions as it is topolitical ones.1 It’s easy to declare in hindsight that the collapseof the Soviet Union was inevitable, but in the summer of 1989,
even amid the rumblings of perestroika and glasnost, one would
have been hard pressed to find anyone predicting that the Berlin
Wall would fall just a few months later.

However, companies outside tech face constraints that are
not an issue for tech firms. Investors are often willing to givetechnology firms more leeway — until recently, Amazon neverposted a quarterly profit and Apple sat on a US$200 billion
stockpile of cash without issuing dividends, and neither firm’s
stock price suffered as a result. But investors aren’t always
as forgiving of firms from sectors that don’t have the same
disruptive innovation aura and credibility around efforts to
disrupt their own business models.

In 2012, when Google announced that it had been testing
driverless cars on US roads and had already driven over 200,000
miles in everyday traffic conditions, the news reverberated like a
shock wave across the world. Driverless cars — a staple of science
fiction just a few years earlier — had become reality faster thanmost of us expected. Time and again, we underestimate thesignificance and speed of disruptive innovation.

Companies looking to disrupt their business models need to
begin a process of rigorous self-interrogation. To start theconversation, we offer a few better questions at the end of thisreport. See How do you seize the upside of disruption? on page 52.

• Time is not on your side.
• Are you embracing disruption quickly enough?

1 David Brooks, “Fragile at the Core,” The New York Times, 18 June 2009.

14

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

2 Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms
to Fail (Harvard Business School Press, 1997).

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

15

From primary forces tomegatrends
GLOBALIZATION

7. How does disruption leadto megatrends?
EMPOWERED CUSTOMERCONSUMER

How will you change buyers into stakeholders?

The three primary forces — technology, globalization anddemographics — are evolving in a succession of waves including
AI, robotics, global urbanization, aging populations, millennial
workforces and more. As these new waves of technology,
globalization and demographics interact, they give rise to a rangeof megatrends.

Meanwhile, sectors themselves are being redefined, as
information technology lowers entry barriers and challenges
driven by demographic change and globalization, such as
climate change and chronic disease, attract companies fromfar-flung sectors to develop innovative solutions. This blurringof boundaries — explored in Industry redefined, page 20 — is also
being driven by the rise of the empowered customer, page 36,
a product of digital disruption and the changing expectationsof the millennial generation.

Exploring these megatrends in depth can give companies
the power to understand a rapidly changing world andadapt accordingly.

When machines become workers,
what is the human role?

RESOURCEFULPLANET

Can innovation makethe planet resourcerichresourceful
instead of resource scarce?

FUTURETHE
FUTUREOF SMARTOF SMART
What intelligence
real intelligence
will wewillneed
we needto create a smart future?

BEHAVIORAL REVOLUTION
SOLUTIONS
How will individual behavior
behaviourimpact
impactour collective future?

INDUSTRY REDEFINEDDISRUPTIVE
Is
every industry now your industry?
CONVERGENCE
text to follow text to follow
text to follow text to follow?

S
IC
PH
RA
OG
DEM

There are two final megatrends that will fundamentally
reshape our future. The next wave of technology is transforming
the future of work, page 28, with disruptive implications
for businesses, governments and society. Meanwhile,a budding behavioral revolution, page 32, is allowing
behavioral economics to solve urgent challenges suchas climate change and chronic disease as digital platforms
enable real-time, real-world behavior modification.

FUTURETHE
FUTUREOF WORKOF WORKURBAN WORLD

In a fast-changing
fast changing world, can cities bebuilt withlong-termperspective?
perspective?
withlong-term

TE
CH
NO
LO
GY

For instance, just as global demographic shifts (population growth
and an increasingly urban world, a trend explored on page 40)
are straining resources and fueling an urgent need for sustainable
solutions, the rise of technologies is providing an answer —something explored in The future of smart, page 24. The
same basic interaction between demographic-driven resource
constraints and technology-empowered sustainable solutions is
at the heart of two other megatrends — Health reimagined, page
44 and Resourceful planet, page 48 — which examine industryspecific implications.

HEALTH REIMAGINEDWith growing
limited resources,
health needs,
is digitalis digital
the best medicine?

Primary forces
16

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

Megatrends

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

17Section 2:
Megatrends 201618

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

19

1

Alphabet is competing hard to win
the race to driverless transport,
logging more than 3 million miles

per day in simulation and10,000—15,000 autonomous
miles per week on public streets.3

Industry
redefined
Is every industry now your industry?

Four mobile telecom operators

The US retail chain CVS eliminatedtobacco products from its stores,changed its corporate name to
CVS Health, and now operates
over 1,100 retail-based healthcare clinics across the country.5

recently received licenses fromthe Reserve Bank of India tolaunch payments banks within thenext 18 months.4

3 “Google Self-Driving Car Project Monthly Report,” January 2016, https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.g.u.00rz.com/en//selfdrivingcar/files/reports/report-0116.pdf
4 “Reliance Industries, Bharti Airtel, 9 others get RBI nod for payments banks,” The Financial Express, 19 August 2015.
5 Walter Loeb, “Why CVS’ New Health Initiatives Are A Winning Strategy,” Forbes, 18 December 2015, http://www.forbes.com/sites/walterloeb/2015/12/18/why-cvs-health-new-initiatives-are-awinning-strategy/#1e3b333530f0

20

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

1. Disruption is driving
convergence

2. Technology underpins
convergence

Traditional diversification orconsolidation sees competitors enternew industry categories, even unrelated
ones. These models allow a company tomeet its business objectives, whether
spreading risk, adding new revenue
streams, gaining greater control oversupply chains, or more. However, neither
strategy alters the basic characteristicsof the industries involved. Even though
new competitors enter the space,the boundaries of the industry — key
activities, value chain fundamentals,
the customer value proposition, anddominant economic characteristics —remain virtually the same.

Technology companies — both start-ups
and existing titans like Alphabet andApple — are disrupting industry spaces
and uprooting incumbents. Several
reasons are behind this phenomenon:

Industry convergence — the blurringof two or more previously distinct
industries and sets of participants —is different. It is about what happens
to industries when disruption takes
place. Disruption reconfigures anddemocratizes information, creates newlevels of complexity, and takes place at
unprecedented speed. In turn, barriers toentry are lowered. Disruption dramaticallyalters the “invaded” industry’s basic
and often long-held characteristics.
The converged industry is redefined.

• The growing software content of
products and services confers anadvantage on companies that excel atcode and algorithms as they enter newcompetitive spaces.
• Opportunities to substitute digitalplatforms for physical world ecosystems
catalyze convergence. Uber has
disrupted the taxi industry and could
do the same for packages and preparedfood delivery.
• Technology companies tend to beasset-light. Industry incumbents are
saddled with legacy costs in real estate,
IT infrastructure, supply chains, andother hard assets.
• Incumbents can lack the digital savvy
at the leadership level — both C-suiteand board — to react and compete
effectively when challenged.

• Incumbents may be burdened withgreater regulatory constraints thansmaller, more agile start-ups.
The automotive industry is a clear
example of how technology can disrupt a
traditional sector and drive convergence.
In the recent past, a handful of global car
manufacturers competed against one
another to design, manufacture and sellvehicles. Today, value in cars is shiftingfrom being 90% hardware-based to being
more than 50% software and experiencebased.6 The vehicle has become a rolling
software platform able to deliver services
based on data, sensors and analytics,
allowing technology companies such as
Alphabet and Apple to compete directlywith car manufacturers for “ownership”
of the dashboard and connected driver
experiences. When cars, trucks andother vehicles become autonomous,the automotive, transportation, andlogistics industries could converge
into a broader mobility industry. This
new sector will likely attract newcompetitors and success will go to thosethat offer the best capabilities for theredefined marketplace.
6 Don Butler, Ford Motor Company, “Digital Transformationand the Automotive Industry,” CXO Talk, 8 May 2015,
https://www.cxotalk.com/connected-vehicles-automobilestechnology-platform-don-butler-ford

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

21

INDUSTRY REDEFINED

3. Customer empowerment
drives demand for novel
solutions
Just as every company is now atechnology company, every company —whether B2C or B2B — is also a consumer
company. The rise of digital technologies
has democratized consumer access toknowledge, given customers a more
powerful voice, allowed more informed
decision-making, and enabled greater
choice between providers.
Empowered consumers with greater
choices are helping redefine traditional
markets and accelerate the elimination of
traditional boundaries. They are becoming
the center of evolving industries. See
Empowered customer, page 36, for moreon this megatrend.
One such example is the power and utility
space. Renewables, smart metering andsmart grids are reshaping the sector. But
customers themselves are also redefining
the industry. The industry was once prone
to viewing customers as impersonal
ratepayers and has traditionally sufferedfrom low levels of customer satisfaction.
Today’s enlightened customers demandtransparent and competitive pricing, as
well as energy-efficient, environmentallyfriendly solutions.
This has led retail companies fromindustries such as telecommunications,consumer products, security services andtechnology to move into the home energy
management market. The distributed
energy revolution allows residential,commercial and industrial customers togenerate and store their own electricity,
as well as sell it back to the grid. The
former ratepayers have evolved to
become actual suppliers to incumbent
power and utility companies.

