[MUSIC PLAYING] LISA L. CEPPOS:
Hello, and welcome. My name is Lisa Lovallo Ceppos,
and I'm pleased to introduce Mauro F. Guillén, author
of the new book "2030, How Today's Biggest Trends Will
Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything." Mauro is one of the
most original thinkers at the Wharton School,
where he holds the Zandman Professorship in
international management, and teaches in its flagship
advanced management program and many other
courses for executives, MBAs, and undergraduates. An expert on global
market trends, he's a sought-after
speaker and consultant. He combines his training
as a sociologist at Yale and as a business economist
in his native Spain to methodically
identify and quantify the most promising opportunities
at the intersection of demographic, economic, and
technological developments. His research, op-eds,
and commentary have been featured
in numerous outlets, from "The New York Times"
and "The Wall Street Journal" to "The Economist"
and "The Financial Times." His book "2030, How
Today's Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the
Future of Everything," was an instant "Wall
Street Journal" bestseller. Mauro, welcome to
Talks at Google. MAURO F. GUILLEN: Lisa, thank
you so much for inviting me. I'm thrilled to be here. LISA L. CEPPOS: It's so
nice to see you again. How is everything? MAURO F. GUILLEN:
I think everything is fine, more or less, knowing
that we are, of course, in the middle of a pandemic. But other than that,
I cannot complain. Things are going well. LISA L. CEPPOS: Well,
I'm happy to hear that. I know that the audience is
in for such a treat today. I have firsthand experience
with your unique world view, having taken your classes at
the Lauder Institute at UPenn and having worked on a research
project that you advised. So we'll take some
questions from our viewers towards the end, so anybody
watching this in real time, please feel free to submit
questions in the live chat throughout our talk. And also, please
visit mauroguillen.com to obtain a copy of
his fascinating book in hardcover or
audio book format. Mauro, why don't we get started? Can you tell us a little bit
about why you wrote this book? MAURO F. GUILLEN:
Yes, so Lisa, I was teaching about seven
or eight years ago. As you know, I've been
at Wharton for 25 years. And by the way, I believe
that only Benjamin Franklin has been on campus
longer than I have. But for the longest time,
I've been doing research on what's changing
in the world, and how is that affecting business
and technology and so on. And about seven
years ago or so, I started to detect that my
audiences and my students were getting anxious about the
future and what might happen. And when I spoke
publicly in front of conferences or conventions
and business leaders, I also detected the same
kind of anxiety about it. Because so many
things are changing in the world, population, the
rise of emerging markets, technology, and so
on and so forth. And I decided to start doing
research more systematically about this. And about three
years ago, I thought, well, the time has come
for a book on this topic, and I wrote "2030." And again, the
year is essentially based on my
calculations as to when we're going to be in a very,
very different situation in terms of consumer markets,
financial markets, population trends, the use of
technology in the world. And of course, some of
the people listening in may be wondering, well,
but now there's a pandemic. You did a lot of your
research for the book before the pandemic. You published the book in
the middle of a pandemic. Well, look, my
only regret, Lisa, is that perhaps the book
should be called now "2028," because as I'm sure we're
going to get into later, this pandemic accelerates
many of the trends that I discuss in the book. LISA L. CEPPOS: Yes. And I think it's
really interesting to see some of the early
trends that are accelerating. Because I think after
just eight or nine months of experiencing
this, in the US, at least, we do see some of
these trends accelerating, which I'm sure that
you'll talk about. It was actually really difficult
for me to prepare the talking points for today,
because it's really hard to know where the story begins. When you approach it from a
lateral thinking perspective, it's like everything
is interconnected, and it's all about
kind of the ability to see around corners, and
identify where everything is coming together in a way that
we don't normally think about. But you do such an
expert job in your book of explaining these
global trends step by step in a way that reveals
just these increasingly complex relationships among
seemingly unrelated forces. Can you give our listeners an
overview of lateral thinking, and how it works? MAURO F. GUILLEN: Yeah, so
lateral thinking, I think, is the single most important
message in the book. Whenever you see so many
things out of whack, so many moving
parts in the world-- again, driven by
population trends, driven by what's going
on in emerging markets, and driven, of course, by
technological innovation-- then you really need
to not just evaluate trends in isolation
of the other trends, meaning one trend at a time. But rather, what
you need to do is look for the connections
between or among trends. You need to connect the
dots, in other words. Lateral thinking is
all about looking for the effect in some unrelated
part of the world of something that is going on
in another part, and thinking in an integrated
way about all of these trends. Let me just give you
a very quick example, which I cover in the book. Look, with the demise or the
phasing out of the one child policy in China, we are
expecting a little bit of pent up demand, so to speak, meaning
that maybe the number of babies will grow in the
next few months. But over the long run, that's
not expected to happen. Now if that's the case
that in China, things continue to evolve in such a way
that families, or women, to be more precise, have fewer and
fewer children over time-- right now, they're at
a level of about 1.7 per woman over their lifetimes-- then what we're going
to see is that there's going to be changes in other
parts of the world as well, not just in China, right? And the first connection
that we should make is in terms of
something that China exports to the United
States in addition to all of those gadgets. It's also savings. They export a lot of savings. And if you remember,
the one child policy was responsible for a higher
level of savings in China, because of the gender imbalance. Having 20% more boys than girls
in the country essentially meant that there was a lot of
competition in the marriage market. And therefore, then families
would save more money in order to make
their single boys more attractive in that market. So in the example that I've
just been telling you about, you see five or six different
trends come together to produce something
