The Roland Berger Trend Compendium 2050 focuses on stable, long-term developments, specifically the megatrends shaping the world between now and 2050. The report emphasizes the importance of understanding and addressing these megatrends, even amidst globally impactful events like the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, as they continue to drive progress and present opportunities.
Value of Innovation
Innovation is crucial for sustainable growth, bringing value economically, socially, and environmentally. It drives social welfare by improving quality of life and creating new markets. Economically, innovation drives prosperity through economic growth, job creation, and productivity increases. It also transforms business models and reduces inequality when widely accessible. Key areas where innovation adds value include attracting consumers, driving the economy, transforming business models, reducing inequality, driving start-ups, attracting investors, increasing productivity, and enabling circularity.
Types of Innovation
Innovation can be categorized into different types:
- Product offering innovations: Subdivided into product performance and product system innovation, leading to more differentiated products and potentially an ecosystem of associated services and products.
- Configuration of a company: Subdivided into business model, network, structure, and process innovation, providing crucial downstream effects and enabling innovation in other areas.
- User experience: Affecting customers directly, including public appearance, reputation, service, channels, branding, and customer engagement.
Diffusion of Innovations
For innovations to have a significant impact, they need to reach critical mass. Everett Rogers' theory of the adoption of innovations identifies five kinds of adopters: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. To reach critical mass, an innovation must transition from early adopters to the early majority, overcoming the "marketing chasm." The five stages of adoption are knowledge/awareness, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation.
Challenges and Opportunities in Innovation
Innovation is a complex and resource-intensive process. While the top innovating countries have remained broadly the same over the past decade, with only South Korea and Germany advancing into the top 10 of the WIPO's global innovation index ranking, there is still room for movement, particularly for France, Estonia, and Japan. China has made significant progress, rising from 29th to 11th place, while Hong Kong has lost ground. Advanced economies, with their strong economic structures and innovation strength, lead in productivity, but emerging markets have caught up by outperforming the productivity growth rates of advanced economies in the last three decades.
Factors Determining a Country's Innovation Ability
A country's ability to innovate is determined by a complex combination of enabling factors. Advanced economies are generally at the forefront due to their infrastructure advantages. Human capital and R&D are particularly important levers for improving a country's innovation performance. Investing in education and R&D signals confidence in the future and is essential for remaining or becoming more innovative.
Global Innovation Index (GII)
The GII scores countries from 0 to 100 based on their ability to innovate, analyzing them on various metrics including R&D intensity, patent applications, tertiary education efficiency, regulatory environment, productivity, high-tech density, and researcher concentration. The GII shows a clear correlation between innovation scores and GDP per capita, with higher-scoring countries enjoying higher levels of prosperity. Many developing countries lack the capacity and access to institutions and skills to better position themselves in the global innovation race.
Frontier Technologies
Frontier technologies are emerging technologies at the convergence of innovative scientific advancements and real-world applications. They leverage recent scientific breakthroughs to address complex challenges or create new opportunities across various sectors. Frontier technologies are pivotal in tackling urgent global challenges like climate change, resource scarcity, and healthcare needs. Today's frontier technologies are expected to experience considerable growth, maturing to a market value of USD 9.5 trillion by 2030.
Readiness for Frontier Technologies
Developed economies clearly lead interms of frontier technology readiness due to their infrastructure advantages. The UNCTAD "readiness index" ranks countries based on five necessary building blocks: ICT deployment, skills, R&D activity, industry activity, and access to finance. Countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa are the least ready to use, adopt, or adapt to frontier technologies and are at risk of missing current technological opportunities. Only a few developing countries have the necessary capacitiesto take advantage of frontier technologies, which rely on digitalization and connectivity. China, the most-ready developing country, ranks 35, followed by Brazil (40), India (46), and South Africa (56).
Global Landscape of Frontier Technologies
China and the US dominate the global landscape of frontier technology patents and publications, holding two-thirds of global frontier technology patents and an even higher share of publications. However, the quality of patents is equally important, and under international scope of patents, the grant ratio, and the commercialization rate, China's performance is lower than that of major developed countries.