22

Regardless of industry, when customers
feel chronically underserved, they
welcome offerings from insurgent players.
Industries with high customer pain points
may be those most ripe for convergence.

4. Companies should seek
opportunity beyond theirown industry walls
In a converging world, all industry spaces
will be hotly contested. As boundaries
break down, incumbent companies will
face competitive threats from start-ups
with disruptive business models andfrom formidable companies in previously
unrelated sectors.
While disintermediation captures
headlines, cross-sector collaboration,
partnerships and acquisitions withincontestable industries will be far more
likely. The world is challenged by large,
costly problems such as climate change,
rapid urbanization and soaring healthcare costs, which are beyond the scope ofany single organization or even industry
to address effectively. In the face of suchchallenges, the future of competition
will shift from company versus
company in a single industry to crossindustry ecosystem versus ecosystem.
Partnerships and alliances will become
ever more important.
In this context, organizations need tothink differently. For those companies thatlook beyond traditional industry borders,asking not what they can sell but what
problems they can solve, convergence
represents a major growth opportunity.
Indeed, industry convergence should beconsidered alongside more traditional
market considerations as companies
strategize, plan and allocate investments
for future growth.

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

Upsides

Consumers benefit when disruptors
enter a traditional industry space,
reducing pain points and delivering
better solutions.

Start-ups can leverage
innate advantages suchas lean operations andtechnical excellence, whichmeans they can quickly
grab market share.

Incumbents can look beyond their own
industry walls for opportunities. They
can also fend off disruption by acquiring
or partnering with new competition or
reinventing their own business models.

Bringing together many brains frommany disciplines can help solve theworld’s biggest challenges — fromclimate change to chronic disease
to poverty.

Better questions
Do you understand who your competitors are, and would your customers agree?
What are the fault lines to indicate your industry is ripe for convergence?
Putting aside what you do or make today, what new problems could your company
help solve?
What will you do alone and what will you do as part of collaboration or an ecosystemof companies?
Will tomorrow’s business landscapes still be comprised of individual sectors?

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond23

2

The futureof smart
What intelligence will we need tocreate a smart future?

1. Smart brings
technology to life

2. Robotics and AI launchsmart to a new level

Smart is a term that has come todescribe everything from health andbanking to entire cities. It takes an asset,
infrastructure, or even transaction,
ensures it is connected, analyzes its data
and makes it more autonomous andeffective. Smart is the layer of insight anddecision-making above the interactions
between connected things.

AI is integral to smart because it canautonomously assimilate inputs, perceive
and understand a need and deliver
the best possible decision. It is hardto overstate the possibilities of AI. It isalready being deployed in call centers toanswer basic queries, in autonomous cars
to transform mobility, and in smartphones
as a personal assistant. The next stepis the combination of AI’s autonomous
reasoning with “deep learning.” Bylearning from every new input andexperience, AI adds to the efficacy ofsubsequent actions.

We are on the cusp of a smart revolutionthat could fundamentally change the way
the world works for two reasons.

Each year, utilities collect four
data points about usage in eachhousehold. A household smart
meter can allow utility
companies to collectalmostFor US drivers, autonomousvehicles could free up almost

By 2020,that figure
will rise to

1.1 billion
connected
things.

data
points.7
50 billion hours each year.8

7 EY Analysis.
8 “The Massive Economic Benefits Of Self-Driving Cars,” Forbes.com, 8 November 2014.
9 “Gartner Says Smart Cities Will Use 1.1 Billion Connected Things in 2015,” Gartner, 18 March 2015.

24

In 2015,
smart
cities used

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

First, in an aging world that is becoming
more resource-constrained, globalized
and urbanized, governments andorganizations see the need to invest in
more efficient and smart solutions.
Second, the demand for such solutions
is being fulfilled by the next wave ofdigital disruption: the industrializationof technologies such as the internet ofthings (IoT), AI and robotics.

9.7 billion.9

Together, AI and robotics will combine
greater decision-making power with theability to execute. Organizations could see
exponential improvements as softwareand hardware develops and costs decline.
AI’s deep learning and robotic automation
also bring closer the possibility of“singularity”: the point at which machine
thought supersedes human capability. It
sounds like science fiction, but consensus
suggests that, within a decade, smart
might solve problems that humans
struggle to conceptualize.

And investors and industries are seeing
the significance of AI. In recent years,
investor funding in AI has risen nearlysevenfold, from US$45 million in 2010
to US$310 million in 201510. Acrossindustries, the widespread rollout ofrobotics is already under way, withspending expected to reach US$67 billion
annually by 2025.11

3. Smart is changing
the world
Smart drives economic, environmental
and social benefits, but the nuance liesin where, when and how.
In the past, an energy grid was deemed
successful if it kept the lights on.
Exploring a grid’s limits was perceived
as too risky. However, when decisions
become more autonomous and are basedon more complex and varied inputs andthe consequences are tested, assessed
and adjusted in real time, the grid canbe optimized.

10 “Deep Interest In AI: New High In Deals To Artificial
Intelligence Startups In Q4’15,” CB Insights, February 2016.
11 International Federation of Robotics; Japan Robot
Association; Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry;euRobotics; Company Fillings, Boston Consulting Group;
EY Analysis.

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

25THE FUTURE OF SMART

Now, apply the same approach totransportation networks, productionlines, health services and supply chains.
Reallocating passengers, resources andenergy to different parts of a network
eases peak demand and lessens periodsof downtime. The smartest networks cananticipate issues and, if necessary, selfdiagnose and self-heal.
The ability to assimilate, analyze andmake decisions in more complex andscalable ways than ever before alsoenhances effectiveness. Using personalsensors and AI to analyze patient data,
even to the level of detecting subtle
changes in individual biochemistry,
makes it possible to diagnose diseases
with greater accuracy and to deliver
improved outcomes.
Smart is also empowering customers withmore information and greater insight thanever before — but insight is not enough.
The empowered customer is expected
to use those insights to take action, toadapt their energy usage, change theirtravel habits or manage their healthproactively. See Behavioral revolution,
page 32, for more.

other things, smart grids and meters
can reduce carbon emissions, combat
energy piracy, increase competition andcompetitiveness and drive investments
in infrastructure.
2 Transforming beyond the core: If
smart is to be effective, it requires an
end-to-end redesign of organizationalmodels. Companies with a heritage
in manufacturing, health care,engineering and other establishedindustries are becoming more like IT
and data organizations. This will create
new roles and increase the importanceof others, such as the chief data officer.
3 Activating inside and out: Smartgoes far beyond technological
implementation and organizationalchange. Like any strategy, it
requires activation. For example, theempowerment of customers is about
more than installing meters or providing
access to data. A smart strategy isactivated through educating customers
about what to do with the data andwhat actions to take.

Upsides

By improving access to andmanagement of resources,
smart can help to improve
provision for underserved
populations and communities.

Mitigating different
forms of risk is madeeasier through smart,whether it’s thedetection of fraud or
preventing network
failures in various
systems from energy
grids to production lines.

Smart is adifferentiator that
adds competitive
advantages. It enables
better, more efficientand more agile use ofexisting assets.

4. The smart solution
is holistic
The greatest challenge in smart
is execution. It is easy to view
implementation through a narrowlens, focusing only on technology
transformation. Smart requires
holistic change encompassing threecore elements.
1 Setting the change agenda: In many
aspects, the business case for smart
still needs to be clarified and repeatedly
tested. Even in smart utilities, where
the case is better understood, therationale varies by context. Among26

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

Stakeholders will see different
outcomes from smart. Some will
see increased efficiencies andreduced costs, while others will see
improvements in outcomes such as
more accurate medical diagnosis.
Investments in smart
have ancillary andfar-reaching benefits.
Smart grids raise thestakes in infrastructureand enhance market
competition as
well as a market’scompetitiveness.

