Trends for business in 2009 and beyond: global shifts will cause a new social order to emerge.

• Author: Frey, Thomas
• Position: Notes from a futurist

In a world in which systems and technologies propel changes at lightning speed, disaster came upon us like a storm, causing our financial systems to collapse. Now we face a future much like that of a damaged ship. We have been torn from our moorings and flung into a rip tide that is whisking us away to unknown seas.

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The disarray that we find ourselves in cries out for answers--a view to the unchartered waters that lie beyond the horizon. Here are some of mine.

DESYNCHRONIZATION

Businesses that are flying executives around the world, marshalling resources to capitalize on new opportunities and working teams 24-7 to meet deadlines, face a rude awakening when they have to work with a government agency operating at a pace that makes a turtle yawn.

In his recent book "Revolutionary Wealth," futurist Alvin Toffler describes how the desynchronization of society has created more and more speed bumps along the fast lane. With a nearly unlimited set of options for circumventing anything that slows them down, systems are becoming marginalized at a record pace.

While the radical pace differential is not just between government and business, it is precisely this desynchronized relationship that is driving the disruptive changes we're seeing around us, the most radical of which are happening on a governing level.

We are first seeing a "peeling apart" of business, industry and social structures that is creating a number of vacuum spaces between the rising gaps in the social structure. While disruptive on one level, these vacuum spaces also create an array of new opportunities for business and industry.

SYSTEM CRISIS

President Barack Obama's team will bring fresh energy to Washington, but we will find them spending the majority of their time in a reactive mode.

Many of the global systems we currently have in place are on the verge of breaking. Most global systems have evolved out of a patchwork of national systems and have not been designed to properly manage the speed, volume and excessive nature of today's society. We need a complete systems overhaul, transitioning us from national to global systems.

National systems will fight to survive, but will flounder because of complexity overload. But if we don't change our systems, our systems will change us. In the coming years, look for major failures to occur in our tax systems, justice systems, Social Security, monetary systems and much more. But pay close attention to the...