BUSINESS FUTURES | 82 OUR APPROACH As a starting point, we identified more than 100 existing cybersecurity was negative 27 percent of the time in 2017, and emerging global, cross-industry trends that will compared to 9 percent for virtual reality and 8 percent for affect businesses in the medium and long-term—from macroeconomic conditions. climate change to sustainability to the evolving role of We used text analytics to assess the focus of the China on the world stage. To do this, we scanned more discussion on venture capital money flows, as a way than 300 sources from the demographic and societal, to track interest in different technologies. Our mapping economic, geopolitical, environmental, organizational of connections among sectors showed a high volume of and technological spheres. chatter on healthcare, AI and blockchain, and connections Each of the futures explored in these pages emerges in geographies found growing attention to emerging from the interaction of a different set of five of these technology countries, including China, India and Israel. trends. However, there are many ways to select a cluster We also examined the 300 most influential English blogs of five from a hundred. How did we decide which of the in politics, economics and technology to spot emerging possible futures to focus on? We used word analytics tools hot topics. to filter and cluster the trends. Based on text analysis of Together, these inputs enabled us to look at the more than 7,000 speeches by CEOs, we identified which relationships among different trends and cluster them topics are on the minds of business executives; in 2017, into selected groups, which we tested with our advisory for example, social media and AI topped the list of topics panel. To explore the implications of these futures for mentioned in CEO speeches. organizations, we engaged with internal and external Our sentiment analysis of these topics also showed us that experts, from futurists to entrepreneurs and industry CEOs are particularly concerned about geopolitics and analysts, through a series of interviews and workshops. cybersecurity. For example, the sentiment associated with THE WORLD OF REDESIGNING THE IMAGINATION THE AGE OF “TECHNO-POLITICS” LIFE ECONOMY (IN)SECURITY