Want to find your next opportunity? Look to the future and spot the next big change. After all, change creates disruptions and gaps in markets, and it is these gaps and disruptions that create some of the best opportunity. After that it is all a matter of timing and execution.
I love the fact that my father and his partners (octogenarians all) still keep their eyes off into the horizon. Dad sent along a copy of Futurists “Top 10 Forecasts for 2008 and Beyond.” (You can order their full report as a pdf download here).
Here is a summary of their top ten:
1. The world will have a billion millionaires by 2025.
2. Fashion will go wired as technologies and tastes converge to revolutionize the textile industry.
3. The threat of another cold war with China, Russia, or both could replace terrorism as the chief foreign-policy concern of the United States.
4. Counterfeiting of currency will proliferate, driving the move toward a cashless society.
5. The earth is on the verge of a significant extinction event.
6. Water will be in the twenty-first century what oil was in the twentieth century.
7. World population by 2050 may grow larger than previously expected, due in part to healthier, longer-living people.
8. The number of Africans imperiled by floods will grow 70-fold by 2080.
9. Rising prices for natural resources could lead to a full-scale rush to develop the Arctic.
10. More decisions will be made by nonhuman entities.
More wealth, more people, less water to drink, no cash, and a scarier world. All of these will be creating opportunities for traditional entrepreneurs. But, they will also call upon a greater role of social entrepreneurs as governments are increasingly showing their inability and even incompetence in dealing with many of our problems.