Tech Leaders Are Growing Up Again Thatã¢â‚¬â„¢s a Good Thing

Are we there withal? The question has been on the tip of the world'south collective natural language for about two years, as we searched for a moment where we could proclaim the COVID-19 crisis over.

In 2021 — afterward a year that forced usa to reconsider our assumptions and expectations for our lives and careers — we searched for a new path, a way to alive and work that felt correct and sustainable amid the ongoing pandemic.

We embraced new kinds of separation and decentralization: In the way nosotros practise our jobs, with the proliferation of remote and hybrid work; in the way nosotros make and ship appurtenances, with growing favor toward local supply chain hubs over global manufacturing centers; and in the style we bank, every bit blockchain-based finance gains steam.

No, we're non there yet, simply nosotros accept made progress. And in 2022, we'll go along to refine and redefine this brand new world. What can we expect for the coming twelvemonth?

Every Dec, LinkedIn editors enquire our community of Influencers and creators to share the Big Ideas they believe will define the year ahead. This year, as we continue to find our fashion amidst an unpredictable pandemic, nosotros offer a selection of thoughts on where we become from here — at piece of work, at home and everywhere in between.

This is by no means a complete list, and we invite you to join us! What Large Ideas practice you think will sally in 2022? Share your thoughts in the comments or publish a postal service, article or video on LinkedIn with #BigIdeas2022. — Scott Olster

P.S. Check out my colleague George Anders' assay of what we got right — and incorrect — in terminal yr's Big Ideas predictions. And you tin can see our local Big Ideas for Australia , India , the U.Grand. , pan-Europe , the Asia Pacific and the Gulf regions.

Brace yourself for Season 2 of "The Great Reshuffle"

"The Not bad Reshuffle" of the past year — which saw millions of workers quitting their jobs and many others contemplating a motility — isn't going abroad. The trend is poised to exist a multi-year procedure, with fresh themes taking center stage in 2022.

For people in their 20s and 30s, expect for professional person nomading to go a more accustomed way of life. Working remotely and switching locations every few months is no longer simply an eccentricity of the tech-sector's elite engineers; it's become a viable option for chore functions ranging from tele-sales to content marketing. "Work from anywhere" may besides become the ultimate perk that many employees insist on.

Wait plenty of 2021's job switchers to keep hopping, also. The U.South. Bureau of Labor Statistics' most contempo written report on job tenure plant that, as of 2020, employees stayed with their employers for an boilerplate of iv.1 years. Wait for that number to drib below 4.0 in the futurity.

Who's going to assist anxious workers notice the correct path? All indicators point toward career counseling as a profession that's set up to boom. One cluster of advisers volition focus on people who worry that they have too many choices. Another puddle will demand to support people who feel trapped in a version of "The Hunger Games," struggling to survive in a harsh, volatile labor market. — George Anders

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We'll enter a golden age for vaccines

Today'south slate of COVID-19 vaccines were developed at a tape-breaking pace. Simply in that location's much more to come, with even faster vaccine development and jabs that can target more than 1 virus in the offing.

In the brusque-term, researchers will continue to examination more cost-constructive, "tried-and-true" protein-based vaccines that could be delivered to poorer countries with less onerous storage requirements, said Brendan Borrell, author of "The Start Shots: The Epic Rivalries and Heroic Science Behind the Race for the Coronavirus Vaccine."

Longer term, "research teams are hoping to develop a 'pan-coronavirus' shot that won't only protect people confronting all the Covid variants, only potentially other types of nasty coronaviruses as well, such as Middle East respiratory syndrome," Borrell added.

Wait all of these efforts to get speedier. Scientists and politicians are already targeting a 100-day timeline from "lab to jab," said Jeremy Farrar, director of London-based charitable foundation Wellcome Trust. Only Farrar thinks even that is likewise long. He foresees cutting the timeline from genome to vaccine to just seven days, with a global rollout within 30 days. How? By identifying the 20 to fifty virus families in the brute kingdom with the greatest pandemic potential and building "a library of advanced vaccines" that can be prepare with only minor alterations.

"This should be our ambition for the end of this decade — our generation's moonshot," Farrar said. — Beth Kutscher

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Big Tech will rival — and fifty-fifty supersede — government on the global stage...

Nation states had been the master drivers of global affairs for about 400 years, in charge of conducting war and peace, providing public goods, writing and enforcing laws and controlling flows of data, goods, services and people. No more. Tech giants like Meta (Facebook), Google, Amazon and Alibaba are increasingly acting as sovereigns, rivaling states for influence over our lives.

