3 megatrends: Demographic changes, urbanization, and climate change

At a very interesting presentation today by Mr. Siegfried Gerlach of Siemens Schweiz at the Kalaidos Business Forum, held at Hotel Novotel Zurich City-West, I learned, for example, about the following 3 megatrends: Demographic changes, urbanization, and climate change.

Regarding demographic changes, I came across - on the website of Siemens Schweiz - this image showing that the population of Switzerland, women as well as men, is getting older. We live longer. 

I was somewhat surprised to also learn that, globally, buildings are responsible for 40% of energy consumption. See photo below. In this regard, I learned that there’s a large need to invest in energy efficient housing / buildings – thereby creating win-win-win solutions. The population / businesses win by being able to reduce energy costs for, for example, housing and by being able to produce energy. Businesses win. And the environment wins as well.

At the Q&A session, I asked to what extent people working for Siemens Schweiz use / will use, for example, social media, crowdsourcing, and open innovation technologies to involve external people / the population in, for example, city development. Listening to what Mr. Gerlach said, I got the impression that it has high priority. For more information about the shift happening at Siemens towards Open Innovation, have a look at this posting.

What I also found excellent about the presentation by Siegfried Gerlach was the design of the slides he used. Great photos from many parts of the world combined with little text on each slide have the effect, that listeners focus their attention on the presenter.

A question to you, dear reader: What effect do the 3 megatrends mentioned above, i.e. demographic changes, urbanization, and climate change have on your life?