Supertrends: Winning Investment Strategies for the Coming Decades

by Lars Tvede

The 2008-2009 market meltdown and house price collapse has reset the credit and property cycles, and smart investors are now looking for the upside. But Where Will the Next Bull Runs Come From, and How Can Investors Take Advantage? The world is now facing staggering change, including exponential performance growth in many technologies. We can expect computers that are smarter than people, self-driven cars and a truly intelligent Internet. We are also facing a biotechnological revolution enabling personalized medicine, fourth generation biofuels, radical extension of human life expectancy, exponential growth in farm yields, and even the recreation of extinct species. Furthermore, our energy sector is facing a complete transformation which will eventually make our energy supply limitless. Meanwhile, our population will grow, age and urbanize, and - largely due to emerging market growth – global purchasing power will have quadrupled by 2050. What will this mean for commodity prices, the environment and growth sectors such as real estate, global finance and luxury? Supertrends explains not only what will happen, but also how and why. Having himself run several hugely profitable funds through seeking out long term opportunities and having set up and sold several award winning technology and new media companies, author Lars Tvede shows readers how to identify and profit from the investment opportunities of the future. If you need to be prepared for the rest of your life, this is the book for you.

472 pages, Hardcover

First published May 24, 2010

Reviews

[Uswa Anjum · Rating 3 out of 5]

En bog om vores fremtid. Bogens vigtigste pointe: Innovation er menneskehedens vigtigste ressource.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a thought-game into the future. A very optimistic one at that. Lots of fun stuff to wonder about, think about and dream about but I did have a hard time as I got deeper into the book. He starts the book by saying that people often catastrophize (my word, not his) the state of the world and, in fact, it is in much better shape than we think. Well, then I am definitely guilty of that when it came to his later chapters. He seemed to skim over the uglier aspects and over-simplified the positives. Or maybe I am one of the people who catastrophize the world.

An enjoyable book if you like this kind of brain-game.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tak til Lars Tvede for at læse og tænke meget. Resultatet er denne idiosynkratiske listning af teknologiske, biologiske, ressourcemæssige, organisatoriske, psykologiske, miljømæssige og samfundsmæssige og politiske trends som ligger til grund for hans optimistiske syn på vores fælles fremtid.

Fortalt med smittende begejstring og i en let tilgængelig fremstilling. Et primært udbytte er at man får lyst til at læse videre i det righoldige kildemateriale på www.larstvede.com, dels for at blive klogere, men også for også for at validere / udfordre bogens mange postulater. Der har ikke været plads til megen diskussion af pro et contra og det er OK, da Lars Tvede gennemgående fastholder at det vi får er hans fortolkning. Det ville også have været en læsevenlighed at have opsummeret de 50 postulerede trends i 5 meta-trends, som ville hjælpe læseren med at navigere og og organisere den meget intense informationsstrøm.

Bogens svageste punkt er springet fra den 'nørdede' beskrivelse af teknologi og videnskab til udledning af de politiske og værdimæssige konklusioner, men dette er vel næsten uundgåeligt, hvis forfatterens personlige standpunkter ikke skal udvandes totalt. Der stilles ikke krav om at læseren skal være enig.

Alt i alt en god anvendelse af din læse- / lyttetid og god stimulation til overvejelser om sammenhænge og mangel på samme i en efter alt at dømme ultra-kompleks verden

[Firsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this book is a little bit along the lines of "Factfulness", "Future Crimes", and "Editing Humanity" (maybe because I have read the latter two just just recently).

Anyway, it's basically an optimistic futurist book with an investment mindset all throughout because the author is a venture capitalist, and when it comes to investors, you have to know that we tend to have a very optimistic mindset about the future because that's the way to invest for the long run. That's probably why my financial analysts have found this book and recommended it to me. It has shaped our investment approach by highlighting these underlying trends that are shaping our future, and you can assign certain companies you want to invest in to one of these trends. If there is a match, then you can at least know that there is a tailwind behind those names.

I have read many futurist books, and I'm not easily swayed by big prophecies and stuff like that. But time and again I experienced that even if a book is just a few years old or maybe a decade old, many ideas come true. Thus by the time you are consuming the content, the book reads like "oh yes that's how the world is, it's nothing special". So these kind of books have better value if you read them early on when they come out.

[Ondrej Slunecko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb insight into what the future will most likely provide for humanity. Good balance of facts and predictions. Even though future will most likely surprise us, I would say significant portion of predictions will come true and we can prepare for them and position ourselves to benefit.