Every bit more than of the world becomes digitized, these companies' command over the goods and services needed to run a modernistic society — including election integrity, telecommunication networks, cloud infrastructure, logistics capabilities, payment systems, infinite exploration and even national security — will deepen. Think about what happened on January six. After rioters stormed the U.South. Capitol, it was social media companies — non law enforcement, Congress or the judiciary — that sprang into action to punish those responsible. Now inquire yourself this: Who will exercise more to influence the outcome of the 2022 midterm elections, the President of the United States or the CEO of Meta (Facebook)? Information technology's telling that we've reached a point where the answer to that question isn't obvious.

Tech giants' influence will trigger enough of backlash from leaders in the U.S., Red china and Europe, all of whom agree that they need to get tough on technology companies. Just don't expect any of these efforts to go all the way — in part considering leaders aren't aligned on the nature of the trouble, in role because they lack the expertise and institutions to regulate Big Tech effectively and in part considering they fearfulness that overreaching could hamper innovation and growth. Which ways that, at least for the near future, the ability of technology companies is poised to grow beyond the ability and willingness of governments to constrain their dominance. — Ian Bremmer, president at Eurasia Grouping

...merely it volition fail to fully own the metaverse

There's a metaverse country grab itinerant and, for once, not all the spoils will go to Big Tech. The next iteration of the spider web is arriving, and it's leaping off of our screens. Information technology'south the metaverse, a term that describes the 3D immersive and collaborative experiences that are already making their mode into our lives. Say the word "metaverse" and nigh people call back of a headset — Oculus, for example, or the HTC Vive — that transports united states of america into a pixelated world in which nosotros collaborate with digital avatars. Merely, the metaverse is far more varied, from existing augmented experiences (remember Pokemon Go?) to high-cease gaming worlds.

As we commence upon the next great technology shift, the tension between closed and open up platforms will continue. Just as in the shift to mobile, large technology companies will effort to carve out every bit much control over this new mural equally possible. Witness the rebranding of Meta, formerly called Facebook. Just a few days later, Microsoft (parent company to LinkedIn) teased its ain metaverse plans. Just different earlier tech paradigms, the metaverse will exist much more difficult to wall off and command cheers to two significant forces. The first is blockchain, which volition let metaverse participants to build and use decentralized applied science, rather than rely on Big Tech players alone. The 2d is the artists and technologists who are laying the initial groundwork for the metaverse aren't appreciative to Big Tech in the means they once were. Thanks to blockchain, they accept a decentralized ways to make money. This version of the spider web holds the potential to exist open; one that rewards individual creators for their contributions. — Jessi Hempel

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The pandemic's next act volition focus on mental wellness

In 2022, the earth volition need to reckon with the trauma the pandemic has left in its wake. Life may be normalizing, merely many people are even so grappling with grief, depression and feet. "The actual work will accept to be done because we're going to encounter a lot of destruction coming [in] 2022," said Rhonda Medows, president of population wellness for the Providence infirmary network in Renton, Wash. "I think nosotros're looking at a lost generation if we don't," she added, referring to the challenges children and adolescents faced during this time.

Merely the demand for mental health services is outstripping supply. With the world facing an farthermost shortage of clinicians, many of whom are grappling with their own burnout, digital platforms will take centre stage, fifty-fifty beyond the current apps linking patients and therapists.

Researchers are already trying to find biomarkers, including through genetic testing, to lucifer people with drugs like antidepressants, which work differently in each individual. The next frontier volition also include apps and wearables to help people manage their treatment, said Courtney Billington, president of Janssen Neuroscience. These tools volition let people to enter their symptoms in existent-time or track vital signs that may correlate with their mental health, like heart rate. And this data could exist shared with or monitored by clinicians. — Beth Kutscher

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Frontline employees will bask new clout

Last autumn, as Amazon ramped up its usual bulldoze for workers ahead of the holiday shopping season, the company offered signing bonuses of upwardly to $1,000 to attract new warehouse employees. This year, the e-commerce giant is offering as much as triple that amount.

Subsequently years of enduring stagnant pay and dreary working conditions, the world'southward forepart-line workers in fields such every bit retail, hospitality and customer service could be heading into better times.

Harvard Concern School's Ryan Buell argues that smart employers will offset to see the benefits of reestablishing closer human contact with customers in a post-pandemic earth. This will interpret into "increased compensation and improved scheduling" for the front-line workers who make this kind of rapport happen, Buell argues.

LinkedIn's chief economist, Karin Kimbrough, goes ane step further, predicting that "employees will keep to drive a harder deal with employers." They'll be helped past a potent 2022 economic system in which the U.S. unemployment rate could shrink to 3.five%, from the current 4.8%.

