While he admitted that there were limits in making trend predictions, he said there was a desire for it. “We have become obsessed with trying to predict the future but we’re still pretty crap at doing it,” he said.

During his presentation he showed that China is now educating far more people than other countries with Shanghai achieving the single largest score in the OECD – standardised scoring (overall PISA score 2012 ).

But all countries – both developed and developing – are faced with rapidly ageing populations. “Most dramatic of all is Japan. It has become the test market for ageing marketing and in 2013 adult diapers outsold children’s for the first time,” added Myers.

When it comes to global optimism, the most optimistic are in China, India, Brazil and Turkey with France coming out as the least optimistic.

As digital affects the world, Myers cited the trend of Amazonification. “It’s a company with an extremely low cost model, squeezed margins. When we did a study looking at mums in the UK for every purchase they’d jump back to Amazon to check prices,” he said.

In terms of globalisation – Bric countries see this as positive for them while the Russians and France are the least positive about the impact of globalisation.

Most of the trends observed are putting huge pressure on sustainability and Myers pointed to people believing ‘we are heading for environmental disaster unless we change our habits quickly’. “People do care and recognise it’s a problem but everyone believes companies ren’t doing enough,” he said.

So overall while there is a uniform desire by people for a simpler life, and there are high levels of anxiety and low trust in governments, people across the world in general believe people of different nations have more in common than differences.