Future Forecast 2023

Our future has never been so uncertain, or our path towards it so strewn and blocked by seemingly insurmountable obstacles: recession, cost of living crisis, inflation, and cultural, gender and equity wars that continue to divide and dog us.

Yet the same path, when filtered through our 2023 macrotrend The Paralysis Paradox, becomes one that is alive with challenge and opportunity; we need to become better business leaders in the face of ongoing uncertainty.

This year has been a bumper year for innovation, patent registration and innovative disruption. In 2022, Q1 saw the highest growth in patent filings (21%) on record, with AI and data-learning innovations promising to unlock transformative, context-rich insights across industries.

This is what our Future Forecast, and indeed, our Futures 100 Innovators Award, celebrate: those first-to-market innovators that disrupt sectors, the innovations they use to disrupt them, and of course the trends that provide them with the headwinds of change to do so.

And this year, our analysts have been documenting wave after wave of disruption as innovators take on those challenges that are designed to make tomorrow different and crucially, to make it better and more regenerative. 

And it is this approach to making tomorrow better that we like to champion in our annual Future Forecast. In it you will discover 50 cross-sector trends and innovations, 10 industry disruptors, and the new directions to monitor for tomorrow.