This new hereafter volition feature more song employees, who won't hesitate to jump transport if they're unhappy, says Joshua Luna, founder of Mgmt, a training and coaching arrangement. "The power dynamic will shift from employers and leave them pining for talent like never before," he contends. — George Anders , Joseph Milord , Andrew Seaman

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Our cities will offset to run on crypto

As national governments around the world face up scrutiny over their efficiency and trustworthiness, many state and city governments have begun to step up and experiment with new approaches to some of their stickiest challenges. Enter crypto, which governments accept begun to embrace to finance municipal services, fund new programs and pay government workers.

Miami has struck a deal with nonprofit CityCoins, which allows users who mine new tokens to earn part of the cryptocurrency they generate and donate the rest to a city of their choosing. And Mayor Hillary Schieve of Reno, Nevada has proposed a plan that includes selling not-fungible tokens (NFTs) to support public art and using decentralized autonomous organizations to sell crypto-based stakes of urban center-owned properties to investors.

What'due south the benefit of adopting a blockchain approach to government? It puts transactions into public view, boosting transparency. And its automation of most processes tin can reduce red record and the likelihood of errors.

"Integrating blockchain-based organization formats ... will allow institutions to manage public goods in a much more than efficient and transparent mode, reduce coordination costs and can drastically speed up the conclusion making procedure," says Niek Van der Voort, COO of MetaMundo and DAO builder. "The number of organizations that volition adopt crypto to address public challenges will grow exponentially." — Liza Jansen

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The iv-twenty-four hour period work calendar week will get a competitive reward

During The Dandy Resignation, millions of people accept been doing more than than walking away from their jobs. They've been rethinking the function that work plays in their lives. There's a growing number of talented, motivated people who are interested in doing a great job in less time.

For decades, leaders have equated delivery with long hours. At long last, more are recognizing that y'all can excel in your piece of work and care near your workplace without making information technology the dominant priority in your world. From Microsoft Japan to Semco in Brazil and the regime of Iceland to Perpetual Guardian in New Zealand, organizations are figuring out how to brand the 4-day work week piece of work.

Earlier COVID, information technology was a novelty. In 2022, the 4-day piece of work week may commencement to become a competitive advantage for companies. Companies that offer fifty extra days of freedom a twelvemonth will accept an easier fourth dimension attracting and retaining talented people. If y'all've decided that there's more to life than piece of work, information technology'southward hard to imagine a more than enticing and exciting proffer.

Every workplace has a gravitational field. Leaders who take the 4-day work week seriously will draw stars into their orbit. — Adam Grant , organizational psychologist at Wharton, host of the TED podcast WorkLife and writer of " Remember Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know "

We'll brainstorm to await at algae — and other "blue foods" — in a whole new fashion

With the global population expected to hit x billion by 2050 and climate change adding layers of incertitude to our food product system, a food crisis is looming. "Bluish foods" —  fish, aquatic plants, mussels and algae — may offer a cardinal solution.

"Blue foods" offering both nutritional and environmental benefits, making them an platonic potential source for future food needs. Algae's protein content, for example, is college than conventional sources such as meat, poultry and dairy products; and information technology can be cultivated without freshwater or arable land. Seagrass is capable of capturing carbon 35 times faster than tropical rainforests, can transform abandoned salt marshes into flourishing habitats and tin can even be used as an culling to rice.

"Even though aquaculture production has continued to grow in recent decades … the potential of the world'due south seas and oceans to provide healthy and sustainable nutrient remains largely unused," says Sander van den Burg, researcher at Wageningen University and Enquiry. Van den Burg sees a change afoot in 2022, where we'll gradually see more blue foods available at local grocers.

To reap the full environmental benefits of this food source, we'll need to allow go of several current manufacture practices, says Van den Burg. He advocates for round techniques, like using algae instead of fish for feed and finding new uses for scraps and other byproducts in the food product process. — Liza Jansen

Salary talk volition come out of the shadows

Fierce competition to recruit talented workers combined with a growing push to concur companies accountable for their diversity promises will force employers to finally open up about who is earning what, once and for all.

Pay rates were once an opaque internal mystery at offices and the bailiwick of much speculation, gossip and resentment. But every bit the push for equity at piece of work gains momentum, pay transparency volition brainstorm to get mainstream, according to Diane Domeyer, a managing director at homo resources consultancy Robert Half.

For several years, companies like Whole Foods and Netflix accept offered all employees access to their colleagues' salaries. But the current impetus for pay transparency stems from growing momentum effectually addressing gender and racial pay inequities. "Societal want to close the wage gap for protected groups is what'due south really at the middle of it," Domeyer says.

Many U.S. states now prohibit companies from discussing pay history with prospective employees during recruitment, to push companies to pay based on current marketplace rates. Salary transparency is a logical adjacent step. "Without it, people will always feel they aren't existence paid enough," Domeyer says.

