Meta-trend: Realigning the fundamentals Every year, Fjord – Accenture Interactive’s design and innovation Meanwhile, technology continues to create change: now, practice – crowdsources trends for the year ahead from its it’s changing the shape of money, recognizing our bodies as network of 1,200 people in 33 studios worldwide. With new a form of signature, and creating virtual doubles. studios opening in Japan and across Latin America, this year’s Fjord Trends are our most globally diverse. Yet, despite the 2020’s meta-trend is nothing short of a major realignment of diversity of regional flavors and context, there was a high level the fundamentals. It’s tempting to misinterpret this as a gloomy of consensus in our initial idea-gathering stage. These are picture – instead, we think this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance also our most closely connected trends ever, telling a compre- to innovate in business models, services and products around hensive story about our landscape and what’s coming next. new definitions of value. Economics and politics, capitalism and resources, technology For companies with the courage to recognize this meta-trend, and society have long been entwined, but recently the there are many opportunities – and there will also be challenges. consequences of that entanglement have burst into public For example, it questions the decades-old definition we’ve had consciousness – ironically, driven by the very technologies of business success, which is underpinned by the philosophy that made such interconnectivity possible. The omnipresence of profit as the only directive. of digital and the internet have been big (possibly decisive) factors in the prominence of President Trump and Greta This realignment also potentially leads to iconic innovation Thunberg, of Amazon.com and the gig economy, smartphones moving beyond start-ups in favor of more traditional businesses and techlash and, indeed, the re-evaluation of Silicon Valley that will need to work together to make change happen at an start-ups triggered by the failure of WeWork’s IPO. industry-wide level. We might see a two-speed model emerging as the shift takes place at different paces in different markets. Questions about capitalism’s trajectory of endless growth Emerging markets might just leapfrog western attitudes toward with profit as the sole metric have moved from shouting on the endless consumption and go straight for a more balanced streets to conversations in the boardroom. Concerns about view. Meanwhile, people continue to be ever more fluid in their plastic have developed into a major climate crisis movement, behaviors, constantly shifting between traditional demographic which is now among voters’ top priorities in many countries. segments in ways that seem contradictory. The clash between the technology industry and governments is causing widely felt tremors, as tech giants are considered However it plays out from here, one thing is likely: those who to have immense power but there’s disagreement about who embrace the long-term view – by starting with their impact on should be held accountable. the world and society, and embracing the systemic complexity of the world–will emerge as winners. Two years ago, we highlighted Tensions as our meta-trend. In retrospect, that led directly to last year’s meta-trend, The search for value. Now, that search has evolved into a re- evaluation of purpose and place in the world by governments, businesses and individuals alike.