Rewriting the social and business contract for changing minds, bodies and meanings.

The post-Covid, post “knowledge economy” era requires a new social contract for a new world order that reflects the fundamental shifts changing minds, bodies and what it means to be human – both collectively and individually

This trend briefing unpacks how and why the current democratic social contract is under threat, and how that in turn is threatening businesses, industries, and the ways we work together. If we hope to build and lead resilient teams and sustainable business models, we need to adapt our recruitment, team building and businesses operating systems to reflect the fundamental changes in the working relationships between state and business, state and citizen, business and workforce and business and customer; in other words, how human relationships with friends, neighbours, colleagues, strangers and self are changing.

This in turn requires an understanding of the mega trends and micro shifts in the political, economic, technological and societal landscape that are changing us physically and fundamentally.

Key areas covered include:

The future of customers and community

• How Generation Z is changing everything, again
• The changing nature of personal and collective identity – and why selling to communities is the new hyper personalisation 
• Multiverse identities – how the metaverse is fragmenting us into many selves (and what that means for marketing)
• Hiveminds – from crowdsourcing to consensus networks (and a glimpse at far-future “singularities”

The future of work and workforce

• The new employment contract and the end of time-based work culture 
• How to foster strong teams in the age of globally distributed remote work (and how to navigate the the minefields of global culture and society)
• What workers want – why meaning matters and the rise of corporate spiritual wellness programmes as a result
• DAO’s, the evolution of living organisations – and organisational ecologists 

The future of state and society 

• The need for a new social contract and the limits of the liberal world order (and what this means for business and employers, from tax to labour law)
• Yin-yang Working in a borderless, yet splintered world – unpacking the new 4D chess game for state and private actors 
• The greater good, and the great trade offs between privacy and freedom and security in an age of multiple existential threats – unpacking everything from open banking to programmable money and the seemingly inevitable push towards more forced transparency and more automated reward and punishment (and who watches the watchers)
• Hacking democracy (the Swiss and Taiwanese ways and the lessons we can apply to building our own Smart Communities)

Who is this briefing for?

• Leaders (state and private sector) – anyone who hopes to lead anyone
• Marketers – anyone who hopes to sell anything to anyone 
• HR departments and managers – anyone who hopes to find, recruit, train or retain talent
• Social entrepreneurs – anyone who is inspired to re-write a stronger, more sustainable, social contract

-Looking at Trends as Business Strategy-