Some employers fearfulness this kind of openness on pay could both breed resentment among colleagues and help rivals poach their workers. Domeyer contends the positives outweigh the negatives and that companies volition soon exist compelled to human action on transparency anyhow. "Organizations have an advantage in existence ahead of legislation and demonstrating to employees they're about disinterestedness and inclusion." — Andrew Murfett

Retailers volition embrace old — and very new — tactics to compete against Amazon

The pandemic remade retail. Stores shut their doors, many of them for practiced, and the shift abroad from concrete shopping accelerated. All of this spelled nifty news for online retail giants like Amazon. But it left many legacy retailers scrambling. In 2022, these retailers volition fight to win shoppers back, through a combination of old and very new school tactics.

Customer service typical of the physical shopping experience volition proliferate online, including concierge-fashion live chat services and new tech to accurately predict size and shopping habits. Offline, retailers will adopt white-glove render services, sending couriers to pick up unwanted items at shoppers' doorsteps. And we'll meet a growth of partnerships with external firms to do all of this, says retail analyst Richard Lim.

The shift from physical retail won't finish there. More retailers will embrace virtual and augmented reality in 2022, allowing customers to interact with products in environments that make it beyond digital replications of a shop. In November, Nike appear it had teamed up with online gaming platform Roblox to create a virtual earth where users tin can play sports-themed mini-games and dress their avatars in Nike gear.

"The metaverse may practise more than to change retail than anything since the physical store," says Cate Trotter, head of trends at consultancy Insider Trends. "It'south not about creating virtual interpretations of the store. It'southward about uncoupling retail from the store and reimagining it entirely." — Siobhan Morrin

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Manufacturing will caput dwelling — and get smarter

The pandemic, volatile swings in demand, a wave of extreme weather and shortages of both workers and cargo space created a perfect storm for the global supply concatenation. And in this age of consumer impatience, nosotros are confronted with a rare experience: we have to wait days, weeks, months to receive our sneakers, cars and toys. (Christmas is coming!)

Experts believe the crunch volition extend across 2022. In the meantime, the supply chain volition undergo a revolution, with businesses focusing less on cut costs and more on making sure they accept the chapters and resilience to weather disruption. Companies will bring their operations closer to abode. Terminal year, some 75% of companies said that they were reshoring operations to their habitation bases or to neighboring countries, according to a survey of iii,000 firms by Bank of America.

To go on costs under control, more companies will start building "smart factories," with an emphasis on automation, cloud platforms and other technologies, argues Stefano Elia, professor at Polytechnic University of Milan in Italy. "[This] will allow firms to reduce costs, improve quality and, higher up all, trigger the demand of skilled labour in their home state or region."

Leading manufacturing hubs will non accept this news lying downwardly, though. "China and other similar countries will put in place political and economical measures to increase the attractiveness of their economies," says Elia. "I conceptualize an international competition." — Virginia Collera

Diverse hiring will go multi-dimensional

In 2021 — in the wake of the 2020 murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor — companies promised to have diverse hiring seriously. In 2022, the bar will exist raised and companies' actions will be judged based on how they approach racial and gender disinterestedness in combination, not every bit siloed efforts.

Some 96% of U.S. companies study the gender representation of their employees at all levels, and 90% report representation at senior levels, according to LeanIn and McKinsey'due south Women in the Workplace written report. But only 54% of companies track gender and race/ethnicity — i.eastward. Black or Latina women in senior leadership. This renders women of color "invisible," says LeanIn CEO Rachel Schall Thomas.

Volition companies rise to the challenge? The best talent volition demand it. Some fifty% of multicultural women are thinking about leaving their jobs in the next two years because they believe both their gender combined with their race make information technology harder to accelerate. "We need to become co-conspirators," said Ella Bell Smith, the author of "Our Divide Ways, Blackness and White Women and the Struggle for Professional Identity." "If all women don't advance, no one group is going to advance in the long term." — Caroline Fairchild

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Our commutes will become easier (or disappear altogether)

Wake up. Make a pot of coffee. Practice some piece of work. Drop off the kids. Become to the office. Choice up the kids. Terminate piece of work. The rise of the "hybrid workday" — in which we work from home and the office — means nosotros're not all commuting at the same fourth dimension anymore.

Flexible work is now a fact of life: 93% of knowledge workers globally want the liberty to decide where and when they exercise their job. And since offices accept reopened, people are showing up later and leaving earlier, according to data from MillerKnoll. The shift away from traditional rush hours will spread traffic out more evenly throughout the day and give transit systems some much-needed relief, says Ryan Anderson, vice president of global research at MillerKnoll.

