In today's world, escalating population, rampant urbanisation and diminishing resources are just three of the challenges facing governments and industry.
Learn more about futureau's thinking on these and other issues by accessing the links below.
At the forefront of this array of challenges are water resources. Economies of scale in localities well served by water are becoming more commonplace, but increasingly the point of consumption is then some distance from the point of production.
In terms of delivery and product formulation, packaging is becoming more innovative and sophisticated, ingredients more targeted and esoteric.
Packaging in particular is increasingly viewed as an asset for recycling, while assessment of performance to environmental targets - as individuals, corporations and societies - is witnessing the development of a range of footprints.
Pragmatic solutions are called for and new technologies are playing a central role. New thinking is required across a number of subjects, not as an intellectual exercise, but to accelerate implementation.
Nowhere are demographic and environmental pressures more apparent than in the provision of water, a fundament of life, a shared resource and the most basic human right.
Regardless of the relative levels of consumption, agriculture, industry and households cannot function without it.
Brand owners take seriously their role as stewards. Source owners are investigating a range of options to deliver water from where it is plentiful to where it is scarce and most needed.
Shipping, pipelines and harvesting are either being discussed or in their infancy. Each recognizes water as a valuable - and tradeable - resource of the 21st Century. The 20th Century paradigm is oil.
In such a world, the much talked of BRIC will play a pivotal role - Brazil and Russia as freshwater exporters, India and China as the largest importers.
Consumers have high expectations of the geopolitical impact of water, particularly when measured against oil. It should be shared and represents not just a good source but also a source for good.
The future of water provision requires innovative ideas and a robust balance between regulation and pragmatism.
futureau consulting is determined to play its part.
Packaging will always be a key element in brand identity.
At its most powerful it is a symbolic differentiator. Without it the FMCG market does not exist.
Packaging has to deliver, habitually unremarked, in a consumer's hands. Frustratingly it is often only acknowledged when it underperforms!
Brand owners have to constantly find the correct balance between innovation and cost, not easy when key raw materials exhibit significant price volatility.
The recent volatility in the price of PET resin represented just such a challenge and one of the principal responses of suppliers and brand owners alike has been to use less material - lightweighting.
There are clearly a range of benefits to this emphasis. However, inappropriate application can lead to commoditization of markets where packaging remains an important differentiator of quality and functionality.
In addition, the communication to consumers needs to be handled carefully to avoid an expectation of price reduction, especially in sectors where packaging is a major component of total cost, such as in bottled water.
futureau consulting can help you strike this balance and is keen to champion worthy innovation.
The trajectory of development in production has been for faster lines, bigger plants and more capacity - the pursuit of all the benefits of an economy of scale.
However, what have been some of the principal impacts of such a pursuit, at least outside the plant? Fewer, larger plants give longer distribution distances, higher distribution costs and increased relative environmental impact. Particular cases may differ, but these fundamentals are universal.
Now even the most multinational of businesses is presenting a regional, even a local face. To be credible this requires smaller plants - and more of them.
In a bottled water market where the emphasis appears now to have switched from perceived high cost to perceived high impact, leading brand owners are still coming to terms with the optimal approach.
Nestlé has sold some regional brands in Germany and Portugal - although acquired in Switzerland - while CCHBC, often in company with Coca-Cola, has built up a strong regional portfolio in the Balkans.
In truth, strong brands remain the secret and increasingly a regional presence is counted as a strength not a limitation. They give proximity to markets and consumers.
Such scaleable models also give, even for the largest and most cash-rich multinationals, a new, standardized paradigm that meets the environmental concerns of Developed World consumers and also provides an affordable investment model for the Developing World.
We are increasingly being encouraged, and rightly so, to consider our impact on the world around us. Carbon offsetting has morphed into carbon footprinting with carbon neutrality - or even now negativity! - the ambition.
The same assessment is now being applied to water which, at its simplest, can be either non-renewable or renewable or waste - alternatively green, blue or grey. After that it becomes a bit more muddied!
Academia and the environmental lobby are still framing the agenda in the absence of, to be fair, adequate regulatory consensus or even guidance.
FMCG multinationals are showing themselves to be increasingly alive to this issue and are at the forefront of initiatives and best practice implementation across the world. This is admirable since most independent assessments suggest that, across the whole supply chain, these manufacturers rarely account for more than about 5% of the total water footprint of the products they manufacture.
As with so much else, the balance between idealism and pragmatism needs to be struck so as not to discourage the implementers - the manufacturers - from continuing their good work.
In the final analysis, some action is better than inaction. Encouragement should be the reflex to develop, not criticism, although it is fair to observe that most manufacturers are not unaware of the commercial benefits of being seen to act with responsibility.
One of the carbon footprint tools that much debate is currently centering around in establishing the principles of water footprinting is offsetting.
On the one hand, perhaps, it is right not to actively encourage it because that could be seen to be condoning sub-optimal behaviour.
However, if offsetting gets clean water into Africa or taps into glacial meltwater that otherwise disappears into the sea - to be desalinated in twenty years at heavy energy and environmental cost - surely it shouldn't be discouraged?
Ask any FMCG manufacturer about the packaging challenge and they will tell you it is about striking the right balance between innovation and cost.
This balance is not, however, the only challenge. Increasingly packaging's journey into and then beyond consumers' hands is of more and more interest to those very same consumers.
The sum of the resources used to fashion packaging and the impact of its disposal are of rising concern to a greater number of stakeholders. Packaging is no longer just waste, it is also a resource to be reused.
For Coca-Cola, recycling is "the act of helping a bottle re-fulfill its destiny and become something great again". An admirable sentiment and a laudable objective, supported by that company's commitment to making practical investments that realize those ambitions.
However, the systems are not always in place to support regeneration and too often, particularly in the Developing World, packaging is and will continue to be waste for some time to come.
Other solutions are called for.
Biodegradability and compostability must be the pragmatic weapons in the armoury alongside the more idealistic armaments of recycling and returnability. They need not be mutually exclusive choices, but complementary provisions.
futureau consulting is committed to helping industry find the appropriate equilibrium between idealism and pragmatism, as it varies over time and in place.
Research and development resources within industry and academia are consistently fabricating new ingredients with ever more specific applications and benefits.
Food and drink is well established as a platform for functionality. The regulation of claims has been tightened to give consumers the assurance that such products can and do deliver.
Regulatory bodies continue to remain opposed to the improvement of value foods with ingredients that 'endorse' their consumption. A thought occurs - wouldn't allowing this be a pragmatic way of actually upgrading nutrition in those socio-economic groups most needful of the improvement? Prevention or cure?
Not all products, however, are appropriate vehicles for improvement. Consumers will always want "fun for me" indulgent products alongside "good and better for me" offerings. They will also be sceptical of certain products being carriers of additional functionality.
It is an environment where anything seems possible and the next wonder is only weeks, even days, away.
It is an environment in which a commercial sensibility is all too easily submerged under a pioneer's passion for his product.
In the final analysis, even sophisticated consumers prefer propositions that are, fundamentally, simple. Science push comes to nothing without consumer pull. Educating consumers individually can be a very expensive business!
The identification of a need and credible provision, through the appropriate channels, to the target consumers at the right price and quality can often be a time-consuming and difficult task. futureau is well placed to assist.