that at the end we know as the highly
indebted American consumer. And all of that goes
back, believe it or not, to the one child
policy in China. LISA L. CEPPOS:
That's incredible. And to a lot of people it might
seem like the butterfly effect. But one thing that I just
remember from your classes and from the many
conversations that we've had throughout the
years is you always have a way to explain
how everything goes through this
connected life cycle. And it's almost like it
leapfrogs continents, and it leapfrogs
technological developments. And I always just found
that so fascinating. And so maybe you could
talk a little bit more now about the
changing demographics in different regions
of the world, and the impact that they
have on how we think about products and services? What are some of the most
significant demographic changes underfoot? MAURO F. GUILLEN:
Yeah, so that's, Lisa, precisely the first
step in my methodology in terms of trying to understand
what the future might bring. So I call it
following the babies. It's a very good way
of trying to anticipate what may happen in
markets, what may happen with
technological development as well around the world. Because those babies
that are being born today or will be born in
the next few years will be the consumers
in the future. So their numbers, also,
what happens to them in terms of their educational
levels, and needless to say, how much money they end up
having in their pockets, will have essentially a
great impact on the future. So just to summarize here
at a very high level, the most important things that
we're seeing in the world right now is that fertility
is declining. And by the way, the
pandemic accelerates that, because obviously
people postpone having babies when they see that there
is a lot of uncertainty, or perhaps if they
lose their jobs. But that decline in fertility is
not happening at the same time, and it is not proceeding
from the same level. So in some parts of the world,
most notably sub-Saharan Africa, still
families or women tend to have more children than
in other parts of the world. So what we're going to see
is three massive changes. Change number one is
the center of gravity in population in the world
are going to shift away from East Asia and towards
South Asia, especially India, and also from Europe
towards sub-Saharan Africa. Here in the United States,
Latin America, Australia, and New Zealand,
the changes are not going to be as dramatic as
those other parts of the world. So dramatic reconfiguration
of the centers of gravity of population in the
world, number one. Number two is what happens
to the younger age group. And we're going to see
three types of countries. China is going to have fewer
young people by the year 2030. In fact, they're going
to have 60 million fewer young consumers
by the year 2030 compared to what
they have today. India or Indonesia
or Bangladesh, or so many other
countries in the world-- Nigeria and so on-- they're going to have
more people in that age group over the next 10 years. And then here in
the United States, we're going to have
about the same number. It's a round number, 90
million people between the ages of 15 and 35 in the year
2030, roughly speaking, the same number
as we have today. But here we see another big
demographic change, of course. More than half of
those young consumers in the year 2030 here
in the United States are going to be what
today we call minorities, African-Americans, Hispanics,
Asian-Americans, and so on. And then last change-- and I'm
sure you're going to have a lot of follow up
questions about it-- population above 60. By the year 2030, people
above the age of 60 are going to be
the largest segment of the market in the world. And this is happening
in every country. Every country will have more
people above the age of 60 by the year 2030. So it's really
important, if you're thinking about
technology, if you're thinking about new
products or new services, to start thinking about
the senior consumer. I call it in the book
the gray consumer. LISA L. CEPPOS:
Yeah, that's right. And the gray consumer
also has a gray wallet, and they need certain gray
services and products. And I think it has a
ton of potential for us to serve them with
new technologies. We see them increasingly
comfortable with kind of the everyday
technologies that we're familiar with in cell phones
and computers and everything. But I'm not sure yet that
we're developing necessarily with that consumer in mind. And this might be
a good area where we could consider some
leapfrog technologies, which you do talk about. Technology has this
opportunity to make its way to a new segment
of the population, or to sell the new use case in
a way that doesn't necessarily wait for it to follow the
nice linear path that a piece of technology might
have followed in, let's say, the US when
it first came to market. And you talk about this in terms
of Africa and mobile payments, for instance. Are there things that we should
consider for the gray market that we might not
have top of mind, but that could be
repurposing existing technologies in new ways? MAURO F. GUILLEN:
Yes, absolutely. And let me just-- before I give
you some specific examples-- clarify a couple of
things that are really important about this consumer
segment that is emerging, that is growing so fast in the world,
of the population above the age of 60. The first very
important point is that once people reach
the age of 60 these days, they can expect to live on
average another 25 years. And more so if we're talking
about women as opposed to men. That's a lifetime, right? So this consumer--
second point-- also is going to be in much better
physical and mental shape than a 60-year-old or
a 70-year-old 50 years ago, when you and
I were growing up, or at least I was growing up. So here's the thing-- that demographic now is
going to be the largest, and it's also going
to be people who are going to be thinking about
spending their time perhaps working part time, perhaps
having leisure, perhaps retiring. And they're going to need
certain kinds of technologies that I don't think we have
developed fully yet, right? So let me give you
two or three examples. First is there
going to be really interested in
hybrid arrangements. Because when you're expected
to live another 25 years, maybe you don't want to
spend them in retirement, but you would like to
engage in some gig work. Let's not forget, people in
their 60s, people in their 70s, they have experience. They have accumulated
a lot of knowledge. And maybe they would
like to continue using that knowledge, if
only on a part time basis, because they also
want to have some fun. So that's one area
in which I think we need to develop new
platforms, new technologies, new opportunities for that
demographic to continue making contributions to society
and to the economy, and not just think
about them as retirees. Second area-- robotics and