But equally good every bit the cease of rush hour sounds, we should think bigger, says University of Amsterdam'southward Marco te Brömmelstroet. Perhaps we should discard the commute every bit we know it altogether? "To ameliorate quality of life, we need to get less dependent on mobility and more committed to local proximity." Making work — even in an office — just a walk or short bike ride away may be in store for more of united states. Barcelona's Superblocks and the xv-infinitesimal city in Paris offering hints at what'south to come up. — Pieter Cranenbroek

The confront of entrepreneurship will change

The last 18 months have seen an explosion of new businesses around the globe, as innovators look to disrupt old models and cleave out solutions for a post-pandemic world. Only while the C-suite has made strides towards diversifying, the world of entrepreneurs has barely budged. Just ii.2% of venture upper-case letter funding went to female-founded companies in the outset eight months of 2021, according to Crunchbase. Blackness entrepreneurs simply received a small fraction — just over one% — of U.Southward. venture upper-case letter funding.

Will 2022 exist the year we run across meaningful modify in startup state? Signs point to yep. More early-stage investors accept added diverseness clauses to their term sheets, and major players like Softbank take begun to ready specialized funding programs to back up various founders.

Michele Romanow, co-founder of Clearco, predicts a image shift in funding, as "technologies that democratize wealth-building opportunities and fix our broken distribution organization of majuscule become the default option." More VCs may plow to AI to place promising startups, placing an emphasis on concern fundamentals over founder demographics, she says. Such tech may help root out the kind of initial biases that accept slowed down diversity efforts. — Riva Gold

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We'll be cleaning our own hotel rooms

During the travel downturn over the by 2 years, many hotels dialed back on their pre-pandemic offerings to cutting costs. In cities where hotels were used for quarantine programs, guests had to change their sheets and take care of basic housekeeping while in isolation. Hotels grappling with staff shortages may wait to make these changes permanent.

We may presently run across the rise of "self-sufficient hotel guests," says Singapore-based travel journalist Raini Hamdi, where guests are in charge of making their beds, washing their cutlery and more — perhaps in exchange for hotel vouchers or discounts.

Nosotros're already seeing these shifts in the U.South., with Omni Hotels & Resorts launching a program in 2020 where they donated to charities when guests opted out of housekeeping services. "This isn't about being surroundings-friendly," Hamdi says. "Information technology'southward almost … whether guests tin play a part, and exist rewarded, for helping hotels lower their cost structure." — Yunita Ong

Teachers (and parents) will say cheerio to public schools

The traditional U.S. educational system took a big hit in 2020, with enrollment in public K-12 schools dropping to its everyman levels in at least a decade. What might at first have seemed like a i-year blip is now looking more like a lasting change of middle by both parents and teachers. Individual alternatives and homeschooling are both ready to pick up the slack, amid widespread frustration over the public system'due south handling of all the challenges associated with COVID-19.

"America's instructor shortage will outlast the pandemic," Axios reporter Erica Pandey recently predicted. Depression pay, vaccine battles and the frustrations of trying to teach in a socially distanced world are driving a sizable exodus from local and state education jobs. New teachers aren't being trained fast enough to replace them. Meanwhile, homeschooling rates are likely to stabilize at far higher levels than the U.Southward. saw in pre-pandemic days. Black families in particular are showing the greatest interest in homeschooling, according to Demography Agency data. Families making the switch may experience encouraged past experts similar British education researcher Sara Bubb, who plant that when students were driven into various forms of homeschooling during pandemic lockdowns, learning rates actually increased. — George Anders

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Athletes will flex their muscle over teams and leagues in fresh means

In recent years, the world's top professional athletes have grown more emboldened when it comes to conclusion-making about where and under what conditions they play, and how teams and leagues operate. Expect this sway to simply grow in the coming yr.

Lucrative television deals take translated into seismic pay increases for top athletes. And social media has offered athletes a direct line to fans.

NFL superstar players now look to be consulted past squad owners nearly coaching decisions, recruiting and even executive choices. And final year, the NBA's James Harden wanted to exit the Houston Rockets — despite the squad giving him an active voice in all of its major strategic decisions. When Houston declined to trade him, he turned up tardily to camp, flouted COVID protocols and publicly criticized the team. Past Jan 2021, he was a Brooklyn Cyberspace.

This extends to social causes. NBA players put the Black Lives Affair movement in the spotlight in 2020 at the Orlando basketball chimera. Euro 2020 soccer players effectively banished soft drinks from news conferences at the championship.

In previous times, such efforts would be squashed by team and league execs. But social media has shifted the narrative in the thespian'southward favor. "New channels of advice let usa to transfer our bulletin without baloney," says Iker Casillas, former goalkeeper of Real Madrid and Spain national team and executive of the Real Madrid Foundation.

