As the Trends Research Institute predicted in 2015, “Takeover” has indeed taken over. Fed by the Federal Reserve’s cheap-money policies and mimicked with increasing skill across global economies, stock buybacks, takeovers, mergers and acquisitions have broadly outpaced business investment, true price discovery and entrepreneurial activity in developed and emerging markets. The consolidation in industrial, entertainment, media, retail and service sectors has stamped out choice of product and services in critical areas.
The greater the consolidation, the broader the range of fields and markets abandoned by the “bigs” because price points and volume are either too narrow, too tight or too small for their grand-scale operations.
Trend Forecast: Trend-savvy entrepreneurs and innovative thinkers will seize golden opportunities by filling market gaps with specific products, services and experiences vacuumed out by takeovers.