automation for the home. Well, sooner or later, people
start declining physically, and maybe they need
help, for example, lifting the shopping bag from
the floor in their kitchen to the counter top. Or perhaps they will need
robotics for other purposes, right? Also, they will
need companionship, so voice recognition technology
may come handy, right? So there's all sorts of things
that once this demographic feels more comfortable
about technology I think will become so
much more widely used. And then lastly, I want
to bring to your attention another area that
is very important. Once people in that demographic
start declining cognitively, they can become subject to one
of the most common crimes here in the United States,
and in other countries as well, which is financial
abuse of the elderly, right? And as you know,
this is a problem that we can measure in the
billions of dollars every year. So I think also the time
has come to help people in that situation and
their family members and their loved ones to
cope with this problem. And let me remind
everyone that most of the time, the crime
of abuse in the elderly financially is perpetrated
by family members, by caregivers, or by neighbors. Because they know
what the situation is. They know what the
weaknesses are. They know where
the money might be. So I think that's another
area in which technology can play a huge role
in terms of helping us minimize that threat. So I could give you so many more
examples about the gray market, about what are the
opportunities with technology. And the book contains
dozens of examples. And of course, I will be very
happy to answer questions from the audience about that
particular aspect of technology development. LISA L. CEPPOS:
Great, thank you. Another thing that strikes
me about an aging population is the need for health care. And one area that you do go
into in quite a bit of detail is immigration, and the
role that immigrants play in our health care
system, particularly in the US. And this is a bit of
a challenging topic to talk about, especially
in the US right now, because it can be a
little bit contentious. But maybe can you talk
to us a little bit about the role of
immigration in ensuring that we have the right health
care in place in the country, that we continue to support
the areas where workers are required, but that
we might not have an appropriate domestic supply
of workers to fill those jobs? I think that would be really
helpful for us to understand the data and some of
the misunderstandings around immigration,
especially to the US. MAURO F. GUILLEN: Yes,
thank you so much, Lisa, for bringing this up. I'm sure the people
who are listening have realized that
I have an accent, so I am an immigrant myself. But look, I think I can be
objective about the numbers. And by the way, all of those
trends that you've put together represent, I think,
a prime example of why we need to
think laterally. Because all of these
things are interconnected. So migration, as you
know, is something that tends to attract, for the
most part, middle-aged people. So children or people
above the age of 60 are very unlikely to migrate
by themselves, right? So in other words, one of the
first benefits of immigration is that it helps us
re-balance the age structure of the
population at a time when, in many countries
around the world, including here in
the United States, we are in the midst of a
process of population aging. So that's number one. Number two is
entrepreneurs tend to be so much more inclined
to become entrepreneurs. Your company is one result of
immigrant entrepreneurship, but so many others in the
Silicon Valley and beyond. Not only that,
there's also a lot of small-scale entrepreneurs who
open a proverbial dry cleaning operation or a restaurant. So entrepreneurship is
something that comes together with immigration. And therefore, I think
we need to debunk that myth that immigrants
tend to destroy jobs. In fact, they create a lot of
jobs, both in small businesses, and also in large technology
companies, for example, such as Google. But let me take this
one step further, following your lead on
the health care sector. Here in the United States,
between 25% and 35% of the doctors the nurses
and the clinical technicians that we have in our health
care system are foreign-born. Those are very high percentages. But it gets even
higher when we consider who are the people here
in the United States who take care of the
elderly in their homes. And that's more than 90%. About 92% are foreign-born. So here's a very
simple projection or forecast on my part. On the one hand, we're
having fewer babies. So we're not going
to have grandchildren taking care of grandparents. There's not enough of
those grandchildren. In fact, by the year 2030,
for the first time in Japan, in China, in the
US, in Europe, we're going to have more grandparents
than grandchildren. Just think about that, right? That was not the
way the world looked like when I was growing up. Now coupled with that, we have
now in many parts of the world restrictions to immigration. So immigration goes in cycles. Sometimes we accept a lot of
immigrants in the destination countries in the
world, but then there's a backlash against immigration. So historically, over
the last 150 years, we've gone through these
cycles of up and down in terms of the willingness
of the general public for admitting immigration. Well, if at the same time,
we have fewer babies, and we also have
fewer immigrants, then I think the conclusion
is very clear, which is that we're going to have
to use technology, Lisa. So I have already realized
that when I'm old-- maybe, let's say 75,
80, 85 years old-- I would like to continue
living in my home, but I will need help. But I have come
to the conclusion that I'm going to have some kind
of robotics taking care of me. Because there's not going to
be enough for babies being born now to take care of me
when I'm old, or there's not going to be
enough immigrants. So technology is going to
be there in our old age, and it's going to be
so much more pervasive. Not just robotics and
automation, but also virtual reality, an
array of technologies. So I think when we become
70-year-olds, 80 years old, we're going to be such
heavy users of technology. And by the way, the
early experiments-- as I explain in the book
regarding all of this-- is that people in
that demographic today prefer to be taken
care of by a robot. And the reason is that the
robot never takes a break. And also, the robot talks
to you using technology, and it only talks to
you about the topics that you want to hear about. And there's so many
other advantages. So it's not that
robots are going to take over and completely
replace human care. But for certain kinds of
things, for certain times during the day, I
think the future will be one in which we're
going to be using technology very, very heavily in the homes