With the Winter Olympics in Red china and the FIFA Earth Cup in Qatar this coming year, there volition be no shortage of opportunities for players to make their voices heard. The heat is on. — Marco Valsecchi

💡 Athletes to follow on LinkedIn: Odell Beckham Jr., Malcolm Brogdon and Tim Tebow

To adjourn emissions, nosotros'll shift focus from cars to houses

The electric car has become a dark-green badge of honor, driving Tesla's marketplace value above a trillion dollars. But for some of united states, electrifying our home would reduce our greenhouse gases even more electrifying our cars: You have to commute more than than thirty miles a day in a car to produce as much carbon dioxide as a Sacramento home powered by mixed fuels.

Electrifying a home would immediately reduce its emissions by 45% and by 82% over time, as electricity grids get cleaner. Sixty-one percent of U.S. homes are still heated or cooled by called-for fossil fuels within the domicile, a practice that a decade from now might seem like leaded gas or the smoking section of an airplane. Increasingly, homes and buildings volition exist warmed and cooled past electric heat pumps. Kitchens will be cleaner and safer with magnet-powered ranges and, eventually, refrigerators.

It's a big alter, but the good news is we've done this before. In the 1950s, U.South. homes switched en masse from being powered past coal and wood to natural gas. Now, about builders realize that any home or part tower powered by burning fossil fuels is obsolete the day it's permitted. New companies are emerging to build homes from different materials and to retrofit the homes we alive in today, and then that nosotros're more comfortable and our carbon footprint is much smaller. — Glenn Kelman , president and CEO at Redfin

The world's ultra-wealthy will declare self-sovereignty

The earth'southward wealthiest people have been slowly breaking away from their countries of citizenship over the course of several years, with gradual increases in asset offshoring and international travel. Just the pandemic and ascent geopolitical risks — particularly tied to the issues of taxes and crypto regulation — are pushing more people than ever to establish residency abroad or pick upwardly additional citizenships. Larry Page, Peter Thiel and Eric Schmidt have joined this trend. But for every recognizable name, there are dozens of others who are quietly doing the same.

In 2022, this shift will go into overdrive for several reasons. Many of the globe'south billionaires — who saw a $5 trillion dollar increase in wealth this year — are shielding their wealth from taxes by establishing residency abroad. Second, a new form of crypto-wealthy, who tend to be avowedly anti-authorities, are setting up shop in countries that are less probable to regulate crypto than the United States and the EU. And finally, paying as much as $23 million for another passport or 2 tin start to sound reasonable to a billionaire living in a pandemic-era world where their mobility is largely adamant on their access to a private jet and their citizenship.

These billionaires' soft landings come at a hard cost, with losing nations deprived of tax revenue to pay for public infrastructure, education and health systems. — Alec Ross , author of " The Raging 2020s: Companies, Countries, People - and the Fight for Our Future "

Hustle civilisation will come back with vengeance

Every bit the pandemic'southward intensity begins to recede and restrictions ease, many will feel finally complimentary to return to the relentless striving of yore. Then, don't let Instagram fool you. Even as influencers denounce the hustle — promising that life is no longer all virtually work and touting the importance of mental health — they are working harder than e'er. They're pairing the increased productivity that came from abolishing the lines between work and habitation during the pandemic with the newfound freedom to travel once again. And they're getting out to their offices, conferences and concern meals. The latest round of leadership books coming out of Silicon Valley offers further proof that the hustle never died: In Jan, Frank Slootman, CEO of loftier-growth software startup Snowflake, will release "Amp it Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity." Y'all may like information technology, you may hate it, just our work culture withal places loftier value on those who want to #CrushIt. — Jessi Hempel

Colleges will shift abroad from campuses, and the iv-year caste

Students skipped out on college in droves during the pandemic: undergraduate enrollment has fallen 7.8% since the autumn of 2019. To get students to render to school — or come at all — colleges will need to make their pandemic-era flexible options permanent and adopt new approaches to instruction.

Higher educational activity is known for its rigid schedules and curriculum. But during the pandemic, schools embraced flexibility. Classes were redesigned with a mix of face-to-face and online content. Textbooks were exchanged for digital materials. The bookish calendar was reimagined with fewer breaks, and campuses welcomed only certain groups of students during particular weeks. Colleges tin keep to offering opportunities to mix-and-match in-person and online courses. And the academic calendar could remain flexible, with "depression-residency" options.

Georgetown Academy R&D leader Randy Bass is even thinking well-nigh revamping the college degree itself, where it's expected that students earn a degree at their ain footstep. Instead of a 2- or 4-year degree or a bachelor's or principal's degree, he calls information technology a "3-to-5 flex." "We have a flex system at present by chaos and negligence," he says. "Some kids go faster, some kids become slower, but it'south not with any kind of intentionality."