Better questions
When AI controls decisions, who controls your company?
How can smart best combine efficient and effective?
Does your organization know enough to be smart?

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond27

3

The World Economic Forumestimates that a confluence oftechnological, socioeconomic anddemographic drivers will displace

5.1 million jobs across 15 major
economies by 2020.12

The futureof work
When machines become workers,
what is the human role?

Also by 2020, Intuit predicts that
In late 2015, several respected
thinkers and technology leaders

40% of American workers will
be independent contractors — anestimate that may be conservative
since it was created in 2010,
when platforms such as Uberand TaskRabbit had barely beenlaunched.13— including Stephen Hawking andElon Musk — highlighted the risks
raised by the rapid rise of AI and
its implications for humanity.14

12 World Economic Forum, “The Future of Jobs Employment, Skills and Workforce Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” 2016.
13 Intuit, “Intuit 2020 Report: Twenty Trends that will Reshape the Next Decade,” 2010.
14 Nick Statt, “Bill Gates is worried about artificial intelligence too,“ CNET, 28 January 2015, http://www.cnet.com/news/bill-gates-is-worried-about-artificial-intelligence-too/ (accessed 25 April 2016).

28

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

1. An unprecedented
reinvention of work
is coming

2. Even white-collar
and creative work will
be affected

3. Moving from thegig economy to themachine economy

The coming reinvention of work is unlike
anything we have witnessed before, evenin this era of disruption.

AI is now disrupting jobs long consideredimmune to technological displacement
such as white-collar work and creative
endeavors. Algorithms have uprooted
white-collar work in the financial sector(high-frequency trading) and are starting
to do so in health care (mobile healthapps, robotic surgery and diagnosis byalgorithm). They are even expanding
into spaces once considered exclusively
the domain of human creativity.
Already, algorithms are writing articles
indistinguishable from those written
by humans and have even recently
composed a musical play.15, 16

We see the future of work evolving in
two stages:

The displacement of labor by technology
and globalization is hardly a newphenomenon. Technology has been
reshaping work since the first Industrial
Revolution, which demolished guilds andreplaced artisanal craftsmanship withassembly line production. Globalization
has been changing work for decades,
thanks to trade liberalization andemerging markets.
Now, the next waves of disruptive
technology — AI, robotics, virtual reality,
IoT and sharing economy platforms —are poised to take labor displacement
to a higher level. Automation has longdisplaced workers in blue-collar jobs,
from factory laborers to supermarket
cashiers. To appreciate the scale ofblue-collar displacement ahead fromdriverless vehicles alone, consider thatdriving is the single largest occupationof US men today.

Not all jobs will be affected and not allaffected jobs will be eliminated — asalways, automation will both replace andsupplement human labor — but jobs thatare truly untouched will be the exception
rather than the norm.
15 Shelley Podolny, “If an Algorithm Wrote This, How Would
You Even Know?” The New York Times, 7 March 2015.
16 Joe Berkowitz, “Computers Writing Broadway Musicals Is
The Next Phase Of The Inevitable Robot Uprising,” Fast
Company, 5 February 2016, http://www.fastcocreate.
com/3056409/computers-writing-broadway-musicals-isthe-next-phase-of-the-inevitable-robot-uprising (accessed 25
April 2016).

• The gig economy. The rise of platforms
such as Airbnb, Deliveroo, Didi Kuaidi,
Etsy, TaskRabbit and Uber has alreadyspawned what is often referred toas the gig economy — in which nonemployee freelancers provide labor in
temporary assignments.
• The machine economy. The next stage
will be driven by AI and robotics: themass disruption of labor and the rise of
the machine economy.
We are in the early stages of these shifts,
and it’s hard to know exactly how they
will play out. On one hand, it has been
predicted there will be massive net losses
of jobs. Today, for instance, a worker
displaced by globalization may freelanceas an Uber driver. In the future, many
more office workers will be displaced
by AI — but they won’t have the optionof becoming freelance drivers if theride-sharing platform of the future uses
driverless cars.

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

29THE FUTURE OF WORKOn the other hand, history shows that
automation surprises us with new
sectors and forms of employment. Just
as digital disruption spawned jobs forweb designers and app developers thatfew foresaw in the computer revolution’s
early days, the machine economy islikely to generate jobs, companies andeven entire sectors that we are unable toenvision today.

it is a fundamental part of thehuman experience. The radical
disruption of work has profoundpolitical and social implications.
2.

4. The future of work
will disrupt business,government and society
1.

Disrupting business. The disruptionof work is already spawning businessmodel innovation. Ride-sharing
platforms, which use transportation
resources more efficiently, envisagea future with fewer vehicles. So,
auto manufacturers are exploring
ways to reinvent traditional models(GM’s partnership with Lyft) while
disruptive entrants (Uber and Lyft,
plus newer entrants Fasten, Split
and Bridj) are experimenting withmultiple approaches.
In the future of work, the ultimate
resource that companies will use
more efficiently is the humanresource. Labor-intensive firms
everywhere will need to reinvent
their business models, deploying
smart technologies and using labor
more productively. One result isthat work will be unbundled. Just as
disruption unbundled music albums
into songs, it will unbundle jobs into
tasks, with each task performed in
the most efficient manner.
However, some of the biggest
disruptive implications will extend
beyond the business world. Work ismore than a cog in a business model;

30

Disrupting government. Gig
economy start-ups are alreadychallenging regulations governing theoperation of hotels, restaurants, taxis
and more. The trend will acceleratewith the move to such machine
economy innovations as driverlesscars and medical algorithms.
Workplace protections could well
be challenged. In the growing gig
economy, hard won rights thathave become commonplace suchas collective bargaining, the fiveday workweek, paid time off andinsurance against workplace injuries
and unemployment could allcome under threat. Independent
contractors in a gig economy havenone of these protections.
The start-ups disrupting work argue
that existing regulations were
designed for another era and do not
apply to the gig economy. There’s
some validity in that, but regulation
also protects consumers and workers
in important ways. Governments
will need to find the right balance,
creating regulatory regimes designed
for the future — nimble, real-time andpowered by big data andsmart technologies.

3.

Disrupting society. Income inequality
could be greatly exacerbated bywholesale labor displacement and by
the dismantling of key elements ofthe social safety net such as healthcare benefits and retirement savings,
which are often provided through theemployer-employee relationship. To
maintain social stability, we will needbold solutions — including, perhaps, auniversal basic income.

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

Meanwhile, the machine economy
promises to deliver a “leisure dividend”
unlike anything we have seen before. We
don’t yet know whether we will use thisspare time to enrich our lives culturally
and intellectually or whether the lossof work will deprive us of somethingelemental that gives our lives a senseof purpose.

Upsides

The machine economy drives huge societywide benefits — from fewer medical errors
to reduced traffic fatalities.
The “leisure dividend” frees up
individuals to pursue other interests andunleashes a wave of entrepreneurship.

How do you build a better working world
in a world with less work?

Companies gain
tremendous increases
in efficiency andproductivity.

Government regulation becomes more
nimble, real-time and responsive to theneeds of citizens.

Better questions
How will workers and citizens be motivated in the machine economy?
How will governments adapt to remain relevant for the future of work?
How do you build a better working world in a world with less work?
With massive labor displacement ahead, how will we address income inequality?

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

31

4

Citi estimates that the
cumulative global costof climate change willreach US$44 trillion
17
by 2060.

Behavioral
revolution
How will individual behavior impact
our collective future?

The World
Economic Forumestimates thatchronic disease
will cost the
globaleconomyUS$47
trillion
between 201018
and 2030.

17 Citi, “Energy Darwinism II: Why a Low Carbon Future Doesn’t Have to Cost the Earth,” 2015.
18 World Economic Forum and the Harvard School of Public Health, “The Global Economic Burden of Non-communicable Diseases,” 2011.
19 National Institute on Retirement Security, “The Retirement Savings Crisis: Is It Worse Than We Think?” 2013.

32

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

The National Institute on Retirement
Security estimates that between

1. Behavioral economics
will become a growing
resource for business

2. Global challenges andtech drive the growth of
behavioral economics

Some of the biggest, most intractablechallenges confronting humanity— chronic disease, climate change,
excessive household and public debt —stem from human behavior such as poor
diet and lack of exercise, unsustainableenergy use and excessive consumption.

