 It's New Year's! Remember New Year's Eve a year ago, 2019. Back then this year 2020 was nothing but future. New Year's Eve that's the day of the year that most of us think about the future more than any other day. We see it in front of us how midnight marks the beginning of something totally new. We set new goals and we promise to change things, change our behaviors. So what are we thinking and how do we think about the future? Well as you know one common theme is more or less. It might be more exercise, more money maybe, or more time with friends or for hobbies or less. Less junk food, less Facebook, less stress and work. These are priorities and priorities of course are important. If you exercise instead of smoking it will most probably affect your future. But this is also just extrapolating and the future is not so simple. It's not just an extension like more or less of what has been, of what we understand and know and everything we've been through. Our future is above all affected by what we don't know. It contains lots of experiences that none of us can imagine and even less expect. What if someone at that New Year's party where you were at last year said, look over there, can you see the coronavirus? Of course you can't because you don't know what to look for. One year ago most of us never heard of the coronavirus. I mean we didn't even know the word epidemiologist and even if you were to get a crash course during the fireworks, how likely do you think something like this would have sounded? Well this, I mean let me tell you that this got to be something. Let me give you a prediction. I predict they will cancel the Olympics. They will close every pub in all of London. They will close down India. That's the level we're at. You will be stuck inside a year in your pajamas. No, we don't think that way because we can't. When we think about the future we can worry and we can wish but only about what's in our imagination. What we cannot even imagine. That doesn't fit in our thoughts about the future. I mean you can do the opposite. You can do an exercise. You can be the future. Let's imagine if there was time travel. So let's bring a person here from the past. I'm Swedish so let's bring back a Viking. Now you are the future. Can you please explain a smartphone to this here, Viking? Remember he don't know what the internet is. He doesn't understand words like camera or GPS. This guy don't even know what a good old telephone is. That gap between you and the Viking. The gap we go to museums to experience. That gap is obviously the same between us and future museums. The future museums are constantly being filled. It's like a steady stream of incomprehensible news and crisis and innovations and smartphones, coronaviruses. And when we talk about these we talk about them and refer to them as good or bad. If I say innovation sounds good doesn't it? Crisis not so good. I want you to think of them not as good or bad but as decisive moments to remind you that they are never good or bad per definition. Decisive moments mean just one thing. It will never be the same again. It will never go back. When you know what a smartphone is or what a coronavirus is, you cannot unlearn it. And in that future museum this is the exciting place. This is where you stop. Your great grandchildren they will look at Steve Jobs when he introduced the first iPhone back in 2007 and Elon Musk with the first test line 2008. Then there is nothing. Nothing exciting for more than a decade. The economy is growing, stock market is up, all is good. The only thing fascinating is this Donald Trump character. Besides that nothing to think of and see. And then boom 2020. The year of the corona pandemic. Wow. This is an exciting part of the museum. This is a decisive moment. New normal. There are always the small, obvious, quite easy to spot opportunities in times like this. I like to refer to them as umbrellas. Like umbrellas when it's raining. It's quite easy to predict that this is an opportunity. The interest will grow. Now there is a growing market for things like designer face masks or these here are selfie masks. I mean obviously no future without our selfies. There is also a growing market for digital tool for communication meetings like this thing we're doing online right now and e-commerce. Everything that can help us in a world of physical distancing. So these are umbrellas on a rainy day. But then there are the not so easy to spot opportunities. A long-term change on the societal level. Change to the way we live our life. What if the transformation from office workers to out-of-office workers is just as profound as when we went from being farmers to industrial workers. Remote work. The opportunity might be something much bigger than just getting a smaller office. Maybe the real opportunity in this new world of remote workers is about a new society. Where people can move from big cities to smaller cities with a lower cost of living and higher quality of life. Where the most diverse and inclusive teams in history will emerge as a result. Now when companies can attract talent globally and where time as the main KPI for judging performance will be replaced by productivity output. Think of what that might mean to all the women. So many women still have to choose between professional life and family life. Now if managers instead have to learn to measure employees by output results rather than from how many hours they've spent together in the office or on the golf course. How well they know each other. Then maybe no one have to make that choice anymore. These are not predictions. These are opportunities and right now entrepreneurs, investors, leaders, people like you will spot opportunities like this and act. Maybe the only thing a small town needs to attract these remote workers is a great school. If they get some great teachers and then of course some super fast broadband maybe they can just sit back and enjoy how people and wealth is coming back again. Decisive moments are exciting moments. It is true when they say COVID-19 took us straight to 2030. One consequence of this pandemic is that much of what would have happened the coming 10 years now happened in just one. Obviously the old and already sick are suffering more than the young and healthy. Same in business. Weak companies the ones stuck in old business models having a hard time to transform and who would have died out now they do so in a faster pace. But just remember behind every bankrupted company every close storefront there is new opportunity. There is like this vacuum waiting to be filled. And another thing that leaped for this our use of digital tools for communication all the umbrellas I just told you about. I mean we were jumping online for all of this the coming 10 years anyway and now COVID-19 took us straight to 2030. But it is also true to describe the pandemic as life put on hold. Many have experienced 2020 as life in slow motion. All of a sudden we've had time you know that thing we never used to have time to think and reflect time to decide what's important and what's not. No matter what you think of this year at least it reminded us of one thing we cannot predict the future. No one can. I mean it's obvious now we were all wrong we didn't even have paper face masks for doctors. And this is an important reminder when we talk about the future like I always say the future is not to be predicted it is to be created. Success was never about predictions successful companies the ones we talk about all the time and Google, Amazon, Tesla they are not successful because their founders were good at guessing. The reason they are successful is because of a true understanding of the now. What problems need to be solved now and what opportunities are there now. So when you think about the future you should pay attention to this present moment. And I know this sounds like a no brainer one liner from a public speaker. But think again look around automobile companies still making hundreds of thousands of fossil fuel cars. The food industry gives unhealthy food that makes us sick. Retailers like in clothing totally unsustainable using resources and polluting all these unsustainable business models out there. This is ignoring today's problems and opportunities. It's quite obvious if you think of it like this. This here is GDP per capita. Thousands of years of progress or well rather thousands of years of no progress and then in just two three hundred years we got it all. Economic growth the fact that we today can create more human well-being in a week than that poor Viking could do in his whole lifetime. But again if we focus on the now today's problems let's add this graph. This is CO2 emissions and then it's quite clear that the way we created this fortune is not working. It's unsustainable. It's by burning fossil fuels and today we know that this is not a safe way and it's definitely not a way to to create more human well-being. Again only when we face the current situation with an attitude of acceptance then we can go on and be curious and think of action what needs to be done. That's how the future is born. It's not to be predicted it is to be created. You know what they say about this year depending on your understanding and then your action. You can come out of 2020 a hunk a monk or a drunk and now in just two weeks we're back watching the fireworks again some kind of physical distancing party and this time just like millions of Americans two months ago or so we will probably celebrate the end of something rather than looking forward. But you will celebrate the new year 2021 and the only thing we know about it is this 2021 will also bring change and you will adapt like you always do but for the future to be inspiring you need more than the ability to adapt. If you want to know how to cope with the speed of change and you want to create a great vision about the future make one that isn't about some thing you want. Make a vision about your relationship to uncertainty. You need to create a culture where you learn to enjoy uncertainty so when you wake up in the morning and and think of how uncertainty is the only certainty and and then just like a student you feel joy and excitement just because of that. Wow we are alive in extraordinary times of adventure and change and so much to learn still out there ahead of us so much to explore when that's your feeling then you should celebrate because the ones who learn to enjoy uncertainty those are the ones who will love our future. I wish you the best of luck and happy new year.