Content, Learning, and Knowledge
AI and Intellectual Property
The intersection of intellectual property (IP) and artificial intelligence (AI) presents a host of legal and creative challenges that will need to be addressed through litigation and regulation. Generative AI and machine learning systems use large amounts of data from the internet, like text and images, without getting permission, giving credit, or paying for it. This raises concerns about fair use and copyright infringement.
AI and Learning
Swiftly advancing artificial intelligence technologies, including generative AI, will transform how and what people learn, driving rapid change in education models and content and affecting training and skill building. Evolving challenges include identifying which skills to teach, how to measure attainment, and how AI can enhance learning rather than undermine it. Associations will find their roles shifting as AI tools integrate their knowledge areas and serve their members and fields.
Changing Information Channels
New technologies and new perspectives are giving rise to new channels of information dissemination. These channels, like TikTok or gaming platforms, are shaped by audiences seeking new forms of contact and expression and transforming what it means to be a legitimate information source.
Higher Education 3.0
Traditional educational models are under pressure as trends in work, technology, and student expectations, along with the disruptions of COVID-19, creating needs for new curricula, modes of instruction, and funding models. Higher education is facing new threats of disintermediation by online education and alternative credentialing systems. Enrollment could be increased and diversified by new approaches to admissions and student debt.
Rejection of Expertise
Public skepticism toward credentialed experts and institutions is growing. Expert pronouncements have reduced impact on public perception, with the public turning instead to non-credentialed and “unofficial” sources for guidance and information. At the same time, information is increasingly able to route around gatekeepers. In response, new frameworks and institutions for curbing the spread of misinformation are being developed.
Truth Under Pressure+
Truth—and the institutions that help define and protect it, such as science, law, academia, and the media—is under pressure. Polarization is a key driver, with society fracturing into competing narrative ecosystems, each with its own trusted sources, experts, and fundamental views of what constitutes reality. Associations are affected both as consumers and producers of information.
Data and Technology
Algorithms and Rights
As companies and governments deploy ever more algorithmic systems, concern is growing about algorithms’ fairness, opacity, and lack of accountability. Many see a need for legal protections and regulations to ensure rights and prevent discrimination in an increasingly automated age.
Anticipatory Intelligence
Big data, data analytics, and artificial intelligence are enabling predictive analytics used to anticipate needs, opportunities, and threats in an organization’s environment. The market for predictive analytics is growing rapidly, and major computing companies are key players. Organizations view predictive analytics as one of the most important ways to leverage big data.
Energy Systems in Transition+
The global shift away from fossil fuels is encountering significant challenges, particularly related to the cost and the complexities of overhauling existing infrastructure. Simultaneously, energy demand is projected to rise due to the growing needs of AI computing, electric vehicles (EVs), and other emerging technologies. In response, attention is turning to advanced solutions such as smart grids, innovative energy storage systems, carbon capture, and next-generation nuclear power.
Ethical Edge of Innovation
Rapid technological innovation, encompassing fields such as biotechnology, quantum computing, and renewable energy, is outpacing the legal and regulatory frameworks intended to protect public safety, promote economic growth, and foster social wellbeing. This leaves lawmakers struggling to keep up with the pace of change. Growing public pressure to mitigate the negative impacts of new technologies is prompting regulators to intervene more actively to shape technology adoption.
Fraying Cybersecurity
Risks to digital infrastructures are growing, even as dependence on them rises and more of everyday life is conducted via a digital layer. The workforce is both worried and harried—concerned about digital privacy and security in the workplace, and tired of the difficulty and complexity of maintaining system security. Associations face the same risks as other organizations but also have opportunities to support their members in new ways.
Personalized Artificial Intelligence*
Rapid advancements in large language models (LLM) enable artificial intelligence (AI) systems to create precise, current portraits of individual behaviors and preferences. These models power multichannel experiences through chatbots, voice assistants, and other AI interfaces. As personalized AI evolves, it is giving rise to agentic AI, which proactively provides personalized support and automates routine tasks. This will lead to a future where humans interact with systems that understand and adapt to their evolving preferences, values, and goals.
Preventing AI Risks and Harms
Societies and industries will be challenged by artificial intelligence’s potential to introduce risks and harms. The list of immediate and potential problems is expanding rapidly (e.g., misinformation, disinformation, discrimination, and job loss). Regulation of AI systems is beginning worldwide but governments will struggle to keep pace with the technology. Associations will need to confront and address potential harms to protect themselves, their members, and society.
Taming Big Tech
A handful of global consumer-technology platforms—Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, Alibaba, and their subsidiaries—increasingly shape entertainment, news, commerce, and personal interaction. The unprecedented (and growing) power and influence of these companies create a variety of challenges for governments and civil society, prompting governments around the world to act to rein in these companies.
Demographics and Membership
Emerging Gen Z
Generation Z—defined as the generation born from 1997 to 2012—is coming into focus. As their role in the workforce expands, gen Z’s approach to work will shape and be shaped by shifting workplace requirements and new technologies, including artificial intelligence. They are the most diverse generation in American history. Due to their demographics and concerns, gen Z will bring new attitudes toward education, work, family, and life priorities.