of people who are declining physically and cognitively. LISA L. CEPPOS:
It's so interesting how we think about the
role of caregiving, right? We're saying that this can
become a function of robots in the future. But if I do take a little
bit of a lateral step, I think about women. Because women traditionally
hold that role. They're mothers,
they're daughters, they're granddaughters. And they do have a traditionally
big expectation in society. But I particularly loved
your chapter about women. It does start off with
some impressive stats up front, like women
receive the majority of undergraduate and graduate
degrees in the United States, and more than 40%
of American mothers earn more than their husbands. I can attest that it's surely
not smooth sailing for women. But these do seem
like encouraging signs for a more equitable society. But then you do go
in to say that they have significant differences
in conception, saving, and investment patterns. And I'm wondering how you think
that will shape the future, and if you can give us some
more details about what you go into in the book in this area? MAURO F. GUILLEN:
Yeah, Lisa, so I think this is perhaps the
pivotal chapter in the book. It comes halfway through it. So women's role in
society and the economy is behind many of the
changes that we're seeing. I mean, the decline in
the number of babies the fertility has primarily to
do with the new opportunities available to women. And I think that is something
that we should welcome and we should celebrate. But it does have consequences. Let me also say very quickly
that not every woman is doing today better
than a generation ago. There's also
tremendous inequality. And by the way, that's something
that the pandemic is also exacerbating. But you mentioned the 40%-41% of
mothers in the United States-- or wives-- so married
women that make more money than their husbands. And by the year 2030, it
will be more than half, according to the projections
by the US Census Bureau. And globally, my own
projection, my own forecast, is that by the year
2030, more than half of the net worth in the
world will be owned by women. Now that doesn't mean that
all women will be rich. Once again, there is inequality,
there's no question about it. And a lot of it has
to do with education. So more educated women do
much better in the market. They do much better in life
from a financial point of view. But to your question-- what
are the implications of this? Well, let me just give
you three examples. The first one has to
do with consumption, the second one with savings,
and the third with investing. They all have to do with
one underlying difference between men and women that seems
to be very resilient to change, which is that women
on average tend to be more risk-averse than men. And that difference
in risk aversion level has a lot of implications
in the economy. When it comes to consumption,
there's no wonder that when women have money
and they have control over their money,
then they prefer to spend it on different
categories of goods and services when
compared to men. Love to give you three examples. Women tend to spend more money
on health care, especially preventative health care. Remember, once again,
they're more risk-averse. Not just by the way,
spending money on health care for themselves
to their benefit, but also for their grandparents,
for their children, and for their grandchildren. Second is they spend
more on education. Again, not just
to their benefit, but also on their
children's education and their grandchildren's
education. And another one that I
really like, insurance. Women prefer to have, for
example, lower deductibles when they purchase automobile
insurance or home insurance. Well, if you demand
a lower deductible, that means the premium goes up. And if the premium
goes up, that means you're spending more
money on insurance. So women prefer more
comprehensive insurance. Now the second thing-- savings. There's also major differences. Women, when they're single and
have no plans to get married, they save so much more than men. Now let me just specify here
something very important. The moment then that a
man and a woman become engaged and they
want to get married, then the man starts
saving more money. I think that's
because he freaks out. He realizes that he hasn't
been saving that much money, but now he's going to
have responsibilities. Now once they get
married, then things go back to the original state. Women start saving more money,
except when there are kids. When there are kids, then the
man, the husband, the father, tends to save more
money than the mother. And the reason for
that is mothers, unfortunately, tend to spend
more time with their children. Because in addition
to working, they also tend to perform a
greater percentage than 50% of the household
tasks, including taking care of the children. And when you spend too
much time with children-- I'm sure you're
realizing that, Lisa-- then there's all sorts
of out-of-pocket expenses that take place. You need to buy this,
you need to buy that. And then finally, investing. What we also see in every
country in the world is that women tend to
allocate their savings in a way that manages
the risk so much more effectively than men. So we see this in
pension fund allocations. Women tend to be more
conservative when it comes to investing their money. And by the way, they normally
get better long term returns as a result. But the more
interesting thing, Lisa, is that there is also
some convergence. As men-- we see in research--
acquire more experience about how investing
works, they tend to reduce their level of
risk, and the opposite is true of women. When women acquire
more experience about how to manage
their money, they tend to increase
their level of risk. So you're very
good at statistics. This is known as a regression
to the mean, right? So men and women start
at different levels, but then as they go through the
same experience of investing their money over time, then
they tend to converge, right? So this is the important
thing here in everything that I've been saying, which
is that men and women are different. We do come from
different planets. That's what the bulk of the
evidence seems to indicate. However, one cannot
assume that women, as they pursue those
career opportunities, will be always very
different from men. There's a certain
measure of convergence. There's a measure of
change, of evolution, in terms of the behavior
of men and women, as they are exposed to
similar experiences. LISA L. CEPPOS: I love that. And I actually just
pulled up your book here. Because one of my favorite
statements was about a study that compared men and women
doing trades for an investment bank in New York. They were similar in terms
of education and experience. The researchers found that
the men traded more frequently and took more risks
than the women, and that the women obtained
