UPENDING MODELS
Could family businesses embrace the ‘Googlisation’ of the economy which some predict? This is where the products made by a company are reconsidered as income producing assets of a different kind—provided cheaply or given away to generate revenue by monetising the user base. Distributed energy, where electricity is generated and stored by a network of smaller devices, promises to do for energy what the internet did for information. Mark Stevenson says the low energy costs that renewables are increasingly delivering will boost the economy. A decentralised network will be more secure and stable, while predictable energy costs, given that the marginal cost of sunshine and wind is zero, will create a more attractive investment landscape because it will be easier to plan long-term. Talk about a game changer. “If we get renewables right we’re looking at a world where energy pretty much becomes cheap, very cheap for most people in the next 20 to 30 years,” Stevenson says. “Couple that with technology that allows 3D printers to print 3D printers. Then add in a blockchain-enabled financial system that doesn’t require many third parties to mediate your transactions, that replaces trust in organisations that consistently prove themselves to be untrustworthy with verifiable proof and is much cheaper. That’s an interesting proposition.”
Right, top: Jamie Arbib asks if virtual reality might have advanced by 2050 to a level where people simply do not need to travel as much
Below: Mark Stevenson predicts family business leaders will need to motivate their staff with social capital
Opposite left: The sole of this Adidas shoe was made using a 3D printer. Families need to ask how new tech will impact their businesses
Opposite right: Forget “clean coal”, the future belongs to green tech, such as the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, spread across 13 sq km of desert near the California-Nevada border
The public’s trust in the institutions of
government, business, media, and non- government organisations is also at an all-time low and there are few signs of it improving by 2050. The 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer of more than 33,000 respondents across 28 countries declared a “total collapse” in trust in the institutions that shape our society. Trust in the UK is at an historic low of 29%. Stevenson says its reasons like these
that mean “it’s very likely that 85% of the people who work for you don’t care about their jobs, they’re not engaged [according to Gallup’s study of more than 140 countries for its State of the Global Workplace report in 2017]. “They realise the system is treating most
of the people unfairly,” he says. Family businesses will also have to
reconsider their employee relationships. “Nobody would work for the company
they work for if they had as much money as the company they work for,” Stevenson says. “If you ask someone what wealth
is, usually they get it wrong, in my opinion. They say it’s basically how
PHOTOGRAPHY: PRESS ASSOCIATION
much stuff you’ve got. My experience with more thoughtful high net worth investors is they say what wealth really is, is power. The power to make things happen that you would like to happen, whether they are good things or bad things. Your wealth allows you to coerce people into doing things in the direction you think is important and that coercion usually takes the form of an employment contract.” However, the rampant accessibility of
technology could mean employees will not need as much money from employers as they used to. Savvy wealth holders Stevenson consults know this and look to increase their so-called social capital. “What they realise is that if they don’t
start saying interesting, important, and useful things about climate change, social justice and inequality, then their power is going to be eroded, because people won’t have to work for them anymore,” Stevenson says. “Your ability to make things happen,
which is what wealth really is, will be eroded, because your team just lost all its best people.”
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