The 2010 World Order: Lateralized, Trillionized, Infotoxicated …

1. Miniaturization

Every business process will go through intense compression and digitalization, so when it comes out on the other side of the tunnel, it will have already considerably reduced its operational costs. This will enable the process to function effectively, more powerfully, and be highly replicatable, with a lower cost structure, like a proverbial silver bullet. Will this now shrink entire office floors into cubicles, and cubicles into little icons on Web sites?

Who would need to come to the offices anyway? Managers (to put their feet on desks), water cooler crowds, elevator pitch experts — or just the office cleaners? Is this the reason commercial office space is about to fall off the cliff? Both big and small businesses will be shrinking to survive, with increasing competitive pressure the requirement is to become the silver bullet. Are you running a bullet speed operation or lost in the office maze?

2. Lateralization

The realignment of both the cerebral hemispheres is also urgently required with the next automobile tune-up. Many exhausted and stressed-out individuals throughout the world have suffered tremendously over the last few years, intensifying with the economic collapse. This raises serious question about the functionalities of senior executives, their basic business logic, financial literacy and the right-left brain balance.

Why did the business systems and financial services fail so badly? Despite all the high-level education, their vision got blurred; capital risk management was insufficient, so the real world imploded. Was it the lack of lateralization that fogged the reality? Is it time to rediscover new types and styles of educational agendas — new methods and new formats of operation?

A new wave of educational programs will sweep the executive corridors. Are you newly trained and outfitted as a gladiator, or you are just an old-time spectator?

3. Trillionization

Once society becomes immune to the trivialization of the trillionization of nations’ debts, it will become a real comfort pillow for the public consciousness to sleep on. After a year of struggle, overconfidence about a US$1 million net profit may sound like an embarrassingly minute accomplishment when pleading for plant expansion funds to a banker, whose tight-fisted policies — despite receiving a $100 billion bailout — still do not solve your business issues.

The overly casual use of the word “trillion,” as an ordinary measurement of the rising deficit, with each hiccup is going to diminish our respect and regard for the daily challenges of life, dealing in only a few millions of dollars. Is this the reason nobody is any longer impressed by how much money you have made during this great recession?

New methodologies and new types of presentation collateral will be required to pitch for any serious business game plan. Do you have the new tools to present your business plan, or would you prefer the sign language?

4. Infotoxication

If the information is more toxic than the toxic assets themselves, what is the point of believing anybody? Just stay intoxicated; forget joining AA. The truth is being morphed into twisted sugar candy by the day to keep the masses high, while credibility gaps are getting wider by the hour. Is there really a person or a body on this planet that the global masses would blindly believe? Is there a government, a department, a corporation, an NGO, a global body, a credit reporting agency, a polling service or a bank?

What happened? Was it a meteor hit, or just a daisy-cutter type memory loss? Why did trustworthiness simply disappear, and why was credibility just wiped out? Is this the reason for the lowest rating when any head of state goes for national public broadcasts? Is this the reason that newspapers and TV are becoming irrelevant and disappearing?

Creating solid credibility will be the biggest challenge for both the public and private sectors in this new decade. Do they trust you with their life or with empty bottles?

5. Google-ization

If society is already overly dependent on Google without a quick early morning handshake, the day simply doesn’t start. The sun does not come out and the moon stays stuck behind the clouds. The entire global search-centric culture is based on googling to put life in perspective, determine the importance of anything: news, personalities, money matters, buying or selling of any idea.

The new product and services from the mother ship Google will keep us even more comfortably tangled in a kind of great and free service till we all get overly cozy, almost dazed, and habitually responding to our stimuli. What Google did in the last 10 years took others a century to even approach. Today, Google can be credited with a trillion dollar savings in time costs, by having information in seconds available to the global public. It is hard to imagine a life on this planet without it.

Become a Google expert and find all the possible options to build your expansion strategies around its access and services. Ignore the sobbing in other media and advertising as they have run out of batteries. The introduction of new ideas, ranging from phone and gadgets to insurance and banking services, will create amazing shock waves and exciting opportunities to feel the global pulse in real-time. Are you being googled — and, if not, do you google yourself?

6. Domainization

If several key languages other than Roman alphabets are allowed, it will make the Internet really global. It will be a dynamic adjustment — colorful and yet at times extremely confusing. So what should brand name holders do? Scream foul in other languages, buy dictionaries, or simply go exploring on world trips?

A name is the most important and critical component of any serious business today. If a name is not worthy of protection, as it is already diluted and confusing, then it could surely become a nightmare very soon. Only well-balanced and protected name holders will really be allowed to play the superior games on new platforms of TLD now offered by ICANN.

A serious business without a solid global name is like a dull joke in search of laughter. Global understanding of domain name management and naming architecture skills will be where all the battles of social-media-searching and customer acquisition will be headed. Is your name identity a shiny star or a dull object?

7. Ghetto-ization

Is social media in reality becoming an antisocial media, as Joe Social has little or no real relationship with Jane Public, except as a spectator cheering at dull events? Is it creating its own social ghettos, where micro-gatherings are only blocking crowd-gathering? Will this fad mold into another form of personal personification, like an old phone directory — but with pictures and some quirky messages?

If advanced level personal data were manipulated to determine the next action to plant a selling proposition, would it not eliminate all the old selling procedures? Can you imagine this as a new online cyberheaven, or will it be cyberhell? Is it time to buy stock in delivery vans?

New processes will seriously replace old-style location and large inventory-based retail industry thinking, along with the traditional advertising. Are you in social-media heaven or antisocial purgatory?

8. Cybernetization

Once all processes are electronic, digitized, portable and in cyberspace, then what is the point of a regimented 9-to-5 Monday to Friday working society? Free at last! If everyone were working and thinking while connected to some large portal spread out on a global range, what would it do to corporate structure, hierarchies, protocols and decorum? Would society cope with such an open-ended free flow of work?

Will it change habits and daily routines? Will you find more people in libraries, cinemas, malls or restaurants? Will they just stay home and watch 3-D HDTV and get more depressed about repeated “socio-politico-economico-climatico-damaged-news”? Will the home craft industry boom and autos stay in the garage? Will back yards turn into small grow-op farms, and will grocery stores be quieter? Are you already undressed to be hard-wired?

9. Frugalization

While “shop till you drop” created the greatest recession, then “save till you drop” will keep you there forever. Was it the failure of capitalism and liberal economic policies without regulation that resulted in “beg, borrow and steal, shop with high-interest plastic, and boost the Dow to 15,000”?

It will surely take every penny to finance these shopping bills. The capitalist free enterprise system seems broken. Communism and socialism are also not the answer. Societies all over the world is getting a free crash course in economics, and what they are going to derive is that saving is perhaps the only way.

Wealth is created by actual work and not by spending. Is it possible that the U.S. may end up with a Japan-like decade? Intense frugality on Main Street will spread and linger all over. Are you saving or spending enough — or do you have a printing press too?

10. Globalization

If globalization is the only way to go forward — despite all the nationalism — what will the new world look like? Will it eventually create select alliances and free-trade regions? Will it create blocs, or just battles in a sandbox? The search for best markets, best labor and minimum regulation is where private corporate jets would be parked.

Talk of nationalism will primarily feed textual lines to teleprompters all over the world, but real protectionism will not work well for most nations. The internationalism of business is already way out of the bag, and this is where all the cutting-edge skills are required.

Multiple countries, languages and cultures will all dance to one tune in the same boardroom. New global standards will drive marketing, naming and image management. Are you basically local, somewhat “glocal” or truly internationalist?