1) Microfinance in India Lending to the poor has proven so profitable in India that microfinance institutions saw their loan portfolio jump from $252 million to $2.5 billion in two years, raising fears of a subprime-like microfinance bubble. Critics say that the expansion has been too large, too fast, and too geographically concentrated – pointing to incidents of mass default in pockets of the country.With an estimated 400 million people lacking access to formal banking services, India is considered one of the world’s largest microfinance markets.

2) Higher Education in the U.S. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has initiated a new investigation into federal investment in higher education. Congress last instituted reforms in the for-profit education sector two decades ago, but federal aid to students at for-profit schools has rapidly increased, approaching $24 billion last year – with an additional $36 billion Pell Grant boost approved in March. A report released recently by chairman Senator Tom Harkin found that up to 90% of for-profit schools’ revenue comes from Washington and that for-profit students are graduating with more debt than students at public or private nonprofit universities. With 96% of proprietary students taking out loans, and nearly half of them defaulting, taxpayers foot the bill. At current increasing enrollment and loan rates, there could be $330 billion in defaults in the coming decade. According to some analysts, government money, lightly supervised institutions, unchecked supervising bodies and debt-trapped students all sound similar to the subprime-mortgage collapse.

Are these analysts shrewdly observing the makings of future bubbles, or are they serving more as alarmists who capitalize on today’s climate of fear among the general public? Whatever the answer, we are undoubtedly going to see increasing speculation, and consequently — more industries/sectors coming under fire from global regulatory bodies.

It may sound benign, but parents, educators and law officials are worried that i-Dosing could be addictive, harmful, and a gateway “drug” to other illegal substances.

i-Dosing tracks like “Gate of Hades” can be found on YouTube and give listeners a free taste for i-Dosing. According to Wired.com, “those who want to get addicted to the ‘drugs’ can purchase tracks that will purportedly bring about the same effects of marijuana, cocaine, opium and peyote. While street drugs rarely come with instruction manuals, potential digital drug users are advised to buy a 40-page guide so that they learn how to properly get high on MP3s.”

As we delve deeper into the inner-workings of the brain, we are uncovering more and more as it relates to addiction.  This emerging society of addiction will also have numerous consequences for the workforce.  Productivity could be greatly affected as people get sidetracked into more appealing pursuits, young unemployed people could become more alienated from the mainstream economy, and the marketing skills needed in organizations will change from the traditional to the more sociopsychological realm.   This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Marketers and advertisers are catching onto this.  A number of brands and social initiatives are now experimenting with sensory memory, looking to wield their own indelible stamp on consumers’ subconscious.  Here are some examples:

Meaty Billboards: Salisbury, N.C.-based Bloom grocery stores made history by erecting the first-ever scent-emitting billboard which sprays a charbroiled smell over a highway via a giant fan.  The billboard features a giant fork-stabbed bite, and emits a charcoal- and black pepper-scented oil to passing cars.

Toothsome Greeting Cards: American Greetings is introducing a new Tasties collection. Each card contains a dissolvable flavor strip that corresponds to the occasion it marks. A birthday card emblazoned with an image of a cupcake tastes like vanilla. Other reported flavors include “donut” and “margarita.”

Fresh Air Fund Fragrances: MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Majora Carter, founder and executive director of community organization Sustainable South Bronx, together with French perfumers Bruno Jovanovic and Pascal Gaurin, Carter created L’Eau Verte du Bronx du Sud (“Green Water of the South Bronx”), a scent containing essences of rain, grass and citrus fruit, with which to infuse the common areas inside an entire low-income apartment complex in the South Bronx. Carter believes that the Sister Thomas Apartments, located a little too close for comfort to a sewage treatment plant and a trash transfer station, will benefit tremendously from a real breath of fresh air.

Scenting an entire building is the latest ambition in a growing business that has, for years, gone unnoticed by most consumers.  There are now ~20 companies worldwide specializing in ambient scent-marketing and dispersion technology. Industry executives value the business at roughly between $80 million and $100 million.

According to a recent article in Business Week:

Scent branding is becoming just as prevalent in retail. Researchers believe that ambient scenting allows consumers to make a deeper brand connection, and data has led many other non-scent-related companies to join the fray. Recently, Gaurin helped create a fragrance for Samsung’s stores, which has been cited throughout the industry as a milestone in scent as design. He claims the research showed that not only did customers spend an average of 20 to 30 percent more time mingling among the electronics, but they also identified the scent—and by extension, the brand—with characteristics such as innovation and excellence. Credit Suisse, De Beers, and Sony have all been experimenting with ambient scenting in their retail spaces, too.