slightly better returns over the long run. And that's something
that I've kind of had in the back of
my mind-- or maybe even the forefront
of my mind right now-- about thinking
towards the future, and trying to not make
any rash decisions, especially during this
moment in which we're living. But I'm not sure that
everybody thinks that way. So it's just really interesting
to hear about that study, and to see the research behind
it, especially as somebody who appreciates statistics. MAURO F. GUILLEN: Look, I'm
very happy about the results of our research. I have two daughters, so I'm
in the best possible situation. I'm very happy. LISA L. CEPPOS:
What's really going to happen, especially if we
consider the role of women in emerging markets? And maybe we want to
think about a little bit of the current pandemic effects. But emerging markets are
certainly not the same as the US. They do have the opportunity
to have different shifts in their population
demographics, different leapfrog
opportunities with technology. How do some of these
trends hold up, and how will the pandemic
potentially impact them differently? MAURO F. GUILLEN: Yeah,
that's a great question, Lisa. And once again, I'm going
to be using this approach of lateral thinking. So for 20 or 25 years,
we've known that at some point the
emerging markets would become more than half
of the global economy and global consumption. And we are approaching precisely
that moment in history. I think we're
privileged, in a way, in terms of the fact that
we're going to see history in the making over
the next few years, as emerging markets
become more than half. Look, the pandemic is affecting
different parts of the world to different degrees. In the parts of the
world where they've managed to bring the pandemic
under control, in terms of the number of cases, the
number of hospitalizations, and also the number
of fatalities, then their economies are-- first, not suffering as
much from the recession. And secondly, they are expected
to recover much faster, and to resume rapid growth. So as a result, what we're
seeing is that East Asia-- so China, Vietnam,
South Korea, Taiwan, and several other
markets, all the way down to the South Pacific area,
where we have New Zealand-- all of those
countries have managed to bring the pandemic
under control so much more so than in Europe or
here in the United States or in Latin America. So those markets are
going to surge ahead over the next 18 months. And if we were expecting that
in five or six or seven years, East Asia would be the largest
region in the world in terms of GDP, then I
think that's going to happen a little bit earlier. By contrast, in South
Asia, including India, or in Latin America, I think
the growth of those emerging markets is not going
to be as fast as we thought over the next
two or three years. Because essentially,
they have not succeeded at bringing the
pandemic under control. But then what role does
technology play in all of this? Well, look, most of
these emerging markets have had one advantage, which is
the concept that you mentioned at the beginning of
the presentation, which is leapfrogging. They have been able
to adopt the latest technology without having
any legacy systems in place. The most extreme case, of
course, is sub-Saharan Africa. You mentioned mobile payments,
but we also have mobile health. We have digital government. Ghana is one of the
countries in the world that is the most advanced in terms
of the digital interaction between citizens and
their government. So what we're seeing
here is essentially that emerging markets have
one key advantage, which is that if they are willing
to invest in technology, they can really surge
ahead through this process of leapfrogging by adopting
the latest thing without having to go through all of
the intermediate stages. And that essentially gives
them a huge advantage. Think about China, right? It's not sub-Saharan Africa. Think about China,
and the extent to which they have moved things
online to the digital world. Think about the
kinds of companies that are emerging there. Think about, obviously,
the size of the country. And if you have 1.3 billion
consumers in your home country that are becoming
fully digitized, that certainly gives you
quite a bit of an advantage, for example, in a field such
as artificial intelligence. So I think what's going
on in emerging markets right now is essentially
a bifurcation. Some of them will
be surging ahead, others not so much in
the next couple of years, because of the pandemic. But in general, emerging
markets have a lot of advantages that they can
leverage right now. And I have no doubt that
before this decade is over-- a little bit before
the year 2030-- the emerging markets
as a whole in the world will be much bigger in terms
of gross domestic product, in terms of the
size of the economy, than Europe, the United
States, Japan, Canada, all of the mature
economies, combined. LISA L. CEPPOS:
Really fascinating. I would like to just
take a quick moment to remind our viewers that
we will be taking questions live in just a little bit. So feel free to add your
question into the live chat. And maybe I can just
move on to something that all countries have in
common, which is cities. The big metropolitan hubs
is where business gets done. It's where people come together. And one area that
you really spend a lot of time in your
book is in the chapter called "Cities Drown First,"
which sounds very pessimistic. But it's actually quite
full of opportunities to think about
vertical agriculture, and how can we be more
efficient with energy, and how do we have to really
think about urban migration and climate change in the
context of the cities that are going to be increasingly
more dense with people. And maybe you can
talk about cities, but also, this is
where you introduce two lateral principles,
the mundanity of excellence and nudging. And I think that
these are actually really relevant for
the technology field. So maybe if you can explain
these two principles, and tell us a little
bit about how cities can employ them to drive the
right kind of innovations for the future. MAURO F. GUILLEN:
Yeah, so this is one of the topics
in the book that is dearest to my heart, Lisa. Look, cities in the world
occupy about 1% of the land. They are home to about
55% of the population. And by the year
2030, the projection is that they will be home
to 65% of the population. But cities, as we speak
today, account for about 80% of the carbon
emissions in the world. So 1% of the land,
55% of the population, 80% of the carbon
emissions, which essentially means that unless we address
the problems in cities, it's going to be really hard to
tackle the problem of climate change, among many
other issues as well. I think technology has a
huge role to play, obviously, in two ways. I mean, one is breakthroughs
in the field of energy-- how can we become
