Markets of Tomorrow: Pathways to a New Economy

The document identifies 20 promising new markets across three categories: safeguarding planetary boundaries, empowering and protecting people, and advancing knowledge. It outlines seven target conditions necessary for these markets to mature—invention, production, demand, standards, value, codification, and infrastructure—and argues that their realization requires coordinated public-private action at both country and global levels.

• The report identifies 20 promising 'markets of tomorrow' categorized into three goals: safeguarding planetary boundaries (e.g., electric vehicles, hydrogen, greenhouse gas allowances), empowering and protecting people (e.g., EdTech, precision medicine, skills capital), and advancing knowledge (e.g., artificial intelligence, space flights).
• For a new market to reach maturity, seven key conditions must be met: invention of a sustainably producible product, established production capabilities, sufficient demand, emergence of market standards, societal alignment on value, legal codification, and the existence of necessary physical or digital infrastructure.
• The 'landscape'—consisting of exogenous structural elements, physical environment, and existing market concentrations—can either facilitate or hinder the emergence of new markets. Sudden shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, can create windows of opportunity for new niches to replace established paradigms.
• The report argues that while global coordination is essential for markets with a global scope, country-level action is the most indispensable unit for organizing economic change because governments hold the primary decision-making power to coordinate stakeholders.
• A mapping of country readiness suggests that advanced economies are generally best positioned to pilot both technological and socio-institutional innovations, while some Middle-Eastern and African countries (e.g., Kenya, Namibia) show high potential for socio-institutional innovation despite less mature technological systems.
• The market for greenhouse gas allowances is currently fragmented across 31 compliance markets and six main project-based standards; the report states that a global, liquid market is needed with values aligned to environmental needs, specifically between $50-$100 per ton of CO2.
• The establishment of a mature digital financial services market could potentially increase the GDP of all emerging economies by $3.7 trillion by 2025, provided regulatory obstacles and infrastructure gaps are addressed.
• The report highlights that 'skills capital' remains underdeveloped because accounting standards and fiscal regulations typically reward investments in machinery and real estate over investments in workforce skills.

APA

World Economic Forum (2020). Markets of Tomorrow: Pathways to a New Economy. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Markets_of_Tomorrow_2020.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Markets of Tomorrow: Pathways to a New Economy. 2020. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Markets_of_Tomorrow_2020.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Markets of Tomorrow: Pathways to a New Economy |date=October 2020 |url=http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Markets_of_Tomorrow_2020.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2020markets, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Markets of Tomorrow: Pathways to a New Economy}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2020}, month = oct, url = {http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Markets_of_Tomorrow_2020.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }