TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION

Economic growth in emerging markets was expected to drive technological innovation and flows of companies, ideas, entrepreneurs and capital to developing countries will increase, the report said.

“During the next 15-20 years, more technological activity is likely to move to the developing world as multinationals focus on the fastest-growing emerging markets and as Chinese, Indian, Brazilian, and other emerging-economy corporations rapidly become internationally competitive,” the report said.

“Technology will continue to be the great leveler. The future Internet ‘moguls’ - as with today’s Google or Facebook -sit on mountains of data and have more real-time information at their fingertips than most governments.”

That data will enable private companies to influence behavior on as large a scale as government entities.

The widespread use of new communications technologies will mean social networking will enable citizens to join together and challenge governments, as seen in Middle East, but will also provide governments “an unprecedented ability to monitor their citizens,” the report said.

POST ARAB SPRING

In the Middle East, the youth who drove the Arab Spring will give way to a gradually aging population and with new technologies starting to provide the world with other sources of oil and gas, the Middle East economy will need to increasingly diversify, the report said.