Industry 4.0
Economies with higher levels of skills and stronger manufacturing industries are more likely to capture the economic gains associated with Industry 4.0. The diffusion of Industry 4.0 technologies refers to the adoption and integration of advanced digital technologies into industrial and economic systems. Key factors influencing diffusion are the availability of skilled workforce and a strong industrial base, along with a robust digital infrastructure, high levels of R&D investment, and a technology-friendly policy environment.
Selected Frontier Technologies
The report provides an in-depth analysis of selected frontier technologies, including:
- Urban Air Mobility (UAM): Offers a potential solution to alleviate urban transportation congestion, with test flights for prototypes already underway and the vision of flying taxis expected to become a reality within a decade.
- 6G Technology: The next step in wireless communication networks, with commercialization expected from 2030 onwards. It will support data-hungry applications and drive fundamental innovations.
- Space Connectivity: Satellite internet is growing in importance, providing a crucial complement to existing networks, especially for remote areas and facilities. The market share of all satellites is projected to grow significantly by 2033.
- Internet of Things (IoT): Encompasses numerous facets of everyday life and is only at the beginning of its development. The number of IoT-connected devices is projected to grow significantly, driven by advancements in connectivity and the decreasing cost of sensors. IoT is an evolving set of disparate technologies at various levels of maturity, with some well-established and others still immature.
- Quantum Computing: Will revolutionize hardware by radically increasing computing power. The market for quantum technologies is advancing rapidly, with projections estimating a fifty-fold growth by 2030 and a market value of USD 128 billion by 2040.
- Blockchain: Impacts processes by means of its unique decentralized transactional characteristics. The DLT market has grown rapidly, driven by its applications in finance, supply chains, and beyond. By 2030, it is projected to exceed USD 140 billion as adoption continues across various sectors.
- Green & Energy Technologies: Include advancements in renewables, space-based solar power, and small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). While the efficiency and capacity of renewable energy sources have increased, their capacity factor still lags behind conventional sources. Space-based solar power has the potential to address the world's growing demand for clean energy, but significant challenges remain. SMRs offer several advantages over large nuclear plants, including faster deployment, lower costs, and improved safety.
- Nanotechnology: Is uniquely placed to revolutionize material science and innovation. By 2050, applications could affect every industry and purpose. Nanotechnology is already widely present in many consumer products and industrial applications today and is expected to impact many more sectors in the future.
- Biotechnology: Enables many beneficial applications but also entails ethical and societal risks. Research is ongoing, yielding breakthroughs such as the Nobel Prize-winning gene editing process CRISPR.
Human & Machine Interaction
Human-machine interaction (HMI) describes the diverse interaction, communication, and collaboration between humans and technological systems, particularly automation and artificial intelligence. The report explores the positive and negative effects of smartphone usage, the development of HMI, and the evolving relationship between humans and machines, including the rise of humanoid robots and the impact of AI on the workforce.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI is becoming smarter and is expected to surpass humans in many areas. The report discusses the benefits of AI, its impact on various sectors, and the challenges it poses. AI infrastructure is unequally distributed, with high costs and energy demands restricting global accessibility and sustainability. AI regulations are a global hot topic, with frameworks and legislation aimed at minimizing risks and ensuring safety and ethical standards.
Corporate Actions
The report concludes with recommendations for companies regarding innovation and AI:
- Invest in human capital: Prioritize investments in workforce upskilling and fostering an innovation mindset throughout the organization.
- Develop a sustainable innovation strategy: Create a long-term strategy that emphasizes the continuous development of innovations in products, services, and/or processes, using frontier technologies.
- Embrace and leverage AI: Integrate AI into core business strategies and foster human-AI collaboration.
- Assess value chain for AI opportunities: Identify high-impact opportunities for generative AI and set clear strategic goals.
- Support workforce transformation: Invest in reskilling and upskilling initiatives to transition employees into new, value-added roles.
