Since 2010 I have been speaking about what I see as three new consumer economic trends that will alter consumer behavior in the developed countries of the world.  A number of aligning forces are significantly increasing the influence and impact of these three trends.

In a recent column here, I wrote about Conscious Capitalism, one of the three new dominant trends of consumer behavior for the Transformation Decade 2010-2020. Conscious capitalism is when a company takes on an altruistic cause, charity or practice and applies revenue to that endeavor.  In that column I profiled two companies, Tom’s Shoes …

In 2010, I made the decision to write a book about the New Health Age.  Along with my co-author, Jonathan Fleece, we realized that the discussion about health care in America was being driven by fear, ignorance and manipulated by politicians.  Any discussion with these three components is a stupid conversation.  We decided to write an intelligent book to bring some intelligence to the discussion about the future of health care in America.  In late 2011, “The New Health Age:  The Future of Health Care in America” was published.

It was clear to us that certainly the United States …

In a recent column I listed the Five Contexts of the Shift Age.  As stated there, while the true cliché of the Information Age was “content is king” the true cliché of the Shift Age is “context is king”.  We live in an increasingly contextual world.  The context in which we receive or consume information shapes the information as much as the information itself.

In my just published book “Entering the Shift Age” I wrote about the five contexts through which we would look at almost everything in the future.  Whether it be education, energy, technology, …

[ This first appeared a week ago in my Shift Age Newsletter.  ]

In the first eight months of 2011, I made some economic forecasts relative to the global economic landscape.  As a futurist, that is part of what I do, as people always ask me about the future, particularly economics.  It is only fair to be accountable in this regard.

Here are some of the forecasts I made, with current commentary:

In January of 2011 I said that the growth rate of the US GDP would be 2% for the year. Well I got that one right.  In …