Want to make the most difference? 10 opportunities ripe for changemaking

Megatrends | Part 13 | Opportunities created by the megatrends

Tracking global trends — all big and dramatic — offers a keen observer a glimpse at something intimate: what the world is lacking. I see 10 opportunities ripe for your changemaking.

The most effective changemakers operate at the intersection of their purpose, their unique gifts, and what the world needs. Before we go on, here’s some backfill:

• Your purpose: My mini-series on Purpose address, Why does purpose matter? What is yours? And what does it mean for your life as a changemaker?

• Megatrends: To understand what the world needs, changemakers must be aware of global trends. Through this series, I have taken you on a 360-degree tour of the change landscape, introducing the ten megatrends reshaping our world.

Now, we are ready to explore the opportunities that the megatrends create. To illustrate each, I offer a couple of examples across industries (many are so savvy that it was a challenge to pin them down to one!). Explore these for yourself, see what else you discover, and let me know in comments, please! I can’t wait!

3 points before we get to these 10 opportunities:

Opportunities are vacuum

Opportunities are like pockets of vacuum created by the movements of air in the atmosphere. Thinner than colder air, warmer air rises, and adjacent colder air immediately replaces it to avoid a vacuum. Sticking with the analogy, opportunities are fleeting: those open today may get saturated and disappear tomorrow. Thankfully and deviating from this analogy, we have longer than a split second to act on an opportunity before its window closes.

Image credit: Tania Max from Pixabay.

Opportunities are options

If something is burning, there is an opportunity to put the fire out or to let it burn through. If a piece of land is parched, there is an opportunity to let nature take its course, an opportunity to plant monocultures that will be watered artificially, and an opportunity to plant that land with suitable drought-tolerant species that will, overtime, help it regenerate. Opportunities don’t mandate; they offer choices.

Opportunities are objective

Like trends, opportunities are an objective reality. They exist whether you see them or not, and regardless of whether you choose to do anything about it. It is how you aspire to leverage that opportunity into an idea and, subsequently, a venture that is subjective because it is unique to you.

10 opportunities ripe for your changemaking

In the tensions that our cravings create against the human and planetary need for equilibrium, I observe ten opportunities, which I will illustrate through examples. Leverage them to check the relevance of your efforts, to create new projects or ventures, to cut a path for worthy ones, or to amplify their impact!