BE has sought to demonstrate ourirrational behavior in a number of ways.
For example, we excessively discountthe future (hyperbolic time discounting),
making us value an impulse purchase
today over a secure retirement decades
later. Our status quo bias leads todramatically different participation
rates for retirement savings and organ
donation, depending on whether the
choice is an “opt in” or “opt out.”

These challenges have been around for
decades, but they are now becoming
increasingly urgent — due to demographics
and globalization — bringing behavioral
economics (BE) into the mainstream.
BE marries insights from psychology andeconomics and, despite being aroundsince the 1970s, has only recently begun
moving from academia to the real world.

65%—92% of Americans (dependingon net worth) aren’t saving enoughfor retirement, leading to a savings
gap of as much as US$14 trillion.19

Incentives to act rationally are all aroundus — from legal restrictions to the ways
in which companies price goods andmotivate workers. The vast majorityof these enticements and impositions
assume that people are utility-maximizing
rational agents who act in their bestinterests. Except, as BE demonstrates,
we aren’t.

Meanwhile, loss aversion bias means
we dislike losing US$100 more than
we like gaining US$100 — leading tounpredictable behavior on stock markets
and elsewhere. Social norms canmotivate us more powerfully than market
norms — one of the reasons behind thesuccess of Wikipedia’s volunteers.
However, our behavioral biases are
consistent and unidirectional, whichmeans we can build incentives that
correct for them. Instead of hurting us,
our biases can be used to help us makebetter decisions.

The growing use of BE will stem from two
major shifts:• Increasingly urgent behavioral
challenges. As the cost of issues suchas chronic disease and climate change
rises with aging demographics andglobalization, the imperative to address
them becomes increasingly urgent. Thisis leading more governments to use
BE. The UK’s pioneering Behavioural
Insights Team has been advising foreign
governments interested in adopting BE.
The US became the latest government
to do so in September 2015, when it
established the Social and Behavioral
Sciences Team.
The huge economic opportunity inthese behavioral challenges is also
attracting the private sector. Large
companies, in a variety of sectors, areexperimenting with BE approaches.
And, intriguingly, a number of start-ups
have sprung up with disruptive businessmodels built entirely around BE —see Inventive businesses are already
employing behavioral economics,
page 34.
• The march of technology. The digital
revolution is catalyzing the deploymentof BE. Smartphones and sensors canmonitor behavior and adapt incentives

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

33

BEHAVIORAL REVOLUTION

in real-time, real-world conditions.
In addition, social media can tap
the immensely motivating powerof social norms and gamification —harnessing game-playing principles
such as competition to motivate humanbehavior. Digital and online platforms
can deploy A/B testing — a key
technique for customizing nudges — attremendous speed and scale.

3. Inventive businesses
are already employing
behavioral economics
The power of BE can already be seen
in a number of sectors. In health careand wellness, BE start-ups such as Pactand stickK are helping people improve
behaviors such as diet and exercise,using approaches that succeed wheretraditional incentives fail.
The financial pain of gym membershipfees fails to motivate most people
to exercise because the fees areautomatically deducted from theirbank accounts (defanging the biteof loss aversion), while hyperbolic
time discounting makes lazing today
more attractive than better healthyears later.
Pact is an app that uses BE to turnbehavioral weaknesses into strengths.
Users make a weekly pact, choosing
how often they intend to exercise andwagering money on their commitment.
Users who fail to honor their pact forfeit
the money they wagered — aversion
to this tangible loss has proven to be agreat motivator. The forfeited money
is pooled and distributed to those who
did go to the gym — turning hyperbolic
time discounting on its head by making
rewards from exercise immediate insteadof deferred.
34

BE can also motivate sustainableenergy and resource use. Opower —a start-up that was recently acquiredby technology giant Oracle — helps
utility companies nudge consumer
behavior by applying the motivating
power of social norms. The company
designs personalized energy bills
informing consumers how their energy
use compares to that of neighbors
and energy-efficient households.
This simple tweak has delivered
considerable savings — and far morecost-effectively than traditional marketingor economic incentives.
In the area of retirement savings,
companies are paying close attention
to the presentation of different choices(known as choice architecture) in theirplans. For instance, in the “Save MoreTomorrow” plan, created by behavioral
economists Richard Thaler and Shlomo
Benartzi, employees commit to increasing
their contributions at a future daterather than today — curbing the desire
to delay because of hyperbolic time
discounting. Increases in contribution
rates are tied to pay raises — minimizing
loss aversion. Employees stay in theplan until they choose to opt out — andstatus quo bias ensures that most remain.
Firms implementing this approach
have significantly boosted employees’
retirement savings.

4. The next challenge:
long-term behavioral
changeBusinesses and governments will have toovercome challenges as BE approaches
are more widely adopted. One stems fromconcerns about “Big Brother” taking away
individual freedom. To address this issue,
it is critical that incentives be designed
to preserve individual freedom, even

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

as they nudge (not force) people toward
better choices.
A second challenge is that chronic
disease and climate change will playout over decades, requiring long-term
behavioral change. Behavioral economists
don’t yet know enough about whether
nudges that work in the short term
will lose their impact over time, andpractitioners will need to experimentand learn along the way.
Lastly, businesses and organizations
need to realign short-term institutional
incentives, such as election cycles andquarterly earnings expectations, toward
the long-term focus needed to address
our biggest collective challenges.

UpsidesSociety benefits from minimizing theimpact of looming collective-action
crises, such as chronic disease andclimate change.

Individuals lead healthier lives and have
healthier savings.
Governments avert
the fiscal impact ofthese potential crises.

Better questions
How will societies improve collective behaviors without restricting individual freedoms?
How can organizations be motivated to focus on the long term?
How can we nudge individuals to save more — and save our collective future?
How will we nudge people to adopt healthy behaviors — for the rest of their lives?

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

35

5

Empoweredcustomer
How will you change buyers
into stakeholders?

1. Empowered customers
know their worth
Today’s individual customers understandtheir commercial value. They can block
ads and they can opt out at a moment’s
notice. However, they are willing to pay
for what they value.

GE is using immersive
virtual reality technology todemonstrate large,
complex deepsea oil and gas
drilling
equipment
to its B2B
customers.20

Companies such as Levi’s andMercedes-Benz are creating anddistributing content starring
young“influencers”
on Snapchat,YouTube,Vine andother social
media
channels.21

Consumers are leveraging
invention platforms like Edison
Nation and financing theseprojects through crowdfunding
platforms such as Indiegogo
and Kickstarter.

20 Lauren Johnson, “GE’s First Stab at Virtual Reality Takes You Under Water,” Adweek, 16 January 2015, http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/ges-first-stab-virtual-reality-takes-you-underwater-162392
21 “How Brands Market with Top Instagram Influencers,” MediaKix, 2016, http://mediakix.com/2016/03/brand-guide-to-working-with-top-instagram-influencers/

36

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

Customers expect to be understoodand appealed to in their full complexity.
Organizations need to see them as
nuanced individuals. One consumer
may say, “I’m a 21-year-old female
who skateboards, listens to jazz rap,
wears Boho Chic, goes to poetry slams,
and plans a career in environmental
conservation. What can you do forme?” Another says: “I’m a 46-year-old
entrepreneur who founded an online
gaming service, has a wife and one
son, loves to shop in Hong Kong, owns
a BMW, likes to try new grooming
products, and when in Beijing, dines inluxury-branded cafes. What can you do
for me?” Customers can no longer be
conveniently categorized.
In this culture of the niche, allinteractions, products and services
need to be personalized. Spotify
personalizes your music, Netflix
customizes your entertainment,

and Coca-Cola displays your nameon billboards as you drive by.
Customers are bombarded daily withinformation, promotions and brandmessages. Curated retail options suchas Stitch Fix or Birchbox and social
reading apps such as Kite are helping
consumers overcome the paralysis of
too many choices.
Software hasn’t killed retail, but retail’s
future, as well as the future of all
business types, depends on deliveringexperience. While mundane products andcommoditized services will increasingly
be delivered via subscription, experiencesthat employ all five senses are becoming
distinct offerings. Differentiatedinteractions — both live and virtual — will
be embedded in everything human beings
do — from dining to vacationing to riding
in a taxi. The growing primacy ofdelivering differentiated experiences
will have profound effects on how value
is created and measured — both forcompanies and economies.
As the demand for personalized services
has grown, the direction of trust has
also changed. Customers trust eachother more than they trust brands
or businesses. Online shoppers havemore faith in peer recommendations
and earned media such as customer
tweets than they do in traditional paid
advertising. Today’s brands are built byconsumers themselves, not advertisers.
Today’s customers distrust traditional
ways of selling and eschew traditional
supply chains. They want multiple routes
to transaction — whether website, mobile
app or physical store. They expect
seamless engagement across thesechannels. Customers anticipate that theirproviders will have a deep understandingof their needs contextually at any point
in time; all provider touch points must be
highly relevant or be discarded as spam.

