Centres of economic activity will shift profoundly, not just globally, but also regionally. Due to economic liberalisation, technological advances, capital market developments and demographic shifts, there will be a major realignment of world economic activity. Within the next 20 years, the Asian and Western economies are predicted to converge. Some industries and functions - manufacturing and IT services, for example - will shift even more dramatically.

The unprecedented aging of populations across the developed world will call for new levels of efficiency and creativity from the public sector.

Almost a billion new consumers will enter the global marketplace in the next decade as economic growth in emerging markets pushes them beyond the threshold level of $5,000 in annual household income. From now to 2015, the consumers' spending power in emerging economies will increase from $4 trillion to more than $9 trillion - nearly the current spending power of Western Europe.

Consumers, wherever they live, will increasingly have information about, and access to, the same products and brands; in the area of ICT, consumers will be more knowledgeable and real prices of ICT products and services will fall.

Whilst connectivity is now changing the way we work and live, we are at the early, not mature, stage of this revolution. Individuals, the public sector and businesses are learning how to make the best use of IT in designing processes and in developing and accessing knowledge. This will create fundamental changes for most of what we buy and do.

Technology is shifting behaviour. Work will be global and instantaneous. Communities and relationships will be formed in new ways (12 percent of US newlyweds last year met online), and social network sites on the Internet will grow as consumers create their own products and services.

Access to talent will be the key resource for the success of ICT ventures. Ongoing shifts in labour and talent will be far more profound than the widely observed migration of jobs to low-wage countries. The shift to knowledge-intensive industries highlights the importance and scarcity of well-trained talent. For many companies and governments, global labour and talent strategies will become as important as global sourcing and manufacturing strategies.

The role and behaviour of business will come under increasingly sharp scrutiny. This trend is not just of the past five years but also of the past 250 years. The increasing pace and extent of global business, and the emergence of truly giant global corporations, will exacerbate the pressures on industry over the next ten years.

Demand for natural resources will grow, as will the strain on the environment. Water shortages will be a key constraint on growth. Innovation in technology, regulation, and the use of resources will be central to creating a world that can both drive robust economic growth and sustain environmental demands.

New global industry structures are emerging. In response to changing market regulation and the advent of new technologies, non-traditional business models are flourishing, often coexisting in the same market and sector space. In many industries, a structure of, a few giants on top, a narrow middle, and then a number of smaller, fast-moving players on the bottom, is emerging. Corporate borders are blurring as interlinked 'ecosystems' of suppliers, producers and customers emerge. Private equity will continue to change corporate ownership and established relationships.

Ubiquitous access to information is changing the economics of knowledge. Not only is knowledge increasingly available and, at the same time, increasingly specialised but its production is moving from creation by individual specialists to creation by communities of practice. This rise in 'open source' is important in ICT, but increasingly also in other industries.