Learning to read the larger context gives you a path for imagining the future. Peter Drucker put it best. I just look out the window and see what is visible, but not yet seen. In the United States, we are, for the moment, economically stronger than we have been in decades. A new inter-organizational way of business and academic life is forming.
Corporate entities are transnational.
The most talented and highly skilled workers in every country comprise the modern phenomenon of a global and mobile workforce. They can easily gravitate to where the best jobs are located. But information technologies have also made it possible for them to stay home and yet work abroad. The future portends even more. Science and engineering are moving toward interdisciplinarity at the same time that they become steadily more complex and vibrant from within.