Empowering the New Workforce
New structures are emerging to support workers’ rights and protections in the face of economic change. Workers are confronting structural changes—automation, the gig economy, globalization, and the decline of unions—that are generally shifting the balance of power in favor of employers. Now, driven by innovative startups, a handful of political initiatives, and workers themselves, new solutions are emerging—including from associations, which can both contribute to and benefit from this movement.
The Evolving Volunteer Experience*
Cultural, demographic, and technological changes are altering volunteer expectations and experiences amidst an increasingly digital organizational environment. Associations and nonprofits are experimenting with more flexible roles and structures to support collaboration and contribution. Hybrid engagement models and new opportunities for virtual volunteering are providing new tools for outreach to association members, especially those in Generation Z.
Immigration-Driven Demography
Immigration will remain the central driver of American population growth and diversity for decades to come, reshaping not only demographics but also values and attitudes. For associations, this creates a more diverse membership with more varied ideas, expectations, and needs.
The Next-Gen Professionals
Millennials are now the largest generational cohort in the workforce, and Generation Z is right behind them. These next-gen professionals are the future of associations and, as Gen Z begins to moves into adulthood, the two generations are showing significant differences in their outlooks and priorities. Organizations will need to provide the kinds of training, mentoring, content, and other services that each of these generations value most, encouraging engagement that leads to loyalty.
Shrinking Youth Populations
In many countries, birthrates have been falling for decades, with births in a growing list of countries—now including the United States—under the population replacement rate. Having fewer young people presents challenges to societies: a smaller workforce, fewer students in the educational system, and shifts in population geography. More countries will have to meet the needs of rising senior populations with fewer youth to support them.
Economic Conditions
American Wealth Gaps
Wealth varies greatly in the United States. The Boomer generation has amassed significant assets over their lifespan while the relative lack of wealth accumulation among younger Americans is affecting family formation and housing demand. Disparities in wealth across racial and ethnic lines persist. These wealth gaps may drive political attitudes and attempts by younger generations to redefine a satisfying life.
Evolving Cities
Urban areas are changing under the influence of unfolding economic, environmental, technological, and social trends. COVID-19 has spawned many acute effects, some of which are proving persistent—especially those involving where people work. City shapes and density are shifting, but the appeal of cities— for economic, social, cultural, and other qualities—remains. Meanwhile, the effects of climate change on cities are becoming immediate rather than theoretical.
Global Power Shifts*
The U.S.-led global order is weakening, giving way to a more contested and multipolar world. Conflict is intensifying as strategic and economic power disperses—shifting away from established states toward rising non-Western powers and flowing to nonstate actors. Driven by these geopolitical shifts and decentralizing technological trends, this fundamental change will significantly alter the operating environment for all global organizations, particularly those with cross-border operations.
Healthcare Disruption
New players will inject a dose of capitalism into American healthcare, shifting healthcare to a more retail-like experience. Healthcare delivery will be further unbundled and disintermediated as to nontraditional actors and businesses move into the space, and as technology enables care anywhere.
The Market-Driven Climate Economy*
Sustainable transformation is accelerating, often rapidly, around the world. While government efforts are increasingly contested, a faster parallel shift is being driven by powerful market forces and accelerating technological innovation. The sharp decline in renewable energy costs and the widespread adoption of electric vehicles have become strong economic drivers, reshaping industries and resource use even without policy mandates. This creates a complex and contradictory landscape, but climate change will remain a defining issue throughout the 2020s, profoundly influencing and affecting associations and their members.
Philanthropy Reshaped
Demographic and political changes, loss of trust in institutions, and the growth of donor-advised funds and impact investing will drive shifts in the channels, targets, and geographic focus of American philanthropy. These shifts will offer opportunities for associations to access new resources, engage new members, and create new partnerships.
Private Equity Reshaping Industries+
Private equity (PE) investments are consolidating fragmented industries into larger, more efficient entities. These rollups are common in sectors like healthcare, business services, and skilled trades. However, their scale has led to increased scrutiny from government antitrust regulators, who have grown increasingly concerned about their potential anticompetitive effects.
Trade in Transition
The patterns of global trade are shifting, with long-established trends slowing or reversing. Globalization is faltering, battered by international and domestic forces. Geopolitics increasingly intrudes into trade as countries seek to protect their supply chains from security threats. Domestic politics will push the world trade system toward economic nationalism in more countries. Associations’ member organizations will be buffeted by these changes, as will globally active associations.
Society and Politics
American Inequality
Inequality in America is growing worse, though there are scattered signs of progress. Since the 1970s, income inequality and the share of wealth in the hands of the most advantaged one percent of Americans have been rising, even as poverty has declined. Americans face a widening opportunity gap as a function of socioeconomic status, as well as significant racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic gaps in primary, secondary, and postsecondary education—though some of these gaps are shrinking.
