Looking at Trends as Business Strategy

The State We’re In 2025 Salon

STEPPING INTO THE VOID: CONFIDENCE AMIDST UNCERTAINTY

The annual Flux Trend briefing – The State We’re In – is an executive summary of where the world is and where it’s heading. Using the acronym T.R.E.N.D.S. – representing six trend pillars shaping how we will live, work and interact in the coming year – the trend briefing identifies trends that businesses need to watch and tracks the ripple effects of previous game-changing trends we’ve identified.

Last year’s SWI title was “Aftershocks”, describing the recalibration process businesses were experiencing post-pandemic. COVID lockdown seems like a distant memory, but we are only really beginning to understand the gears of change that were set in motion when the world stopped. In many ways, it was the calm in the eye of the storm.

“Polycrisis” was the word of the year in 2022. Since then, it feels like we’ve been on a treadmill of polycrises. Flux takes a different view. There are messages in the madness.

Transformational events taken in isolation seem catastrophic. It’s only when you step back that you can see patterns emerging. We track trends over long periods and see not just patterns but seismic change afoot. Whether they are positive or negative depends on how you view and react to them.

This salon will begin with a trend briefing presented by Dion Chang. The trend briefing will highlight the Flux mantra, “To change the world, you first need to understand it” by allowing and encouraging us to step into the void, also known as the necessary place of initiatory transformation. It requires moving with confidence into uncertainty.

We will unpack these themes and much more in this trend briefing.

Scenarios that explore the future possibilities that could arise from these trends will follow the trend briefing.

Thereafter, we will conclude with an interactive session that will help you find confidence amidst uncertainty – locating your current location and how to confidently get to where you want to be.

Event Details:

Date: Thursday, 13 February 2025
Time: 08h30 for 09h00 to 11h00
Address: Workshop17 @ The Bank
- 24 Cradock Avenue
- Rosebank, 2196
- Corner Tyrwhitt and Cradock Avenue
Pin: https://goo.gl/maps/BcfaGbSoBHQ592448

This salon will help you confidently enter into the void of uncertainty and complexity. It will help you to see change, however disruptive, as an opportunity for growth and transformation.

Here are some key trends that you will encounter once you step into the void:

- T (technology): Generative AI and Interactive AI are integrated into society and used as weapons for good or evil. What seemed to be a small and distant change in technology has become a great and rapid transformation of the industry. Further blurring the lines between reality and fiction.

- R (retail): In a turn of fate, retail is transitioning from mega-fulfilment centres to family warehouses (mini-fulfilment centres). Add to this a new trend of middle-class shoplifting created by the cost-of-living crisis, and you have an uncertain and disruption-filled 2025 for the retail sector.

- E (economy): In 2025, geopolitical dynamics will become even more complex because of the increased threat of conflict zones around the world and the impact of the second Trump administration.

- N (natural world): We unpack how businesses and governments respond to the global natural water shortage and the conflicts that could arise from the tensions precipitated by this shortage. While also looking at how communities are responding to the realities of climate change, eco-anxiety and climate grief.

- D (diplomacy): 2024 was the largest election year in history. The aftermath of this global political shift will unfold in 2025. Couple this with the growing number of countries preparing themselves in the physical and digital space for war, and you have a diplomatic cocktail that requires calm and skilful diplomacy.

- S (socio-cultural): There is a seismic shift in social contracts propelled by multiple trends including gender politics, declining birth rates and an ongoing cost-of-living crisis. This brings into focus the growing 4B Movement, the child-free movement and burgeoning alternative versions of the nuclear family, showing how society is slowly changing to respond to these uncertain and complex times.