And starting this fall, you can even get a master’s degree in scent design at Parsons New School for Design in New York. As part of a “Scent as Design” seminar, organizers enlisted luminaries from various fields to collaborate with fragrance experts.

Let’s fast forward to today, where we see a fascinating reversal of this principle. Civilians are now leveraging the myriad technologies at their disposal to assume the role of ‘Big Brother.’ In doing so, they often serve as watchdog to government and law enforcement officials.

The issue has come to light recently, due to civilian-taken cell phone video footage of an incident involving a Seattle police officer. That particular footage is the latest in a series of incidents catching public figures in questionable, and at times legally suspect, conduct.

This is somewhat related to the trend of civilian as “reporter” (e.g., when civilians using mobile devices are best able to report on and give alert to crimes, riots, natural disasters, etc.). However, civilian as “watchdog” may truly shift the balance of perceived power in society. Few things are left to “he said – she said” anymore — particularly in developed societies, as almost everything is technologically captured from someone’s vantage point. This will undoubtedly have profound implications for the increased monitoring and accountability of elected public officials, law enforcement officers and other public servants — including teachers.

More than 1,000 futurists from around the world will gather to address what tools and strategies we’ll need to envision—and build—desirable futures that are truly sustainable.

On Friday evening, Edie and Arnold will be presenting on the “Unemployment Conundrum“:

The current global economic transformation involves worrisome concerns about both short- and long-term employment, unemployment, and underemployment. It is an enormously complex subject. Issues range from stubbornly persistent unemployment in many developed countries to labor shortages in others to lack of training and education for a new economic reality tolack of economic development to profound transformations in how and where work is done. It has become apparent that traditional economic thinking and policies are increasingly ineffective. There is an urgent need for new thinking in order to make economies everywhere in the world more sustainable and provide rewarding work for a still growing population.This session will provide an overview of the global employment/unemployment situation. It will also present suggestions for new ways of seeing it. The presenters have worked on and spoken on these subjects for decades.

On Saturday morning, Erica and Jared will be presenting on “Cultural Shifts Among Global Youths“:

We are currently in a period of transformation. Our current systems, our current ways of living, our societal norms and our social groups are all being redefined.  This time of profound change is creating a host of cultural shifts among our global youth, and is causing ripples which can be felt in the workplace, in our homes, in our institutions and in our own lives.  A new generation of young people, combined with advancing technologies, will profoundly alter the landscape of the workforce and emerge with different skills, jobs, careers and ways of organizing work and life. New subcultures of technologically-adept young people have not only evolved across the globe, but also represent a new, robust and powerful market.  Witness, for instance, the impact immersive online communities and virtual worlds have had on the developed, and to some extent the developing, world.  This panel will explore and help shed light on the social, demographic and technological shifts occurring in both today’s global youth, and future generations.

We are looking forward to another good conference!

Those reserves include deposits of both “light” and “heavy” rare earths — minerals that are in everything from TV displays to magnets in hybrid electric motors, and from wind turbines to cell phones. Rare earth minerals play a major role in advanced technology, and they could be key for future clean energy. However, congress is worried about the fact that almost all of these materials come from China, and could be subject to tight export controls by the Chinese government.

Experts are calling on the U.S. government to take steps not only to promote domestic production of these materials, but to fund research to find ways to recycle them, to use less of them, and to potentially do without them altogether.

Light rare earths include the minerals ranging from lanthanum to gadolinium on the periodic table of elements, while heavy rare earths range from terbium to lutetium. If developed, such deposits could help the U.S. avoid a possibly crippling rare earth shortage in the next decade. China has warned that its own industrial demands could compel it to stop exporting rare earths within the next five or 10 years.

This issue has gone largely under the radar. While Congress is now looking at this issue, it is neither near the top of the agenda nor has it been given its just due in mainstream media. Considering the ongoing struggle for all nations to establish energy independence and access to clean water, the identification of of other potentially valuable natural resources that can be highly monetized and leveraged in the global marketplace is critical. China already has control of the rare earth market — a dangerous proposition for much of the rest of the world. Consider a possible short-term future scenario where China is to rare earth mining (and subsequent technology production) what the Arab Middle East has become to the world’s oil supply.

