Predict future business opportunities and threats in the national and global environment - Essay Example

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze threats and opportunities that businesses face in the future domestically and internationally. The economies of countries have become more interconnected than in the past. A potential opportunity for businesses in the global economy is to take advantage of the growing trade from emerging economies. Emerging economies can be defined as rapidly growing and volatile economies that promise huge potential for growth, but also pose significant political, monetary, and social risks (Businessdictionary).

In a lot of these emerging economies there are a growing number of middle class citizens that are looking to purchase consumer products in order to increase their standard of living. Two examples emerging economies that pose a tremendous opportunity for companies looking to expand into foreign markets due to their large populations are China and India. The combined population of China and India account for over one-third of the global population. A market that has been forgotten by the business community which poses an opportunity for companies looking to expand oversees is Africa.

The Sub-Sahara African region is considered by many economists as the frontier market. Africa has six of the ten fastest economies in the world (Harare and Johannesburg). Another reason that Africa represents a huge opportunity for businesses in the future is due to the fact that within three decades Africa will surpasses China as the world’s largest workforce. In the future another factor that represents an opportunity for businesses is technological advancement. Companies must invest money in research and development in order to accelerate the process of innovation to bring new technologies to the market.

Companies will be able to improve their manufacturing capabilities as technologies such as robotics become advance enough to replace the need for human labor. Automation provides several advantages to companies such as lower labor costs and greater productivity. “Automation created hundreds of millions of jobs in entirely new fields” (Kelly). The premise that robotics and automation will increase unemployment is erroneous. The need of low skilled laborers will decrease in the future, but the demand for skilled laborers will rise.

New technologies are going to create new markets and more opportunities for new businesses. The supply of labor in the future will change in regards to how companies recruit personnel. The old approach of focusing mainly in employees located near the geographical location of the business will change. Companies in the future are going to look more to recruit employees internationally because it will become harder to find educated employees in many fields from the local labor supply. The governments of the different nations across the world are going to have to change their immigration policies in order to adjust to the needs of global corporations.

In the future companies will be able to reduce their operating costs associated with energy due to the fact that renewable energy sources will become cheap enough to replace the dependency on petroleum as the main source of energy and gasoline. Despite all the positive scenarios of the future of business there are also threats that corporations must deal with. Robotics poses both an opportunity and a threat. If machines evolve enough to have artificial intelligence that is smarter than the human brain it is possible that the robotics