2. Empowered customers
want a piece of the action
Today’s customers are creative. They
sell their dreams through Etsy. They use
small-scale desktop 3D printers such as
those sold by MakerBot to print products
sourced from free designs provided by theThingiverse 3D design community. They
work hand-in-hand with organizations
to co-create products and services.
They expect to participate. Through theEuropean Citizens’ Initiative, citizens are
co-developing EU policies by successfully

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

37

EMPOWERED CUSTOMER

petitioning the European Commission toconsider specific legislative proposals.
And customers are entrepreneurial.
They demand vehicles for commercial
self-expression. Crowdfunding platforms
such as AngelList, Crowdcube, Demohour,Indiegogo and Kickstarter provide accessto capital and visibility for entrepreneurs
as well as foster communities ofevangelists. And their clout matters. For
example, the growing affinity for small,
local, craft products has had an impact
on big companies. Customers are not justbuyers, but stakeholders.
Customers drive efficiency and speed
to market. The global B2B platform
Buyerparty facilitates gathering orders
when products are in the design stage,
allowing their owners to move into costly
production only upon sufficient demand,
helping to eliminate problems likeoverstock and resource wastage.

3. Customer empowerment
is a business opportunity
Customer empowerment is a chance for
consumers and providers to realize greater
value from a more intimate and trusted
relationship. However, there are challenges
that businesses must overcome.
Providers must develop the right mix ofautomated and human touch points. They
must manage paid, owned, and earned
media channels — as well as data across all
consumer touch points and the physical/
digital divide — seamlessly.
They must view customers holistically,both end-to-end and continuously.
Advances in artificial intelligence and the
IoT will turbocharge customer analytics,
but also raise the stakes around privacy
and the kinds of products and services
that customers are willing to accept in38

return for their personal data. Consumers
will likely demand greater choice about
who receives their data. At the same time,organizations that provide consumers
more control over how their personal
information is leveraged may gain
competitive differentiation.
The power of analytics is not just about
understanding consumer behavior but also
influencing it. Nearly all companies areusing advanced data to build algorithms
intended to influence the choices that
consumers make. When building thesebig data strategies, businesses need toconsider not only how to preserve humanvalues such as privacy and confidentiality,
but also need to examine the ethicaldimensions of subverting free choice.

4. B2B must adopt B2Ctechniques to satisfy
empowered customers
Business-to-business (B2B) organizations
increasingly will need to adopt businessto-consumer (B2C) techniques. Businesscustomers want the same level of
empowerment relative to their suppliersand distributors that they receive from
Amazon as individual consumers. This
raises supply chain questions for B2B
companies that work with middlemen.
For example, the supply chain required
to deliver in bulk to a distributor ismuch different than that designed toaccommodate individual consumers.

5. Customers continue
to evolve
Customers themselves will continue
to evolve. The emerging gig economy isspawning a whole new customer
group — freelancers. These professionals
are being targeted by new B2P (business-

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

to-professional) companies and solutions.
For example, India’s cross-border
payments company, Transpay, enables
freelancers across the world to get paid
quickly and securely when contractingwith online workplace platforms suchas Upwork.

UpsidesTreating customers as stakeholders rather
than buyers generates a virtuous cycle —customers benefit from better products andservices and companies are more likely tomeet their needs.
From maker spaces to crowdfunding
to invention platforms, there are more
ways than ever to get an idea
off the ground.

6. Invent the futurewith customers
Organizational aspiration and ability to
be customer-centric across the value
chain, including innovation, will be a key
determinant of future competitiveness.
Of course, companies will still need tohelp invent the future for customers. As
Henry Ford allegedly said: “If I had asked
people what they wanted, they would
have said faster horses.” But they may
also have said that they preferred Ford
to continue making cars in colors otherthan black. Innovation can no longer takeplace in hermetically sealed places ofinvention — tomorrow’s success requires
innovation in lockstep with customers.

Co-creation getscustomers invested in
the success of an idea
and builds loyalty —even evangelism.

Delivering richexperiences — either
wrapped around products
or services or standalone— has the potential to
improve margins andcreate new revenue
streams.

Empowered customers
carry their rights
with them into otherdomains. Empowered
citizens help
governments to become
more transparent andresponsive, boosting
efficiencies and helping
to achieve policy goals.

Better questions
Power has shifted to customers; what will they do with it next?
If today’s customers are kings, will tomorrow’s customers be kingmakers?
When experiences trump things, how will you delight your customers?
What can you offer the customer that has it all?
When you can go over-the-top to your customers, how will it change your value chain?

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

39

6

Urban world
In a fast-changing world, can cities bebuilt with long-term perspective?

1. Asia and Africa will see
the bulk of urban growth1970

In 1970, there
were two megacities(defined as populations> 10 million) — Tokyo and
New York. Today, there
are 23 megacities, withthe total expected to
Today rise to 41 by 2030. The
fastest growing urban
areas will be mid-sized
cities (populations of 1
to 5 million) in Asia andAfrica.22
2030

Singapore tackles density
through “checkerboard”
planning; high-risedevelopments areinterspersed with lower-risedevelopments and surroundedby green boundaries, creatinga spacious effect andcommunity feel.23

The Colombian city of Medellín
is winning awards for inclusive
growth; it is building gondolas andelectric staircases to help integrate
its poorer hillside communities withthe larger city.24

22 United Nations, “World Urbanization Prospects,” 2014, http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/Publications/Files/WUP2014-Report.pdf
23 Limin Hee and Scott Dunn, “Does High Density Mean the End of Liveability?” Skyline, March/April 2013, https://www.ura.gov.sg/skyline/skyline13/skyline13-02/files/Does%20high-density%20
mean%20the%20end%20of%20liveability.pdf
24 Coby Joseph, “Medellín Metrocable improves mobility for residents of informal settlements,” The City Fix, 26 August 2014, http://thecityfix.com/blog/medellin-metrocable-improves-mobilityinformal-settlements-low-income-accessibililty-equity-development-coby-joseph/40

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

In 2008, the world reached a milestone.
For the first time in history, the majorityof the world’s population lived in cities. By
2050, at current rates of urbanization,
the world will be two-thirds urban and
one-third rural, a reversal of the global
distribution pattern of 1950.25

spaces — all inhabited by connected andaware citizens — are already beginningto emerge. Dubai is testing electricbuses and driverless cars with plans to
deploy them during its hosting of Expo
2020.28 Singapore is on the verge oflaunching a driverless taxi pilot. Seoul
is leveraging smart technologies andmobile-web applications to provide
citizen-centric services.29

Most of that growth will occur in Asia andAfrica.26 Those regions are expected toreceive an additional 1 million inhabitants— roughly the population of Boston
and Zurich combined — every week forthe next 40 years.27 Such growth puts
pressure on existing megacities to expand
and for new cities to form, heightening
infrastructure demand. The effects ofclimate change — especially rising waterlevels — will leave many cities in both
the developed and developing world
vulnerable. This puts pressure
on infrastructure to be sustainable
and resilient.

Innovation to reduce the cost curve ofinfrastructure — ranging from smart
grids and better network load balancing
to less expensive natural gas extraction
to improved flow rates across roads — ishelping cities to become sustainable andmore habitable. Urban residential andcommercial customers are generating
more of their own energy and getting
more of their power from distributed
renewable sources. Net zero energy —where the renewable energy generated bya building in a given year equals the totalenergy the building uses — has become agoal for many buildings around the world.