If the U.S. wants to remain economically competitive, protect itself from Chinese monopolization and also increase it’s ability to barter in global trade markets, it needs to put a sharper lens on rare earths as a potential growth engine of critical strategic importance in the future.

The concept of government-backed web censorship is usually associated with nations where human rights and freedom of speech are routinely curtailed. However, if plans for a mandatory Internet filter go ahead, Australia may soon become the first Western democracy to join the ranks of Iran, China and a handful of other nations where access to the Internet (or at least part of the Internet) is restricted by the state.

As could be expected, the push for this Internet reform is being met with resistance from several groups in Australia. What will this all mean for the future of Internet expression in other countries previously viewed as “Western” and impenetrable to the forces of filtering/censorship? Does this signal a longer-term shift in Australian thinking, or is this merely an anomaly borne of the current political climate?

Currently, and for the first time in history, more than half the world’s population lives in cities. This is a tremendous milestone with myriad long-term consequences. Urban planning, civil engineering, and architecture are among the disciplines that will be most profoundly impacted by the urbanization explosion. As the world becomes more urban, it inherently becomes more “vertical.” We often talk about the bourgeoning development of vertical farming as a future engine of both economic and environmental sustainability in dense urban centers. However, intriguing new design applications are also emerging that could one day redefine what it means to “live” vertically.

The longstanding norm of linear apartments stacked perfectly on top of one another in linear structures may soon be complemented by an entirely new paradigm. Those who desire urban living, but lament the forfeiture of many of the benefits of suburban/rural living may soon enjoy “stacked houses”. Could these types of designs ever take hold in a major urban metropolis? Surely, they would command a premium — not just for square footage, but also for cost of construction. However, this is a great example of cutting-edge engineering with an eye toward both the current design imperative and the global trend toward “vertical.”

China has seen an increase in the number of bachelors because there are not enough women for their men to marry.  Currently, there are 120 boys born for every 100 girls, an imbalance reinforced by the one-child policy and a cultural preference for sons.  The normal male/female rate at birth is 105 males for every 100 females.  Gender imbalances will have a profound impact on everything from family to education to the economy. Because of the disproportionate number of men in China, this may also create an upsurge of problems related to the trafficking of women, forced marriages, prostitution and surrogate motherhood.

India’s rate is about the same as China’s.  And throughout West and Southeast Asia, the trend is similar—in Vietnam, for example, the rate is now 111/100.

In addition, a surplus of young males competing for scarcer women will almost certainly result in increased violence. In the meantime, there is likely to be a backlash against women working outside the home, as the Chinese males will need to compete for the better jobs in order to attract desirable (or any) women.  Since women have made tremendous strides in the economic advancement of China, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

By 2020, China will find itself with 30 million more men of marrying age than women. But what else could this imbalance mean?  Here are 4 other hypotheses:

1. A rise in imported mail-order brides

2. An uptick in gay relationships: Homosexuality is not especially well-tolerated in China, but that could change as men — and society — run out of options. Currently, it’s believed that 90 percent of the estimated 25 million gay Chinese men marry women. Some gay couples are even marrying lesbian couples.

3. A real estate bubble: As women become scarce and harder to impress, men may be forced to attract mates with premium real estate.

4. A war to thin out excess men: Chinese officials are clearly worried about the gender imbalance, and if their current propoganda-based efforts to dissuade parents from killing or aborting female offspring don’t work, a war to cull the surplus males is in the realm of possibilities. A surplus of frustrated, low-status males is bound to spell trouble for society. A generation of single, more affluent and independent women will not only change employment demographics, but will also affect family and household formation.

STEP stands for Strategic Trends Evaluation Process…but also stands for the four trends we look at on a consistent basis: social, technological, economic and political.  This is a client-focused, participatory program that provides our clients with a continuous look at emerging issues in the external environment —  and ultimately, what the trends mean for their customers, members, strategies and operations.

We had a wonderful roster of clients and guests around the table, who actively engaged in an off-the-record discussion of important trends in today’s current environment.  It’s always fascinating to see in what direction the conversation goes, and hear the buzzing of comments around the table.

Additional information on the STEP program is available on our website.  We encourage you to check it out.

Until the next one in September…