more energy-efficient, developing new energy sources. But then there's a second one,
where I think that especially the kinds of digital platforms--
the kinds of apps that we have on our phones-- can make a big, big difference. And that's in terms of changing
our behavior as consumers. And here's where the two
principles that you mentioned come in, the mundanity of
excellence and nudging. That is to say, we could
deploy technology apps to help us become more efficient
consumers, less wasteful. Let me just give you two
very simple examples. Here in the United
States, we waste about 30-31% of the food that
reaches the end consumers. But we don't share food. We let it go bad-- those cans that we
forget we have at home. Or we don't use the full
bag of some ingredient when we're preparing a dish. Well, there are apps now--
they're just not very widely used-- that help people share food. And it is sharing
food with people who need it, but
just more broadly, sharing food with
your neighbors. If you're not going to
use the rest of a can because you only needed half of
it for some particular recipe, maybe you could inform
other people in your area through an app that is the case. Another area that contributes
a lot to carbon emissions-- it's not just agriculture. For example, another
area is clothing. We buy way too many
clothes, right? And sometimes, we only wear one
of them for a couple of times, and then it falls out of fashion
and we never use it again. And yes, there
are some platforms already where you can share
certain types of clothes. Rent the Runway comes to mind. But I think we should make
a greater effort, right? And I think technology-- through the sharing or
collaborative economy-- can make us better consumers,
more mindful of how we use natural resources,
and also in a way that helps us reduce
carbon emissions. Because let's not
forget, agriculture and the transportation
associated with moving fertilizers or
produce around the world-- that is the single
most important source of carbon emissions. So if we can fix our
behavior as consumers, making it less wasteful in
the cases of food, clothing, and several other categories. I think we can go a long
way in terms of addressing the problem of climate change. And again, I think
technology, I think apps, I think the sharing platforms
have a very important role to play. What we need to do
we think in terms of the mundanity
of excellence, how very small changes
in our behavior can go a long way
towards overcoming the problem of climate change. And secondly, nudging,
introducing incentives that are non-monetary
that induce people to do the right thing, to make
the right kinds of decisions to be more
environmentally conscious. LISA L. CEPPOS: Great. I think, as people who live and
breathe technology every day, sometimes we're so
focused on making a huge technological
advancement, we can lose a
little bit of focus on the details that really
make everybody's life better, and the small tweaks
here and there, and really focus
on the excellence, and the right
incentives, as you say, and nudging folks in
the right direction. So maybe I'll make
this the last question, and then we'll go
over to the live chat for some questions that are
coming in from our listeners. People, especially
at Google who live and breathe technology
every single day-- in the book, you do mention
kind of big life-cycle-- not even 10,000-foot view, it's
like the million-foot view, because we go back and we
think about technological advancements throughout
all of history. Where are we at in the
technological lifecycle right now, and where
will we be in 2030? I'm especially
interested in the areas of artificial intelligence,
automation, VR. And how can we think
about these things, and applying them
to some of the areas that you talked
about in the book? MAURO F. GUILLEN:
Well, Lisa, I think it is no exaggeration
to say that we're going through an
explosion, a huge outburst of creativity, and just
sheer breakthroughs in terms of technology. And I think the next
few years are crucial. Because there's so
many ways in which we can allocate the
resources that we have to develop new
technologies, new applications of those technologies. I think what will be
important in the next 10 years is to prioritize,
to see what is it that can make the planet more habitable? What is it that
will help us address the problem of climate change? What is it that will help
us reduce inequality, for instance? Now notice that all of
these trends-- with the only potential exception
of climate change-- are being accelerated
by the pandemic, right? And I mentioned that
climate change is not being accelerated
by the pandemic, in the sense that
we're commuting less, so we have this
phenomenon of remote work. Well, all of these
things are going to be more or less
attractive to people depending on whether we
can persuade the population that it's going to make them
better, that it's going to help them be happier in life. And for those who are at
the short end in terms of the rewards-- the people who are suffering
from inequality-- if we can, one in way or another,
use technology to reduce those
levels of inequality. I think it's extremely
important over the next 10 years to prioritize, right? And at the top of
my list, perhaps, would be climate
change, because I think we need to throw
everything we have, including the kitchen
sink, on that problem. And so I think we should
focus a lot of our technology development efforts. But again, we were
talking earlier about the population above age 60,
and the fact that increasingly, people are going to
live beyond age 70, 75, 80-- greater and greater
numbers of people. How can we make life for that
demographic something that is fun, something that is
rewarding, so that they can continue to have
a lifestyle that has certain effective
characteristics? So for example, a measure of
independent living, or help them be in communication
with their loved ones, even if they are distant. That's where I think
virtual reality may play a very important role. So what I would
encourage the people who are listening
to think about what are those key problems in
the world that we have? And again, you may focus your
attention on climate change, or you may focus your
attention on making the life of the elderly as good
and as rewarding as possible. And then see how different
kinds of technologies can help us get there, so
reach our goals in terms of overcoming the
obstacles, and just creating more opportunities
and more fun for everyone. So I do believe,
though, that we're going to have to prioritize, right? Because not every technology
has the potential of making life be much better for
everyone, or for the largest number of people possible. And I think that's where both
businesses and governments need to essentially think about
how to allocate resources in the way that generates the
greatest value to society. LISA L. CEPPOS: Great,
