Future Trends Forum

What for years seemed like a science fiction dream is beginning to become reality: fusion energy is on its way. In a world that needs urgent solutions to climate change, dependence on fossil fuels, and ever-growing electricity demand, fusion is emerging as a unique alternative: clean, safe, abundant, and capable of transforming the global energy future.

And most importantly, the time is now. Scientific advances have proven that fusion works, and investment from large companies, governments, and international funds is accelerating the transition from the laboratory to industry. Never before have we been so close to turning this promise into a real source of energy.

This report from the Future Trends Forum shows where we are today, what progress has been made, and what remains to be done before fusion reaches the power grid. It also offers a clear view of the challenges that remain to be solved and how Europe can seize this historic opportunity to lead the next great industrial and technological revolution.

Embodied AI is revolutionizing the way machines interact with the real world. Through the integration of sensors, actuators, and advanced learning models, artificial intelligence is no longer just about processing information—it perceives, acts, and adapts.

This marks a paradigm shift in the relationship between humans and machines, unlocking new possibilities in sectors such as healthcare, mobility, and industrial automation, where real-time adaptation and learning are essential.

Currently, more than 2 billion people live in regions with high levels of water stress, and it is projected that by 2050, half of the world’s population will live in areas facing water scarcity. New technologies, such as reuse, desalination, and atmospheric water capture, offer innovative solutions that can ensure their availability and quality in the long term. Moreover, the interdependence between water and energy is key to creating a sustainable future. The water crisis is a call to action, and this report proposes viable solutions to build a more resilient and sustainable future.

In a world where water, an essential source for life and human development, is facing an unprecedented crisis due to growing demand, climate change and pollution, the Future Trends Forum organized by the Bankinter Foundation of Innovation brought together leading global experts to seek innovative solutions. During this event, technologies and innovations in desalination, water reuse and digitalization of water management were explored. In addition, strategies to strengthen climate resilience, improve governance and ensure equitable and sustainable access to water were discussed.

The final report will be published in autumn 2024.

In the near future, we will face the monumental challenge of feeding a global population expected to reach 10 billion by 2050. This challenge places us at a crucial crossroads where innovation, balance with nature, human health and efficiency must converge to find sustainable solutions that ensure the well-being of the population and the preservation of our planet.

Moving an exoskeleton through the mind, mitigating tremors caused by Parkinson’s disease, preventing and treating mental illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, regenerating organs through bioelectricity and enhancing human skills and abilities. The Future Trends Forum experts analyze these and other innovative proposals, as well as the opportunities and challenges, including the ethical and legal aspects involved, with the aim of outlining a promising future in the field of physical and mental health.

The combination of AI and quantum technologies are laying the foundations of a quantum revolution, but still imperceptibly to the general public.  This report aims to prepare us for when this revolution comes.

It is necessary and urgent to change our energy and production models to ensure a sustainable future (socially, economically, and environmentally) for humanity. The challenge is to reach a NetZero world by 2050 and the Future Trends Forum experts have examined the most promising technologies and innovations to solve specific challenges, from carbon footprint reduction to new energy sources, showcasing the key ideas that will accelerate the path to a NetZero world.

Future Trends Forum experts have analyzed the job environment, made recommendations about learning, re-skilling and up-skilling the workforce and corporate organizational needs. All this, aiming at a future of work that reaches new levels of competitiveness and resilience.

There is an erosion of trust in all areas of society and business. How to build trust, how to maintain it, how to increase it? and, even more difficult, how to recover it if we have lost it?

How will we feed ourselves in a few years, when we are 10 billion inhabitants? Will we witness in human food a change as radical as those who have experienced health, communications, the way of working or relating?

The Future Trends Forum has detected the main areas of work of neuroscience and discussed how neuroscience will help us to know ourselves better, improve our intellectual abilities, heal diseases or the possibility of connecting our brain with machines.

Our think tank has analyzed Artificial Intelligence from several points of view: its technological development and the capabilities and impacts it will have on our lives in the next 10 years.

This report analyzes how technological advances and scientific research are enabling the commercialization of space, which is already presented as a business opportunity on Earth.

Our experts analyze the challenges and propose the best ways to transform our cities into disruptive cities.

Our experts analyse the main consequences of an ageing population for business and society, as well as the opportunities it brings for innovation.

This report analyzes the latest technological developments, the detail of the resulting business models and their socio-economic impact.

Our experts discuss what can be done to ensure that the benefits of technological innovation improve prosperity for society as a whole.

This report has analysed how new technologies (Internet, robotics, artificial intelligence, etc.) will influence employment and labour markets in the next decade.

The Future Trends Forum analyzed the Digital Health trend to determine the value of this new tool to solve the problems of current health systems, as well as the opportunity it offers to turn the patient into the epicenter on which all health services revolve in the future.

Our experts analyze new innovation trends related to new financial services.

This report analyzes how cybersecurity should develop around transparency, surveillance and privacy, also becoming a generator of new business opportunities.

Report that analyzes scientific and technological advances that increase and improve human capabilities.

Report where the proposals of our think thank on the new flows of capital (human, financial and intellectual) that will reconfigure the economic panorama of the coming decades are concretized.

This report analyzes the study of human behavior and its implications for people, the business world or governments from the analysis of the data we produce.

We analyze the new map that is drawn for pharmaceutical innovation. These agents involved are the pharmaceutical industry, biotechnology, entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, public administrations and patients.

Our experts analyzed the characteristics of the Spanish labor market that make it so dependent on the economic cycle: its duality, lack of flexibility and low productivity rate.

This report analyzes the mobile market´s opening and how it affects the offer of devices and services, providing some clues on how to take advantage of the opportunities that are emerging in the sector.

This report analyzes education as the definitive variable that will condition future economic growth in this century.

Report that analyzes the ingredients necessary for innovation and entrepreneurship to take place in our society.

Analysis of technological development that allows person-to-person interaction.

Our experts analyze the technology that makes it possible for any imaginable object to be able to be connected to the Network, become intelligent and therefore, offers infinite possibilities.

Report that identifies the strategies to be followed to achieve a model of social and economic organization that contemplates ethical values and sustainable development.

We analyze the new multipolar world order, characterized by a greater weight of emerging economies. Deepening the new rules of the game that will mark the dynamics of the markets in which investors, companies, governments and consumers coexist.

This report analyzea the revolution of access to technology that the cloud supposes, which facilitates the access of people and companies to computer services.

Report that analyzes the causes and consequences of the phenomenon of global aging and immigration as new commercial actors and business trends.

This report provides an overview of the Web 2.0 phenomenon and its impact on social media.

We define the concept of innovation, make a diagnosis of the current situation in the world and analyze its implications and its influence on competitiveness and productivity.

Report that analyzes the conjunction of finite resources, with an unstoppable demand and a production incapable of accompanying the consumption trend will produce tensions in the global economy.

Report that analyzes the development of science and engineering at the nanoscale and its impact on society.

Report that analyzes how the challenge of China’s opening to the outside world and its global repercussions was faced.

Report that analyzes the new medical environment that will allow the progressive application of treatments, preventive and curative, based on genetic information.

Report that analyzed the development of the new generation of mobile phones known as 3G.

In this report, our expert analyzed radio frequency identification (RFID) technology installed on objects to transmit information to an RFID receiver and its business implications.