Aftershocks and Opportunities – Scenarios For A Post-Pandemic Future.

What are the possibilities for the future in a post-pandemic world?

An Opportunity for Fresh Perspectives
While the world grapples with the current unfolding crisis, as futurists we know how important it is to also be thinking about the next horizon and beyond. This can help ensure that the decisions we make today do not simply lay the foundation for a new set of problems over the horizon. Equally, understanding the types of future that might emerge post-crisis can help us plan and prepare for those possibilities as we reshape our strategies today. Finally, such future insights might help us spot, train for, and adapt to the new opportunities, risks, and challenges that could arise as a post-pandemic world unfolds.

A Global Collaboration
In response to the need for future perspectives, Fast Future wanted to create this fast track book, which draws on the expertise, insight, ambition, and vision of twenty five future thinkers from around the world. The goal is to provide individuals, leaders, and organizations with foresight, insight, challenge, visionary thinking, and navigational guidance on what lies ahead.

Scenarios for A Post-Pandemic Future
The common goal of this group of writers is to provide provocations that will take the public discourse beyond the current debate. The aim is to acknowledge their importance and think about how we can create a safer and more sustainable world beyond reproduction numbers, testing strategies, personal protective equipment, lockdown policies, vaccination, and economic support. As many have said, a crisis is an ideal time to reset our thinking, refocus our strategies and policies, and try new ideas designed to lay the foundation for the next the future and what comes after that. A future that the authors believe can be fairer, more inclusive, more transparent, and more sustainable for all.

Four Core Themes
The concise, insightful, and action enabling ideas and provocations in this book are presented as an exploration of possible scenarios and development paths across four key domains that we believe should be if interest politicians, business leaders, civil society activities, and most importantly, the ordinary citizens of this planet:
Critical shifts – exploring the developments taking place across every aspect of our collective thinking as a result of the pandemic experience.
Society and Social Policy – examining the implications and opportunities for the fabric and infrastructure of society as we look to tackle both the existing persistent challenges and the new ones that have arisen through the crisis, framing an agenda for what could be developed in what many commentators are calling the future “new normal”.
Government and Economy – assessing how governments are and should be grappling with the challenges and consequences of balancing health and economic protection and recovery during and post-pandemic.
Business and Technology – outlining the possible implications, opportunities, and choices for business and our use of technology. Exploring how we might solve critical questions posed by the pandemic and lay the foundation for the future across health, education, social structures, commerce, and the design of our organizations.

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“The Future of Business is essential reading for business leaders, entrepreneurs and anyone who wants to stay ahead of the curve understand how our world and the world of work could be transformed over the next two decades.”

Rohit can tailor a keynote address for your company’s needs. His current key speaking topics closely correlate to the subjects covered in The Future of Business:

1. Aliens, Barbarians and Magicians: New business behaviours in a disruptive world
2. Emerging global landscapes: Future global economic, political, social, environmental and business scenarios
3. The Future of Business: Key forces, trends and ideas shaping future strategies, business models, organisation structures and ways of working
4. Mayhem, Magic and Muscle – A practical business framework for responding strategically to a rapidly changing world
5. Emerging Technologies: How advances in science and technology could transform society, business and the human brain and body.
6. Four Faces of Future Disruption – Business and societal implications of rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Currency, Peer to Peer Networks and the Internet of Things
7. Empires of Tomorrow – Emerging industries and their implications for individuals, society, business, government and the future of work, employment and professions
8. The Future of Professional Services – How service firms can transform themselves to survive and thrive in the tomorrow’s business environment
9. New Horizons: The future of aviation, travel, tourism, hotels and live events
10. Disrupted – A case study on how Fast Future Publishing is challenging every aspect of thinking and practice across the sector

Fast Future Research

Through his consulting and research work at Fast Future, Rohit is helping global clients deliver transformational strategies and invent powerful new concepts that will disrupt existing sectors and create the industries of the future. Fast Future has four core streams of activity:

• Live delivery – Futurist presentations, conference chairmanship and designing highly participative executive level futures experiences
• Reinventing the present – Helping clients determine how to transform their strategy, products and services and create the future design for their organisation
• Envisioning the future – Helping clients create transformative future visions and organisational models – recently these have included envisioning an airline, airport and city of the future for industry leaders in each sector
• Investing in disruption – Helping clients spot, invest in and nurture disruptive new ventures and developments that could transform their business.

Example projects include:

• Future Human / Future Work – Exploring how organisations can respond to the rapid pace of chemical, genetic and technological advancements that will enhance the human brain and body and see robots working alongside these super-humans and their unaugmented predecessors
• Total Transformation – Advising global professional services firms on how to reinvent their strategies, business models, ways of working, cultures and mindset in order to survive and thrive in an era of disruptive change
• Smart City 2030 – Developing visions for a truly sustainable city of the future that will become a hub for groundbreaking developments in emerging science and technology sectors
• Airport 2050 – Redesigning the airport service experience and design to take account of developments in the fields of human capability, robotics, artificial intelligence, smart materials, 3D / 4D printing, grown structures, biomimicry and superfast construction –
• Future Airline – Reimagining everything an airline does and how it does it to create a truly inspirational customer-centric model for the future of air travel. – Multiple presentations

Videos of Rohit Exploring the Future

• A Very Human Future – Keynote Presentation to PWC Future of Work Conference (36 minutes)
• Launch of the Future of Business – London Business School Global Leadership Summit (first 23 minutes)
• Anticipating 2025 – Driving forces, global challenges and potential disruptions (30 mins):
• A World in Transition (60 mins):

Publications

• The Future of Business – Critical Insights into a Rapidly Changing world from 60 Future Thinkers
• Achieving Transformation and Renewal in Financial Services
• Designing Your Future – Key Trends, Challenges and Choices
• 100 Drivers of Change for Business and The Accounting Profession
• The Path to 2025 – Driving Forces Global Challenges Potential Disruptions and Business Scenarios
• The Future of China’s Economy
• Futurium – Science and Technology Transformations Shaping the Path to 2050
• Reinventing the Airport Ecosystem
• Hotels 2020 – Beyond Segmentation
• The Future of Travel and Tourism in the Middle East
• Law Firm 2024 – Rethinking Law Firms in Digital Era (The ILTA Legal Technology Future Horizons Project)
• HR2020 – the Future of HR
• The Shape of Jobs to Come
• Asia Scenarios 2020
• Future Migration Scenarios
• The Narcotics Landscape
• The Future of the Family

The Future of Business is the first book in the FutureScapes series. The book focuses on the critical social and economic forces, business trends, disruptive technologies, breakthrough developments in science and new ideas that could reshape the commercial environment over the next two decades. It explores how these future factors could come together to force a fundamental rethinking of the purpose, strategy, business models, values and structures of organizations as they seek to survive and thrive in a rapidly changing reality. The Future of Business draws on the latest rich and challenging insights, ideas and visions from over 60 contributing authors – established and emerging futurists, foresight researchers and future thinkers from around the world.

Lead editor and global futurist Rohit Talwar introduces the book:The Future of Business explores the business implications of political, economic and social shifts, cybercurrencies, new business models, and the long term impact of disruptive developments such as neurotechnologies, gene editing, 3D printing, new energy solutions, AI and robotics. It explores the potential emergence of new industries and  new organizational forms, and highlights practical strategies for exploring and embedding the future.