2. Innovation is at the heart 3. New cities are beingof the cities of the future
built from the ground up
Future cities built on driverless transit
systems, smart buildings and green

Brand new cities are being built in China,
India, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and thePhilippines, among others. Greenfieldurban experiments serve as test beds
for addressing environmental andsustainability challenges. Tianjin Eco-city,
a joint venture of China and Singapore, isbeing built from scratch on a sustainablemodel that emphasizes green buildings
and transportation, as well as affordable
housing. South Korea’s brand new urbanzone, Songdo International BusinessDistrict, offers one of the highest numberof LEED-certified projects in the world.
China has combined trade incentives
and tax subsidies to build or jump-start
new cities in the interior as part of its Go
West program. Some of China’s newer
cities, such as Zhengdong New District,are beginning to fill up, suggesting that

25 United Nations, “World Urbanization Prospects,” 2014,
http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/Publications/Files/WUP2014Report.pdf
26 United Nations, “World Urbanization Prospects,” 2014,
http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/Publications/Files/WUP2014Report.pdf
27 Joel E. Cohen, “Beyond Population: Everyone Counts
in Development,” Working paper 220, Center for Global
Development, July 2010, http://www.cgdev.org/
files/1424318_file_Cohen_BeyondPopulation_FINAL.pdf
28 “Driverless cars plan for Dubai Expo,” The National UAE, 22
February 2016, http://www.thenational.ae/uae/technology/
driverless-cars-plan-for-dubai-expo
29 “Smart Cities Seoul: A Case Study,” ITU-T Technology Watch
Report, February 2013, https://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-t/
oth/23/01/T23010000190001PDFE.pdf

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

41

URBAN WORLD

what were termed ghost cities by theinternational press were actually justcities slowly coming to life.30
While centrally planned urbanization has
its challenges, unplanned urbanization
has its costs as well. Roughly 32% ofcity dwellers in 2050 will live in slums, adoubling of today’s numbers.31 Subsisting
on informal economies to a large extent,some slums have become ungovernedand unserved cities within cities. The
realities of slums — unemployment,poverty, disease and despair — makethem fertile recruiting grounds forcriminal and terrorist networks. The ideaof inclusive urbanization, whereby all
citizens share in the benefits, is gaining
traction but will require real politicalcommitment and innovative mechanisms.

4. Mature cities must
upgrade or replace
infrastructure
Many established cities in mature markets
face the challenge of retrofitting andupgrading their existing infrastructure.
Four-fifths of the £1.3 trillion (US$1.9
trillion) cost of the London Infrastructure
2050 plan is earmarked for upgrading
existing infrastructure, for example.32
In a time of fiscal stress, policymakers
and the public have tended to favor new
projects, but maintaining and upgrading
existing infrastructure is also essential.
A 2014 EY survey highlighted thatthe public’s willingness and ability to
pay for infrastructure are the keys toshaping the future of urban projects
and real estate over the next decade.33
Extracting additional value from existing
assets, whether through optimization(e.g., dynamic tolling rates on roads toshift peak use) or creating new revenue
streams (e.g., selling air rights to build
42

above existing highways or rail lines)
can be an alternative to building new
infrastructure. The most effective
investment and creative planning will
also be underpinned by behavioral
solutions, such as pricing mechanisms to
reduce vehicle usage.

have profound effects on future
geopolitics, governance, andcorporate plans.

5. Public-private
partnerships will be
the foundation of theurban world

Upsides
Dense living promotes
efficiencies, convenience andthe exchange of ideas. Cities
offer inhabitants arich variety of jobs, services
and cultural opportunities.

The clusteringof talent, capitaland supporting
infrastructure
make cities
perennial hotbeds
of entrepreneurial
activity.

Successful urban solutions will entail
public and private cooperation. Meetingthe challenge will require the creativity
and investment of the private sector
alongside the long-term vision andfunding of the public sector, as well as
a dedication to inclusive growth. The
gravest challenges cities face will requireinternational cooperation, such as the
COP21 Paris climate talks.

6. Cities will become as
powerful as nations
Within decades, cities are likely to
become as powerful, if not more so,than nations themselves. Local city
governments are better positioned tounderstand the specific needs of citizens
and tend to be pragmatic (and less driven
by raw politics) in their approaches tourban challenges.
Cities are already leapfrogging national
roadblocks to play an important rolein determining what our urban world
will look like. For example, the C40,
a network of the world’s megacities,
is acting both locally and collaboratively
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The potential for megacities toemerge as the world’s mostimportant economic entities will

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

Making cities smart and resilient is atrillion-dollar opportunity for productand services providers, small andlarge companies alike.

Successful urbanization
requires the private
sector and the public
sector to work together,leveraging theirrespective competencies.

Cities hold the key
to a sustainable
future — pioneering
the sharing economy,
green architecture,
microgrids, driverlesstransport and more.

Better questions
Will we become citizens of cities not nations?
30 Wade Shepard, “The Myth of China’s Ghost Cities,”
Reuters, 22 April 2015, http://blogs.reuters.com/greatdebate/2015/04/21/the-myth-of-chinas-ghost-cities/
31 Richard Florida, “The Amazing Endurance of Slums,” The
Atlantic CityLab, 23 January 2014, http://www.citylab.com/
work/2014/01/amazing-endurance-slums/8120/
32 “The Cost of London’s Long-Term Infrastructure: Greater
London Authority (GLA): Final Report,” ARUP, 29 July 2014.
33 Urban Land Institute and EY, “Infrastructure 2014:
Shaping the Competitive City,” 2014, http://www.ey.com/
Publication/vwLUAssets/EY_-_Infrastructure_2014:_
shaping_the_competitive_city/$FILE/EY-infrastructure2014-shaping-the-competitive-city.pdf

In a world where income inequality is rising, how can urban growth be more inclusive?
How can cities be made resilient to the future’s known and unknown stressors?
New cities are built with “brains,” but how will they develop their hearts and souls?
How will the public and private sector co-author this century’s urban story?

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

43

7

HealthreimaginedWith growing health needs, is digital
the best medicine?

1. Disruption and economic
sustainability drive thehealth care revolution

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1010101000010

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1010101

101
101

$47

2.3 exabytes

The World Economic Forumestimates that chronic disease
will cost
globally
between 2010
and 2030.34

The volume of healthdata worldwide is
projected to balloon to
2.3 exabytes(2.3 billion gigabytes)
by 2020 —growing 48%
per year andoutpacing the
growth of
big data
overall.35

1010001011111010101010101
1010101000010100101011111

Health care is being reinvented. The shift
is being driven by two main factors: thesearch for economic sustainability anddigital disruption. Health care spendingis on an unsustainable trajectory, thanks
to demographic shifts (aging populations)and globalization (sedentary lifestyles
that accompany economic development
and urbanization).

In 2015, an astonishing 165,000
mobile health apps were available
on theiOS andAndroid
platforms —about twice
as many
as just2013
two years
earlier.36

2020

34 World Economic Forum and the Harvard School of Public Health, “The Global Economic Burden of Non-communicable Diseases,” 2011.
35 EMC and IDC, “The Digital Universe Driving Data Growth in Healthcare,” 2014.
36 IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, “Patient Adoption of mHealth: Use, Evidence and Remaining Barriers to Mainstream Acceptance,” 2015.

44

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

2015
165,000

This is motivating health care systems tofocus as never before on sustainability
and value as they strive to balance threefundamental imperatives: expanding
access, improving quality and managing
costs. Meanwhile, just as health systems
need to contain costs, digital health(mobile apps, wearables, social media,
and analytics) is providing a key part of
the answer by enabling approaches thatare dramatically more cost-effective.

2. The journey to Health 2.0
The search for economic sustainability
is playing out in different ways acrossgeographies, reflecting the realities

of individual markets. In the US, theAffordable Care Act has significantly
expanded access to health coverage andled to considerable experimentation withapproaches that align incentives withvalue (pay-for-performance) instead ofvolume (fee-for-service). Hospitals acrossthe West are implementing initiatives tomaximize efficiencies with better resourcescheduling, discharge planning, andclinical pathways.
Developing economies in Africa andelsewhere are using mobile healthsolutions to expand access in rural areas.
Resource-rich economies in the Persian
Gulf and emerging markets such as China
are investing in health care systems
and have the opportunity to build moresustainable approaches from the start.
Developing sustainable approaches
will require varied skills, from app
development to analytics andcustomer engagement. So, entrants
from once far-removed sectors —technology, telecommunications, andretail, for example — are moving in. For
more, see Industry redefined, page 20.
Their entry creates opportunities forcross-sector partnering — but also raises
the specter of disruption for mature
health care incumbents.