American Instability
The American system of rules-based democracy is under strain. Polarization and distrust are pushing that system beyond gridlock toward potential breakdown, in which laws are not followed, election results are rejected, and political violence occurs on a growing scale. This could create a more uncertain and insecure operating environment for associations and their members.
China’s Expanding Global Influence*
China’s immense economic power is enabling it to reshape global systems according to its strategic preferences. This systemic ascent will fundamentally shift international norms, standards, and practices across key domains, including trade, finance, technology, and governance. East Asia will become the world’s central nexus, even as other Asian nations dispute China’s leadership and dominance.
Declining Trust*
In the United States, trust in institutions—including government, media, science, and medicine—is falling, with social, political, and economic implications. This decline in trust could fuel deeper political polarization and further erode social cohesion. Over the long term, trust may increasingly shift from centralized institutions to decentralized networks.
Dismantling Systemic Racism
The spotlight intensified on racial justice in 2020. Conversations about systemic racism were held in new spaces, including the workplace and across professional networks. Industries, professions, and organizations are exploring and implementing policies and programs, but change will be complex as implications are worked out on the ground. The challenge to dismantle systemic racism will remain a standing issue in public discourse.
The Population Health Paradigm Shift*
The concept of population health is reshaping approaches to health in the United States. Population health looks beyond delivering health services to patients and instead pushes healthcare providers to adopt a more systemic approach to identifying and influencing the determinants of community health. Managing population health will require new techniques to identify community health risks and the most effective, efficient community-health interventions.
The Splintered Society
Americans are self-segregating along multiple divides, both online and offline: politics, economic status, educational attainment, social life, consumer spending, media choices, and geography. This is being fueled by political, economic, and technological trends.
Standards Under Pressure
Standard setting will be marked by more conflict. Internationally, countries are using standards to advance competitiveness or dominance. Within countries, social issues are playing out in standards, making them more political in a polarized era. Associations will be participants in these conflicts—and also potential mediators.
Transparent Organizational Ethics
Organizations will face new kinds of scrutiny as drivers of transparency proliferate. Ubiquitous connectivity and information-capture, new sensing capabilities, and pervasive social media all enable hyper-transparency of organizations’ actions, necessitating actively managing reputation in a world increasingly concerned about ethical organizational behavior.
Workforce and Workplace
Automating Work
Machine learning, robotics, data analytics, and the internet of things are making growing swaths of work automatable. The adoption of automation will vary substantially by industry, occupation, and even workplace—but automation could transform most kinds of work and affect workers at every level, including senior management. Associations’ members and their own workforces will increasingly be reshaped as automation transforms the work of organizations.
Changing Science
The global scientific enterprise is changing. New regions are developing research centers and funding science on the scale of traditional science hubs in the West, while in the West, citizen science and DIY research are supplementing and challenging traditional scientific institutions. At the same time, falling trust and rising sociopolitical polarization are impacting science, while automation brings new changes and challenges.
Disability Inclusion
As public recognition of disability evolves, there will be a greater demand for accessibility and inclusivity in the workplace and beyond. The idea that disability and ability exist on a spectrum, with individuals’ physical, behavioral, and cognitive traits varying widely, is gaining acceptance. The increasing number of workers with disabilities will expand expectations for accessible products, solutions, and environments. Organizations will need to adapt to a complex and changing landscape of expectations and regulations.
New Forms of Work
Freelance, gig, contract, and temporary work and the infrastructure to support them (e.g., online platforms and reputation systems) are growing. Many employers view these non-permanent workers as relatively disposable, and offer them lower levels of benefits and pay. However, firms are becoming increasingly reliant on flexible workers, and growing numbers of independent professionals are joining the flexible workforce. Associations will have new opportunities to serve these workers and advocate for their interests.
The People-Automation Dynamic*
As automation expands, the relative value of certain human qualities like social skills and creativity will increase significantly. Human relevance will shift from knowing to high-level thinking, listening, relating, and collaborating.
The Shifting Inclusion Imperative*
As American society and workplaces become increasingly diverse, evolving values and the growing influence of younger generations will continue to shape expectations around belonging and fairness. This shift will unfold amid ongoing social and political polarization, with workplaces often serving as key spaces where differing views intersect and tensions surface. To navigate these dynamics, organizations can approach inclusion as a strategic system that strengthens institutional cohesion, enhances performance, and fosters the broad range of insights needed for innovation and organizational resilience.
Supporting Mental Health
Views on mental health care are changing, with increasing recognition of the importance and prevalence of mental health issues. A binary view of being well versus unwell is breaking down—though the question of what constitutes mental health may prove increasingly contentious. Efforts are underway to achieve equity and access in mental health, while therapy innovation is growing.
The Talent Drought
A growing number of industries are facing a long-term shortage of talented workers due to the retirement of baby boomers, young men remaining out of the workforce, and younger generations’ disinterest in entering the skilled trades. Automation and AI may fill labor gaps for some jobs, but for many tasks that require a literal or figurative human touch, employers will need sustained efforts to recruit, train, and retain workers.