thank you for that. I think we'll start taking some
questions from our listeners here. So if we could see the
first question, please? And this question from Avner. "What is the one
past prediction you have made that you
are the most proud of, and what is your biggest miss?" MAURO F. GUILLEN: OK. So that's a great question. And I must say, Avner, that I've
never been put on the spot so bluntly, so I'm very
happy to see that. Look, I'm proudest
of the prediction that the process of
globalization, in particular, the process towards financial
markets in the world that are very integrated,
would generate instability in the global system,
in the global economy. So I'm proudest
of that forecast. Now that doesn't mean that I was
able to anticipate the crisis in 2008, which if
you remember, had very clear financial origins. There were very clear
financial origins to it. But nonetheless,
it's very difficult to predict a particular
instance of a crisis, but you can certainly
predict that there's going to be instability,
just at the general level of instability and uncertainty
in the global economy. Now the one that I
completely missed-- so I think I would say
among many others-- since I told you that I've
been around for a long time, I tend to make
these predictions-- I never anticipated,
for example, the collapse of
the Soviet Union. And as you know,
there's many people who study the world and
global geopolitics who would have liked
to predict that, but nobody predicted it,
even after Chernobyl, even after some of those events. But I think we all learn
from those mistakes as well as from the successes. And let me tell you
what I've learned, and it's the single most
important thing, which is that you have to choose a
time horizon over which you are making forecasts
that makes sense in the context of the
kind of forecasting tools that you have. So in the book, I
use this methodology combining population
trends and projections about the growth of
emerging markets. And I feel very comfortable
making these days predictions 10 years down the road. And that's why the
book title is "2030." It just came out, so these
are 10-year forecasts into the future. However, using the
same methodology, if I attempted to make forecasts
20 or 30 years down the road, I think I would be
making a lot of mistakes. So I feel very confident
using a 10-year time window to make forecasts
using this methodology. So that is, for me, the
greatest learning point. So you can make projections
into any number of years into the future, but make sure
that your methodology enables you to do so. LISA L. CEPPOS: Great,
thank you for that. We have another question
here from Matthew. "A lot of the research
and stats presented are for straight
couples and families. Are there any interesting
insights for LGBT+ families?" MAURO F. GUILLEN: Yes,
Matthew, thank you so much for the question. And I was going to make
a comment about this when Lisa and I were discussing
the differences between men and women. Increasingly, as you know, the
number of people who are LGBTQ are playing a very important
role in the economy. And of course, we
see that attitudes towards that category of
gender are shifting, especially among the younger generations. And these days, we
also have people who define themselves as
being non-binary in so many other ways, right? So there are, of course,
certain characteristics of men and women
which are biological, having to do, for example, with
the rate at which they produce certain proteins or certain
enzymes in their bodies and all of that that have
an impact on certain things that are important for the
future, such as, for example, longevity. So regardless of whether
women have children or not, they tend to live longer than
men because of their biology, right? So there are certain
things that go with the classification of
humans between men and women. But in terms of,
for example, some of the other characteristics,
I must tell you, Matthew, that I'm working
on that right now. Because the statistics
that we have available, for example, in terms
of the career paths, and in terms of the
accumulation of wealth or lack thereof, and also in
terms of inequality across different categories
of people depending on their sexual
orientation, depending on the lifestyle
that they would like to pursue in their
lifetime-- those statistics are still lacking. We have very little information
in some of the surveys that are conducted. And by the way, if you try
to get that information for countries other than
the European ones or here in the United States,
or perhaps Canada, it's extremely difficult
to find that information for sub-Saharan Africa,
for Asia, needless to say, for Russia, which is as you know
one of the places in the world where sexual orientation
is not really respected-- the choices that people
make in that regard. So I have to tell you
that I'm working on that. But the biggest
obstacle that I have in terms of making
projections about it is that we still lack
good data on that. And it is something that
I'm presently working on. LISA L. CEPPOS: I
was going to say, it does seem like an area ripe
for applying lateral thinking, and getting to the source
of truth behind the data, as you say. Because I don't think there are
very robust insights in a way that we'd be able to present
the same trends today. So I'm really glad that
you're thinking about it, and I think it will be really
insightful to bring something like that to market. Maybe we can go to
another question? Great, this one from Sandeep. "Insurance companies have their
money on the line with regards to insuring properties that
will be heavily impacted by climate change. How do you foresee the role
of insurance companies?" MAURO F. GUILLEN:
Yeah, well look, if you talk to people in
the insurance industry or if you check some
of the statistics, you will notice that insurance
companies are already anticipating that problem. And they're starting to be much
more reluctant, for example, to insure at relatively
affordable rates property in areas that can be
subject to floods, especially if the risk there
is increasing as it is because of climate change. So there are many issues, I
think, that we as a society are going to have to deal with. Because insurance companies
are going to be very reluctant, I think, over the next 20 or 30
years, to take on certain risks that they may find are
just impossible for them to insure against. But let me also put on
the table for discussion another one that I think is very
relevant, at least to some part of your company of
Google or Alphabet, which is, how are
we going to deal with the potential consequences
of automated systems in terms of insurance, and in terms of
the things that could go wrong? Just consider
autonomous vehicles. So just a few days
ago, I was teaching a class for undergraduates that
has to do with applications of artificial intelligence. And I'm bringing a