Over time, these trends promise to
take us to Health 2.0, a fundamentallydifferent model for health care. Instead ofbeing passive recipients of care, patients
will become empowered consumers, withmore information and control over theirhealth decisions. Sophisticated analytics
will allow providers to focus on prevention
and disease management. Instead ofbeing delivered only in hospitals andclinics, health care will be available
wherever patients happen to be.

3. The next wave of digital
innovation will be evenmore disruptive
The next generation of smart technology
promises even greater change. Consider
the disruptive potential of the following:• Artificial intelligence: Much of
medicine involves heuristic, rules-based
problem solving based on symptoms
and test results. This is fertile groundfor AI. Today’s decision-support
tools could soon be replaced bysophisticated algorithms that diagnoseand prescribe — with greater accuracy
and less random variability than their
human counterparts.

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

45

HEALTH REIMAGINED• Sensors: Monitoring health in real-time,real-world conditions promises hugeefficiencies through disease prevention
and care management. Today, thisis done through medical devices,
smartphones and wearables, which areessentially mobile platforms packed
with sensors. The next generation of
sensor technology — cheaper, smaller,
more efficient — will unbundle sensors
from phones, embedding them intattoos and adhesive bandages.

health technologies has grown rapidly,
mainstream adoption has remained
elusive. Payers often do not provide
reimbursement and providers remain
skeptical in the absence of scientific
data on efficacy. The next generation of
sensors — less invasive and with moreaccurate and useful data — could finallytake us to the tipping point.

Digital health has also compounded thechallenge of fragmentation in health• Real-world analytics: Sensors do more care. Achieving the vision of Health 2.0
requires integrating data across diverse
than enable timely interventions; they
streams to see the big picture. This
also deliver an abundance of realhas never been easy in health, wheretime, real-world data. Today, analytics
interoperability is limited and data sharing
firms are combining and analyzing
restricted by regulations and concerns
big data streams across health careorganizations, but the gold mine of data about privacy and security. The rapid
proliferation of data sources is making
from sensors sits largely untapped.
the challenge considerably more difficult.
Imagine combining the information in
The need to address this challengea patient’s health record with roundwill continue to drive partnerships andthe-clock sensor data on diet, activity
acquisitions to access data, as well as
levels and medication adherence towork on analytical techniques, industry
comprehensively understand thestandards and platforms to integrate it.
drivers of her blood pressure. When it
happens, this will be a game changer.
As the chronic disease burden escalates,• The sharing economy: Sharing
systems will be forced to tackle theeconomy platforms are terrific atbiggest challenge of all: behavioral
deploying underutilized assets —change. Expect to see increasing action
allowing people to list their unusedin this space, as payers, providers
cars on Turo or their guest bedrooms
and employers combine insights fromon Airbnb, for instance. This approach
behavioral economics with mobile healthcould have tremendous applicability in technologies to “nudge” behaviors. See
health care systems, which are rife with Behavioral revolution, page 32, for more.
excess capacity. Start-ups have alreadybegun tackling the problem.

4. Fragmentation, adoption
and behavior patterns
challenge Health 2.0
It is relatively easy to imagine the futureof health; getting there will be morechallenging. While the number of mobile

46

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

Upsides

Entrepreneurial start-ups become
the new health companies,
creating and capturing value ininnovative ways.
Societies and governments benefit
from improved quality, expanded
access and reduced costs.
Incumbents become
better aligned with healthoutcomes and the needsof the patients they serve.

Individuals become
more proactive inmanaging their health.

Better questions
When algorithms prescribe and diagnose, how will providers adapt?
In a world of fragmented health data, how do we see the big picture?
While everyone in health care is focused on the short term, how do we incentivize thelong-term behavioral changes needed for tackling chronic disease?

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

47

8

ResourcefulplanetCan innovation make theplanet resource rich instead ofresource scarce?

1. The resources
transformation is at an
inflection point
As demographic trends push the world’s
population to 9.7 billion by 2050,
natural resource constraints — whether inavailability or infrastructure — challengeestablished modes of consumption, fromthe individual through to global corporate
supply chains.

Unchecked, rising temperaturesdue to climate disruption would
cause a 23% reduction in global
incomes by 2100.39

The world’s population consumed
the equivalent of
1.6 planets’ worthof resources in2015;
this figure is set torise to two planetsby 2030.37

21 of the world’s 37 largest
aquifers, providing the water for
more than 2 billion people, havepassed their sustainability
tipping points.38

23%

37 “World Footprint,” Global Footprint Network website, http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/world_footprint/, accessed 21 April 2016.
38 “Study: Third of Big Groundwater Basins in Distress,” NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory website, http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4626, accessed 21 April 2016.
39 “Study finds climate change will reshape global economy,” Berkeley News, UC Berkeley, http://news.berkeley.edu/2015/10/21/study-finds-climate-change-will-reshape-global-economy/, accessed 21
April 2016.

48

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

At the same time, changing climate
patterns, rising seas and more frequent
extreme weather events exacerbate
natural resource issues. The Earth’s
ability to absorb human-generated
carbon emissions is arguably our mostimportant resource constraint.
Of necessity, the future will be resourceefficient, carbon-constrained andresilient.
The recent alignment of a numberof drivers suggests we are at an
inflection point in a natural resources
transformation that has been gaining
force over the past decade:• Growing political will: With its
objectives of limiting global warming

and achieving net global carbon
neutrality, the COP21 agreement
signaled a global course change inenergy use and development.
• Rise of renewables: Aided by falling
costs, renewables are the fastestgrowing energy source. Renewables
accounted for half of global new
generating capacity in 2014 and are
expected to represent more than 50%
of all capacity growth through 2040.40• Shift to gas: Natural gas is on
track to surpass coal as the world’s
second-largest energy source by2035, thanks to its low prices, its
low-carbon characteristics and newexport facilities.41• Corporate energy and resource
optimization: Corporate adoption ofrenewables as part of an optimization
strategy is beginning to cascadebeyond a core group of Fortune 500
companies.
• Global utility market reform: Morethan 30 countries are reforming theirenergy and water markets. Most ofthese reforms enable increased clean
energy production and introduce
resource efficiency innovations.

2. Industry convergencecreates the fourthindustrial revolution innatural resources
The resources transformation is alreadychallenging utility business models
and driving down coal’s share of the
global energy mix. A convergence inenergy, batteries, smart technology(see The future of smart, page 24, formore) and transportation is driving theestablishment of innovative, integrated
and networked resource solutions witheven broader potential disruption andupsides — the fourth industrial revolution
in natural resources.
Corporate power customers are
combining on-site clean energy
generation, energy management
technologies and energy storage toreframe their relationship to thegrid and participate in energy markets.
The growing penetration of theInternet of Things (IoT) pairedwith machine learning in industrial
40 “World Energy Outlook 2015 Factsheet,” International
Energy Agency website, http://www.worldenergyoutlook.
org/media/weowebsite/2015/WEO2015_Factsheets.pdf,
accessed 21 April 2016.
41 BP, “BP Energy Outlook: 2016 Edition,” p. 15.

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

49

RESOURCEFUL PLANET

Upsides

Energy technology andbusiness model innovation
could avert the worst impactsof climate disruption and drive
economic growth.
energy, logistics and manufacturingsystems is enabling new levels of energy
efficiency and performance optimization.
This is also enabling the wider
aggregation and monetization of energy
demand response.
The increasingly distributed andconnected nature of resource
technologies is pushing assets to theedge of the network and changing
ownership models. For example, sharing
business models have made it possible
for residential customers to buy solar
energy from someone else’s leased
rooftop panels.
In terms of transportation, electric
drivetrain vehicles, connected andautonomous vehicle technology, andride-sharing platforms are converging totransform mobility.
Value is shifting away from the asset
owner to the network operator who
aggregates demand, drives utilizationand provides services on assets it does
not own.
Smart technology is being embraced bycities globally to create smart “systemsof systems” that yield more resourceefficient and resilient infrastructure.
San Francisco, for example, is piloting
a cellular network for the internet ofthings as a platform for urban innovation.

3. Energy storage will bea catalyst for disruption
Steeply declining energy storage costs— the price of grid-scale lithium-ion
battery packs is projected to fall 47%
over the next five years — will be an
essential catalyst for the fourth industrial
revolution in resources.42 As energy
storage costs fall, new value streams
and a rising number of business models
50

become economically compelling.
Economical energy storage paves
the way for upsides in renewableenergy integration, energy trading,
grid optimization and electric vehicles,
which could all potentially disrupt
industry incumbents.

