* Patrick Dixon advises many of the world's largest corporations on global trends, including banks, insurers and governments. 

What factors will shape longer term economic growth globally?  What about life beyond COVID?  What will be the impact of the combined economic stimulus of Central Banks?

There have been two major economic crises in the last 12 years: the banking crisis and now the pandemic crisis.

Major economic factors that will shape the next decade and beyond

Here are the major factors likely to shape the global economy over the next decade and beyond: (Article posted in April 2021 - judge for yourself how right it was.)

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU – George Orwell’s 1984 gives a chilling picture of how technol­ogy could be used by a dictator to control millions.

But Artificial Intelligence tools available today have advanced far beyond what Orwell saw.  Most governments of larger nations are using a wide range of digital tools to secretly monitor people on a very large scale.  

AI is taking this to an entirely new level including instantaneous, accurate face recognition from fixed video cameras in public places, through to recognition by mobile cameras worn by police or undercover agents.  

When you combine all the power and all the weaknesses of the Internet of Things, Big Data, Cloud Computing and Artificial Intelligence / AI, together with 6 billion smartphones, computers and other smart devices, the result is a gigantic range of lucrative targets, and a potential future global emergency.  

As I warned years ago, every large company in the world is now experiencing frequent, severe cyber-attacks, on their own systems or in the Cloud, whether they know or not. Much of this is linked to activity supported and encouraged by governments, attacking the economies and intellectual capital of other nations.

As we will see, over 4 billion people have already been personally affected by theft of their private details – and this is just the beginning of the security nightmare, which will drive huge investment in new security measures by all large corporations and by governments.

COVID forced acceleration in pharma drug discovery, innovation, clinical trials and regulatory approval / licencing as well as major changes in delivery of health care. What does this all mean for the future of pharma and health care?  Especially when combined with pharma impact of AI / Artificial Intelligence on drug discovery and clinical trials. Take for example the rapid growth of "virtual drug trials" - see below.

As a Physician as well as a Futurist I have worked with most of the largest pharma companies, helping them to understand the future.  I have warned for over two decades of global risks from new pandemics like COVID.

So what will be the Future of Pharma beyond COVID?

Here are notes on a recent Virtual keynote on the future of pharma.