Mauro Guillén: Today’s Biggest Trends Will Collide in 2030

LAS VEGAS—Mauro F. Guillén is said to be one of the most original thinkers at the Wharton School, where he holds the Zandman Professorship in International Management and teaches in its flagship Advanced Management Program and many other courses for executives, MBAs, and undergraduates. He was just recently appointed the next Director and Dean of Cambridge Judge Business School. An expert on global market trends, he was the keynote luncheon speaker at the CREW Network Convention where he discussed a few key trends that he says will collide in 2030, will impact the CRE landscape and reshape our future. 

“The world as we know it will be gone before the end of this decade,” he said. “We have changes going on in population, the economy and, of course, technology.”

But he says that if you consider each of those three things in isolation of the others, you will miss the point. “I like thinking about the future laterally. What you need to do is connect the dots so you can anticipate unanticipated effects,” he explained. “Individual trends don’t matter as much as how they come together.”

According to Guillén, when you look at the number of babies, it is dropping. “Now we are at a level of perhaps 2.4 babies per woman for the entire world and the number will continue to go down,” he said. It is mainly going on, he said, because women have better access to educational opportunities. 

“The reason is that when women are prevented from being in school, they start having children earlier in life and when they have better educational opportunities, they postpone having babies,” he explained.

The other thing he said we can expect is that life expectancy is growing and will have big implications for the future. “On average, we will live maybe six or seven years longer than our parents and maybe 11 years longer than our grandparents.”

If you put those two things together, he says, there is a stunning change coming our way. 

Assuming immigration will remain roughly at the same level, by the year 2028, Africa will be the second region in the world in terms of population. South Central Asia, which includes India, is going to be the second largest. China, Japan, Europe will have a big decline. Nothing too dramatic will happen in the US. 

But what will be interesting in the US is that the age group of 15 and 35 will be the majority and minority groups in this country will be the majority, he continues. 

In terms of population aging, every country in the world, whether rich or poor, will have more people over the age of 60 in 2030. Up until now, people in their 30s and 40s were the largest purchasing power, now, this will change over the next few years as the population grows. In the US, 80% of the net worth is over the age of 60. Wealth and net worth is concentrated on the older population.

“As we see the convergence of all of these trends, the organization of our life will change. The three big changes will be as follows: lifespan: a 60 year old is expected on average to live another 24 years; healthspan: a 60-year old is now much better mental and physical shape; and technological change is making knowledge obsolete faster than in the past. In the future, people will go back to school several times and pursue several careers, not just several jobs.”

We can also expect more remote work and offshoring, he also says.Remote work enables companies to hire worldwide without restrictions, and employees to search for jobs worldwide. 

What are some of the implications for CRE? ”If I think of the intersection of all of the things I have talked about and the pandemic, hot areas I think are considering are distressed retail, last mile retail, distressed office space, smart office space, logistics and green commercial and office space,” Guillén says. “I think there will be great demand for space that is more efficient, more family friendly, better for the environment etc. Cities are the heart of the problem when it comes to climate change, we will need a lot of retrofitting of office space in cities.”