4. Carbon andwater solutions
Fossil fuels will be critical to meeting theworld’s massive energy needs for years
to come — 80% of the global energy mix
is expected to be supplied by fossil fuels
in 2035 — making carbon solutions a
critical part of the approach to climate
disruption.43 A growing number ofconventional energy companies areembracing the need to participate in
the low-carbon energy transition. Fresh
impetus is being given to developing
innovations in carbon capture, reuseand sequestration.
The United Nations’ climate conference(COP 21), held in December 2015, gives
new energy to putting a price on carbon
to provide the much-needed economic
drivers to achieve climate objectives. Only
12% of annual global greenhouse gas
emissions are covered by a carbon pricing
mechanism.44 In the run-up to COP21,
six oil majors called for a global carbon
pricing system to set a level competitive
playing field and incentivize developmentof mitigating technologies. China plans tolaunch the largest carbon market in theworld in 2017, which could help neutralize
competitive objections to carbon pricing
mechanisms in other regions.
Water has become the most important
medium for climate disruption, with risingseas, drought and flooding exacerbating
resource challenges in developed andemerging markets. Developed markets
face a trillion-dollar investment gap in

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

maintaining existing water infrastructure.
Emerging markets contend with thefundamental challenge of meeting theneeds of growing populations — 770
million people lack access to clean
drinking water. 45
Crisis is spurring innovation andadoption. Water system managers are
deploying sensors and smart metersthat enable more resource-efficient
operations. Distributed water systems arebeing integrated with centralized systems
to avoid expensive infrastructure buildout. Modular water treatment systems
and innovative business models are
helping to bring water to remote andunderserved communities.
Supply chain risks and license-tooperate challenges arising from water
issues are leading corporations to adopt
on-site water treatment innovations
and water efficiency measures as wellas engage with local communities on
mitigation initiatives.

5. Distributed resource
innovation could
transform lives inemerging markets
The demographic growth, urbanizationand economic development of this century
will be centered in emerging markets;
so will growth in resource consumption
and the impact of climate disruption.
Emerging market countries have embraced
renewables and nuclear energy as partof an “all of the above” strategy to
42 “Market Data: Advanced Batteries for Utility-Scale Energy
Storage,” Navigant Research, 1Q 2016, p. 12.
43 BP, “BP Energy Outlook: 2016 Edition,” p. 6.
44 “FEATURE: Climate change and sustainability key tofuture development agenda, says former UN official”,
UN News Centre, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.
asp?NewsId=50165#.VxmV200UWPw, accessed 21 April
2016.

meet growing energy needs. Lack of acentralized resources infrastructure inmany regions is leading to the adoptionof distributed resource innovations, suchas off-grid solar for lighting, mobile phonecharging and water purification. Distributed
resource innovations could have atransformative impact for the billion people
without access to power and clean water.

6. Disruptors will be
the winners
While the resources transformation isat an inflection point, it will not be easyor occur in a linear fashion. Remaking
how the world produces and consumes
resources such as energy and water will
require mobilizing vast amounts of capital,
replacing incumbent systems and spurringinnovation. Inherent in this process are
disruptions and upsides that will reshapeindustries, generate new sources of value
and alter the corporate and international
competitive landscape.
In this context, nimble innovators are
combining new technologies, digital,
understanding of the customer and new
financing models to disrupt resource
incumbents. Corporations are accessing
this resource innovation pipeline andcrossing industry boundaries — in pursuitof new revenue opportunities. Competitive
differentiation based on resource
optimization and an embrace of resource
innovation will provide increasing value toglobal corporations.
For corporates, governments, innovators,
investors and other stakeholders, now is
the time to assess current capabilities andcompetencies against the disruptions andfuture upside opportunities created byaccelerating change toward a resourceefficient and low-carbon economy.

Distributed energy and water innovations
hold the potential to transform the livesof billions of people who lack access tocentralized resources infrastructure.

Competitive differentiation based on
resource optimization and an embraceof resource innovation will provide
increasing value to global corporations.

Improving energy storage
cost and performancefactors will catalyze
new value streams
and business models
that enable the next
phase of the resources
transformation.
Convergence of resourceand smart technologies is
empowering customers toshare, trade and optimize
resources.

Better questions
How will we link prosperity and sustainability?
Can business disruption also address climate disruption?
How is climate purpose reflected in yourcorporate purpose?
Who is your Chief Resources Officer?

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

51Companies looking to disrupt their business models could start by asking important questions
such as: How can we set the right tone at the top? What rigorous processes should we institute?
What metrics will encourage experimentation?
These are all good questions. But we argue that the starting point is elsewhere. When disruption
upends incumbent business models, it challenges many of the most basic assumptions
underpinning those models. The first, and most important, step in self-disruption therefore
involves challenging long-held assumptions about matters as fundamental as what your businessis and who your customers and competitors are. Here are five better questions to ask yourself.

How do you
seize theupside of
disruption?

1. What business are you in?
Disruption has a way of changing the very business thatcompanies are in. You may have thought you were in thebusiness of assembling steel and glass into motor vehicles— but disruption clarifies that the business you are really in ismobility. Customers don’t necessarily want to own a car. Theirreal need is to get from point A to point B, which can just as
easily be accomplished with a ride-sharing service.
Are you in the business of manufacturing compact discs— or the business of streaming music? Are you in the businessof licensing human drivers — or the business of regulating
algorithms in driverless cars? Understanding how your core
activity has changed is the first step in reinventing yourbusiness model.

2. Who’s your customer?
Disruption does more than empower customers. It creates
entirely new customer segments, with different needs andexpectations. Are your customers’ corporations buying
mainframe computers — or individuals buying PCs? Are you
selling to doctors buying medical devices — or patients managing
their health on smartphone apps? Understanding how thecustomer base has changed, and what the needs of the newcustomers are, are critical inputs for self-disruption.

3. What’s your value proposition?
To respond to the expectations of the new customer base, youneed a different value proposition — the one that customers
traditionally appreciated may be entirely different from what
new customers demand. The traditional value proposition ofnewspapers was authoritativeness and reputation. In a world of
52

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

53

Megatrends 2016 The upside of disruptionsocial media and blogs, they have had to create business models
built on new value propositions — convenience, 24/7 access,customizability — to remain relevant.

4. Who are your competitors?
Responding to disruption requires making the right comparisons,
including comparing yourself with the appropriate competitors.
Since disruption attracts non-traditional entrants from othersectors, the peer group you once used may no longer be relevant.
Fifteen years ago, should executives at Circuit City have comparedthemselves to Best Buy and Radio Shack — or should they havebeen more concerned about a Seattle start-up named Amazon?
How can Ford face the challenges presented by GM and Uber?
Today, is it more important for car makers to compete with eachother — or to understand how they are competing with sharingeconomy start-ups that are disrupting their business?

5. What’s the risk of standing still?
Time is not on your side. We tend to underestimate the speedof revolutions. In assessing the cost, benefit and risk ofinvestments, we often make comparisons in the context ofa world similar to today’s.
The more meaningful comparison, however, is against theenvironment that will exist in the near future, which could
be radically different. The market potential of a disruptive
opportunity may seem insignificant relative to the size of yourbusiness today — but that calculus could be very different
in a disrupted environment, where the market share of the
traditional offering has shrunk dramatically. In a world where
everything is changing, the biggest risk is standing still.
The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

53This report was produced by EYQ.
To discover more insights and stories on disruption:ey.com/megatrends andbetterworkingworld.ey.com/disruption

Your contacts for this report:
Uschi Schreiber
Global Vice Chair – Markets
and Chair, Global Accounts
Committee, EY
uschi.schreiber@eypo.ey.com

Gautam Jaggi
EYQ (primary contact for The futureof work, Behavioral revolution
and Health reimagined)
gautam.jaggi@ey.com

Gil Forer
Lead Partner, Digital and Business
Disruption, Global Markets, EY
EYQ, co-leader
gil.forer@ey.com

Andrea Potter
EYQ (primary contact for
Industry redefined, Empowered
customer and Urban world)
andrea.potter@ey.com

Karin Lutz
Lead Partner, Global Strategy &Analysis, Global Markets, EY
EYQ, co-leader
karin.lutz@uk.ey.com

Martyn Whistler
EYQ (primary contact for
The future of smart)
mwhistler@uk.ey.com

John de Yonge
EYQ (primary contact for
Resourceful planet)john.de_yonge@ey.com

54

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond

54

The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2016 and beyond55

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