Busted: a world past its use-by date

Megatrends | Part 8 | Obsolescence Pandemic

With so much in flux, nothing ever seems quite right anymore.  Systems, business models, products, and even people themselves wash up irreparably lacking. 

We have come together in villages since forever because most of us can only do a fraction of what it takes to govern, protect, feed, clothe, teach, and heal a community. How we have gone about that — our very models of creating value — are well past their expiry dates. For thousands of years, we have profited from the extraction of resources and exploitation of living things; still a dominant paradigm despite being propped by assumptions that we know to no longer hold true.

Image credit: Herbert Bieser from Pixabay.

Most of the models for creating and exchanging value have, indeed, outlived themselves. With their clunky systems and people trained for a world that no longer exists, organizations across mature and established industries (i.e., industries like media, education, or real estate that have been around long enough to get commoditized) are running on borrowed time.

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On the Megatrends series

I have earned an international reputation for leveraging global trends to create positive transformation. Having (1) introduced this concept and (2) set the stage through earlier posts, I now guide you on a 360-degree tour of today’s change landscape!

Having covered Gluttony, Abstraction, Permeability, Collective power, and Cacophony, our tour continues with Obsolescence Pandemic.