With a demographic cliff coming in the middle of this decade as the number of loftier-school graduates falls off, providing something different is the only way all simply the biggest brand names in college education will survive. — Jeff Selingo , author of " Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions "

Read more: Pedagogy's Big Idea in '22: Continual, Always On, and Flexible Learning

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We'll drive on plastic roads

The globe's highways and roads accept seen better days. Rising traffic and the effects of climate change have battered this critical infrastructure, with some 27% of all roads and railways worldwide exposed to natural disasters, such as floods and earthquakes. The damage comes at a hefty price, to the tune of between $3.1 billion and $22 billion per year, co-ordinate to Nature.

One of the world'southward biggest ecology thorns — plastic — may help roads weather condition the coming storms.

Roads made of plastic — the kind that would otherwise terminate upwards in an incinerator — are easier to build and better able to cope with heavy rainfall, explains PlasticRoad co-founder Anne Koudstaal. "Plastic roads can store around 300 liters of h2o per square meter, a multiple of most asphalt roads."

Plastic roads last longer, are easier to repair and are, unlike cobblestone, like shooting fish in a barrel to recycle. It would also put the world'southward surplus of plastics to adept use, says Doug Woodring, founder of the Ocean Recovery Brotherhood. "I believe plastic roads, if created at calibration, will offer an opportunity to absorb hundreds of thousands of tons [of plastic], almost overnight." — Arnoud van der Struijk

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Move over Hong Kong, Singapore is the new APAC darling

Hong Kong has long been the crown precious stone of finance and engineering in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly for international companies looking to expand into loftier-growth markets like Cathay and India. Singapore held a similar function for firms with an interest in southeast Asia.

That dichotomy will be turned on its caput in 2022, with Singapore taking the captain as the city of option for international companies operating in the Asia-Pacific region.

A 2020 national security constabulary passed in Beijing essentially brought an cease to Hong Kong's independence from mainland Prc, diminishing the city'southward attraction to multinationals. In 2010, at that place were 6.1 multinational firms for every Chinese company in Hong Kong. That ratio narrowed to 3.i in 2020, co-ordinate to data from CBRE.

Singapore was already on the rise in 2017, equally protests in Hong Kong put the city on lockdown. Only the pandemic proved to be the concluding push button in its favor. Hong Kong is operating under a zero-COVID policy, with strict protocols on border crossings and a mandatory 21-day quarantine. This has made business travel shut to impossible.

Singapore, meanwhile, is opening its quarantine-complimentary travel to more countries. To further entice multinational companies, Singapore has rolled out tax incentives, including one that offers anywhere from a 5% to ten% revenue enhancement pause to companies that locate global or regional headquarters in the city-state. Expect more firms to take reward and go all-in on Singapore. — Jordyn Dahl

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There's no housing bubble — and that spells trouble for minor cities

Abode cost increases will slow significantly in 2022 due to rising interest rates. Merely don't expect a major drop in home values. Long after the price of well-nigh other assets comes back downwardly to earth, home prices volition be style above pre-pandemic levels. The earth simply doesn't have enough houses, or enough dwelling house-building capacity. Coming into 2021 with a iii.8 million housing unit of measurement shortfall, the U.S. is building less than 1 meg single-family unit homes each year.

In 2021, home prices rose by more than than 40% year-over-year in cities like Austin, Texas and Boise, Idaho, every bit professionals taking advantage of new remote-work policies opted to get out the large city. Cheers to this migration, housing-driven economic anxiety once reserved to major metropolitan areas has expanded far beyond, both in the U.S. and around the globe.

A family unit moving from California to Idaho suddenly feels richer, regardless of whether their new domicile costs $550,000 or $400,000. Simply that price jump makes the residue of Idaho feel poorer. And not everyone buying one home is putting another upwards for sale. The trend that initially set up off the pandemic housing smash, relocation, is being overtaken by an increase in 2nd-home demand, at present 50% to 100% in a higher place pre-pandemic levels. High housing costs volition keep wages rise, and politicians who once wouldn't be caught dead siding with builders will exist fighting tooth and nail to bring new developments to their cities. — Glenn Kelman , president and CEO at Redfin

NFTs volition shake up the mortgage market

Much of the conversation around non-fungible tokens in 2021 has been around its use in digital art sales, with images of cartoon apes selling for $24.4 1000000 amid others. But NFTs — digital tokens that represent buying of assets and can be traded on blockchain exchanges — are set to infiltrate many more areas of our lives and shake up our agreement of ownership.

