Exploring Microsoft Future of Work Scenarios
Exhibit 5: Continental Drift
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Continental Drift is the result of reinforced nationalisms emerging from complicated political relationships among the United States, Europe, China, and the Middle East. Political friction rivals that of the Cold War with security measures that make it difficult to do business across borders. As nations and regional blocs reassert self-protective nationalist ideologies, borders become less open, and access to key raw materials, information resources, markets, and labor becomes difficult. Although oil remains in adequate supply, the transportation of oil proves ever more risky with many nations choosing to reduce the length of supply chains and, in many cases, bringing goods production back to national soil. National governments become much more assertive in creating industrial and labor policies, reflecting a return to economic nationalism and disenchantment with the free market and neoliberal theories that dominated prior decades. The decline in trade increases the stagnation of the world economy and lowers the rate of wealth creation. A few large businesses thrive on government contracts and subsidies while competing among themselves for the domestic markets. Most businesses become increasingly associated with their nations of origin as they pull their edges in toward a more secure, controlled, and predictable core. Some nation-states nationalize industries, eliminating the subsidiaries of multinationals overnight.
Some additional characteristics of this scenario include:
• Increasing global problems — terrorism, economic turmoil, and environmental degradation — lead to the return of big government across the world.
• Although the United States remains militarily powerful, a series of strategic missteps significantly weakens its economic and cultural influence relative to rising powers elsewhere in the world.
• Major governments in Europe and Asia raise taxes to pay for large infrastructure projects intended to kick-start a stagnant and more regionalized world economy.
• Regional innovations do not spread globally; security barriers at national firewalls often halt the news of regional discoveries until they can be used to political advantage. This distrust causes much duplication of effort.
• A new generation of young nationalists, particularly in fast-growing economies like China and Brazil, spur increasingly confrontational military and economic policies on the part of their governments.
• Regional compliance becomes a significant source of overhead for the few remaining multinational companies as nations manufacture new forms of compliance to keep local businesses in line and deter international trade.
• Differences rule. New local competitors emerge in various regions as the disruption of the global economies creates local niches in industries once dominated by multinational firms and brands.
• Playing by local rules is as important as (or more important than) efficiency, causing many firms to reduce their profit expectations for business continuity goals. Multinational corporations retain control over international holdings through complex relationships that fragment internal operations to ensure compliance with local regulations.
• Cultural competence and multilingualism are valued skills among employees charged with negotiating the increasingly less penetrable boundaries between nations.
• Many nations create strict regulations on the movement of information and invest heavily in filtering and encryption technology to restrict access to national assets, leading to a high level of concern over information boundaries.
• As standards fragment and fracture, information translation and format transcription prove invaluable to maintain fluidity. Much early work done by hand will be automated over time.
• Regionally oriented reputation systems dominate with barriers to exclude finding expertise or managing relationships outside of approved boundaries.