different guest speaker every day of class. But during the
first day of class last week, I was telling them
about the ethical dilemmas involved in autonomous vehicles. What happens when you approach
an intersection, in that you can either spare the
life of a 50-year-old, or you can spare the life of
a 10-year-old, but not both? It's a typical-- if you
remember-- classic trolley problem. Well, there's ethical
considerations there, but there's also
insurance considerations. So for example, I think
insurance companies are incorporating the
internet of things when it comes to assessing
the right kind of rates for different kinds of
people, depending on how they use their asset, how they drive,
all of these sorts of things. But I think that automation
and artificial intelligence more broadly are
also going to open up a Pandora's box with surprises
for insurance companies. So I think that technological
change, not only climate change, is also going to
change [INAUDIBLE] transform the insurance industry, both
in terms of the kinds of risks that they're going
to have to insure, and also in terms of
the way in which they're going to be assessing or
evaluating those risks. And be mindful of the
fact that new technology enables insurance companies
to avoid profiling. Because if you
remember, for example, they ask men to pay a
higher rate of insurance than women, knowing
statistically what happens once men versus
women get behind the wheel. But maybe in the
future, we can have more behavior-based measures
of assessing people's behavior, and therefore, charging
them different rates. Now again, that raises
further ethical issues. Because maybe we would get into
a society such as the one that was described by George Orwell
in "1984," Big Brother watching how you drive your car. So we're going to have to
be very careful about all of these, but I think you've
put your finger on an industry-- insurance-- that is going to go
through a huge transformation, both because of climate
change, and also because of technological
change, and the new kinds of opportunities that
technology offers. LISA L. CEPPOS: Thank you. I want to go to one
more audience question, and then I think
that should be it. Oh, another one from
Sandeep, great, a perfect follow on for the
climate change here. "There was a 50-year study
on loss of flora and fauna from 1970 to 2020 that
published dire numbers. Are you optimistic
that there will be change in our relationship
to our ecology by 2030?" MAURO F. GUILLEN:
Look, Sandeep, that is a really important question. If you remember many,
many decades ago, there was a famous book
called "Silent Spring" which was published. And in it, the author-- a woman-- told us, look,
think about biodiversity very seriously. Because if we upset
the balance among all of the millions of species
that we have on the planet, then that's going to have very,
very important consequences. And we're seeing that today. Now to the part of
the question what you're asking-- am I optimistic
about the next 10 years in terms of both climate
change and biodiversity? And I completely agree with you
that our losses in biodiversity are at least as important
for the future, in terms of the consequences
that it might bring, as our inability to deal with
climate change right now. So I am optimistic
in three respects. So let's see if I can
persuade you about them. So the first is
that I do believe that we're getting to the point
where green renewable energy sources are becoming
competitive. As you know, solar and wind now
can under most circumstances be better in terms of cost,
in terms of efficiency, than coal, which is by far
the dirtiest source of energy that we have. Number two, I think we have now
the technologies, especially the ones that you
develop at your company, that will enable us
to engage in a kind of micro-behavioral
modification of consumer actions and decisions so that
we become less wasteful. And we were discussing that
earlier on during this session. And then number three,
I do hope that one of the key learnings
from this pandemic is that we need to think
again about our relationship as the human species
with the environment. Because at the end of the
day, a public health crisis such as the one that
we're going through has something to do with
the ecology of human beings on the planet. The ecology is all about
how a species relates to its environment. And I do believe that we strike
the right lessons from this, in the sense that we need to
redefine how we live our lives, how we use the natural
resources at our disposal. So I am optimistic. And by the way, Lisa
didn't mention this, but the book is very optimistic. There are all of these changes,
there are all of these issues, but I always try to
put in every page put a positive spin
on things, trying to turn a challenge or a
threat into an opportunity. So I am very optimistic,
but I think we need to act. We cannot delay action on
both biodiversity and climate change. LISA L. CEPPOS: Thank
you so much, Mauro. That was exactly the note that
I was going to close on here, is that this book, for me, is
just full of opportunities. And I love the way that you
present them with that mindset. I think that's critical, as
we can maybe sometimes feel a little bit overwhelmed
by all of the things going on around us that
are out of our control. But to me, I do see
so much opportunity in the world ahead of us. And it's a great way to pull
together different trends, and find new ways of looking
at things that will really have a very strong impact in
solving the new challenges that we're going to be facing. So thank you so much for
that breath of fresh air, and bringing that
perspective to life for us. This is just the beginning
of the conversation. So I encourage anybody to
reach out to you on LinkedIn if they have
additional questions, or feel free to visit your
website mauroguillen.com to check out a hardcover
or audio book of "2030, How Today's Biggest Trends Will
Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything." Is there anything you'd like
to leave us with today, Mauro? MAURO F. GUILLEN:
Just first of all, a word of thanks to you and to
the technical team behind this, and all of the listeners,
because of their questions. And once again,
as you mentioned, I would very much like to
continue the conversation. Reach out to me. The easiest way, perhaps,
is over LinkedIn. So just send me a request,
or you can also email me. And I will be very happy to
continue with the conversation. And remember, we need now to
think about what the future may bring, especially
the next 10 years, because I think they're
going to be revolutionary. If you think the pandemic
has changed everything, wait and see what's
about to happen next. LISA L. CEPPOS: Great. Well, it's always
a pleasure, Mauro. Thank you so much for spending
an hour with us today, and best of luck. MAURO F. GUILLEN: Thank
you so much, Lisa. [MUSIC PLAYING]