Take the mortgage market place. Decentralized mortgage lender Bacon Protocol recently issued its first vii mortgages as NFTs, collectively worth $1.5 one thousand thousand, offering investors and borrowers a new entry into the housing market.

Using NFTs allows lenders to bypass big banks or other intermediaries, forth with their associated costs. This tin can help reduce mortgage rates. And the use of blockchain-based "smart contracts" tin can automate the approval process, setting borrowers upwards with loans more rapidly.

"On-chain transactions via smart contracts are non contingent on trusting whatsoever institution or individual," says Elijah Johnston, founder of NFT-venture studio Modern Mantra. "This means a mortgage can be owned by an individual, multiple individuals, or a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization), rather than by 1 large bank determining mortgage rates and terms. Regulation, however, is a cloud of uncertainty that looms over all of this." — Liza Jansen

Buy Now, Pay Later will challenge credit cards' supremacy

In 2022, Purchase Now, Pay Later (BNPL) volition become a formidable challenger — fifty-fifty a replacement — to credit cards amidst consumers. BNPL has given new purchasing power to millions of people with limited access to credit — from young adults to gig workers, to historically marginalized communities and the underbanked — because information technology doesn't require a credit check, it'south involvement-free (equally long as yous pay on time) and you can use the service even if you don't qualify for a credit card.

With the closing of brick-and-mortar stores, the pandemic acquired a surge in online shopping, skyrocketing shoppers' use of BNPL to spread their payments out over time without interest for both big ticket items and smaller purchases. For many individuals who experienced a turn down in income, the ability to split purchases into 4 smaller payments every two weeks — rather than making one unmarried, large payment — made a huge difference.

With the proliferation in BNPL, it volition be critical for consumers to stay educated about the risks associated with financing their purchases through the service. If you aren't careful, BNPL can seriously damage your bottom line, and then information technology's important to go along track of your payment due dates, sympathise that information technology doesn't assistance you abound your credit score and to not overspend. — Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz , president and board chair at the Charles Schwab Foundation

The sustainable investing backlash will arrive

The environmental, social and governance (ESG) moniker has done its role in challenging the Gordon Gekko mentality of profit-over-all and has put social awareness onto the business agenda.

Only whistleblowers from investment firms like BlackRock have begun to question sustainable investing, calling information technology a "mirage," and critics are calling for clearer definitions and standards. As trillions of dollars menstruation into the sustainable investing motion, participants have begun to complain that there is no way to compare ane green investment against another. Expect a reckoning in 2022.

"We are heading for a new phase of climate-aligned investing," writes Huw van Steenis, senior adviser at Swiss bank UBS, in the Financial Times. "Investors will increasingly be able to construct comparable metrics on carbon footprints, throughout the entire value concatenation and across a whole portfolio."

With ameliorate data, investors volition be able to hold boards accountable. They volition be joined by regulators around the world, who are starting to "turn the screw" on fiscal firms — from investment managers to banks to insurers — who are engaging in greenwashing. At stake is an "avalanche" of capital now seeking sustainable investments. Next year, the finance industry will exist forced to dissever the ESG wheat from the chaff. — Pieter Cranenbroek

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Successful organizations will cast aside their cynicism

Times of arduousness leave scars on us, but they also have a way of teaching us what matters. In a postal service-pandemic world, employees will be moved more than past pregnant. Correct at present, many organizations aren't keeping upward, equally they continue to focus on brusque-sighted, bottom-line outcomes at the expense of homo connection. This has led to a rising tide of "organizational cynicism" — employees' sense that their workplace is competitive, individualistic and greedy. Cynicism does pervasive impairment to the workplace, stifling collaboration, dissolving cohesive cultures and killing inventiveness and drive. The Great Resignation shows no signs of slowing downwardly, and organizations that cannot overcome cynicism will face existential threat in the years to come.

But if cynical beliefs can become self-fulfilling, so can more hopeful ones. Ernest Hemingway one time wrote, "the all-time mode to notice out if you can trust somebody is to trust them." When leaders start with trust instead of suspicion, their employees stride upwardly and organizations thrive. — Jamil Zaki , professor of psychology at Stanford University and writer of " The War for Kindness"

What volition yous exist watching in the year ahead? Share in the comments or publish a post, article or video on LinkedIn with #BigIdeas2022.

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Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/29-big-ideas-change-our-world-2022-linkedin-news/?src=aff-lilpar&veh=aff_src.aff-lilpar_c.partners_pkw.10078_plc.Skimbit%20Ltd._pcrid.inc.com_learning&clickid=1UF2mVTwYxyIRmlWqLzqlSv6UkGQcpwt1UZTwA0&mcid=6851962469594763264&irgwc=1

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